The SCO saga

I’ve long been an interested observer of the SCO saga. I observed at first with indignation, but for well over a year now I’ve watched with the same kind of macabre fascination that a bystander finds him or herself unable to turn his head and look away from a traffic accident scene.

And still, after all this time, the case never ceases to surprise me. Today’s Groklaw article reveals that SCO has spent eight and a half million dollars in the last two years on "experts and consultants" for its litigation efforts. In addition, they have paid an absolutely astounding twenty-six million dollars in attorneys’ fees.

Think about how much money that is for a second. In this era of big business I think we get desensitized to large sums like that, but if you actually pause for a moment and really reflect on how much money 34.5 million dollars is it’s quite shocking. It’s hard to believe that they’ve been able to spend that much money, doubly confounding because it’s such a worthless, misguided, corrupt undertaking in the first place. I take my hat off to them; I couldn’t have done it. About the only way I can think of to destroy so much cash, so much goodwill, and so much business, is with a truckload of cans of gasoline and an abundant supply of matches.

The sad part is that the real winners in this debacle include the SCO executives who massively increased their wealth by selling off stock when their initial efforts at media manipulation sent the stock price through the roof back in 2003. Other winners include the lawyers who are charging those fees, but they always win, don’t they? Even when they’re on the losing side.