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SCO insider trading watch
Things have been relatively quiet on the SCO front recently; one gets the
sense that, perhaps, the company's lawyers were finally able to convince
management that a bit of discretion might be helpful. Silence does not
mean that nothing is going on, however. Among other things, SCO's
executives continue to slowly cash in their stock to take advantage of its
current, inflated price. Here's the latest insider trading roundup:
That's a total of 93,000 shares sold since the suit was filed, for a net of $782,000. This sum is a small down payment on the bonanza that SCO hopes to eventually enjoy as a result of its actions. The big payoff may remain in the future, but one could understand if even the most confident SCO executive feels the need to collect a little now, on the off chance that things fail to go as planned. It's worth noting that Opinder Bawa has quietly left the company, shortly after selling all shares in his possession. Finally, it has emerged that - as many had speculated - the "mystery licensee" is none other than Sun Microsystems. The Unix license purchased by Sun came with a nice bonus: an option to buy 210,000 shares of SCO stock for $1.83 per share. Neither company has yet made any statements about why things were done this way. Most software license agreements do not include stock options, after all. A high level of paranoia is not yet called for, but it is natural to wonder just what Sun is up to here. (Log in to post comments)
SCO insider trading watch Posted Jul 17, 2003 9:13 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link] So this is illegal or not?
SCO insider trading watch Posted Jul 17, 2003 13:01 UTC (Thu) by gleef (guest, #1004) [Link] Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and I'm certainly not an SEC lawyer. The below is not legal advice. It's probably not illegal, but we won't know for sure until some time passes and more information emerges. IIRC there are two big things the SEC looks for regarding Insider Trading:
I would not be surprised if there is a lot of 1 going on, but it's hard to prove something was fraud as opposed to stupidity. As for 2, we can't tell if these sell-offs meet that criterion until we see what comes next. Regardless, I think the guy who sold all his shares and left the company could easily argue (whether its true or not) that he was disgusted with the new direction the company was going and wanted nothing more to do with them, and be pretty safe from insider trading charges.
SCO insider trading watch Posted Jul 17, 2003 15:37 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] My personal opinion is that while we as a community tend to jump up and down screaming that it was Microsoft behind the puppet of SCO.. it was more likely our old 'friend' Sun who really is trying to profit from all the press.Looking over history of Sun's ways of dealing with falling behind in the market (say SunView or Java) has been to litigate or play super hardball business with people who are on their enemy list. Most of it seems to be Scott McNeally and companies sour grapes that they arent the monopoly they wish they could be.
Sun needs x86 drivers Posted Jul 17, 2003 19:38 UTC (Thu) by stuart2048 (subscriber, #6241) [Link] IMHO...Sun is trying to reinvigorate its Solaris x86 platform. As usual, the problem is device drivers. SCO has the drivers and Sun licensed them. Rather than pay full in cash, it looks like they worked at a part cash, part stock deal. I can see why a lot of people might think Sun and Linux are competitors. But surely it can be only good for Sun that Linux is building demand for the Unix model.
Sun needs x86 drivers Posted Jul 18, 2003 11:40 UTC (Fri) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link] But surely it can be only good for Sun that Linux is building demand for the Unix model.Um, have you not been paying attention to the attrition of customers from Sun to Linux? Linux isn't building demand for the Unix model, it's building demand for Linux -- something Sun hasn't quite figured out, or is unwilling to learn. People aren't using Linux and then saying "hey, I want to go out and get a proprietary version of something like this that's far more expensive, not much better, with vendor lock-in and really expensive hardware." But a lot of people who have been using Solaris, Aix and other proprietary Unix systems are looking at Linux and saying "hey, this is just as good, or good enough, and it runs on far cheaper hardware, costs less and I can pick and choose my vendors -- or support it myself. I'm in!" Even more than Microsoft, Sun has a lot to lose from the success of Linux unless they can figure out how to make money from it -- which doesn't seem to be happening, since most of their Linux efforts are half-hearted and mostly just seem to be ways to let their sales force say "hey, we have Linux solutions, but look at this Solaris solution over here..."
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