[CLUE-Talk] Interesting times: Novell acquires SUSE

[Jed S. Baer]

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 14:04:08 -0700
"Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier" <jzb at dissociatedpress.net> wrote:

> >  Most likely they will cut a deal with Canopy to buy their share of
> >  trolltech 
> > or they will cut a deal with trolltech to invest more.
> 
> Buying Canopy's share wouldn't cut them much, Canopy only has a 5.7%
> interest (if you count SCO's 1.6%) according to this:
> 
> Investors:
> http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/investors.html

Lemme get this straight. Canopy (major shareholder of SCO?) is also an
investor in TrollTech, while SCO is foaming at the mouth over the GPL?
Hmmm. I see they also include LinuxNetworx in their portfolio. Has anybody
heard what Ray Noorda has to say (if anything) about SCO?

Just googling around, I came across this:
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=19265298

<quote>
 At the time of the lawsuit's filing, Ray Noorda owned 47.7 percent of
SCO/Caldera's's stock through the Canopy Group, a division of the Noorda
Family Trust which Ray Noorda still personally oversaw as recently as
2001. Although Canopy has reduced its ownership position slightly since
the lawsuit (taking advantage of the increased stock price to cash out),
it still owns more than 40% of Caldera's shares. According to page 66 of
SCO/Caldera's most recent annual report, SCO's chairman of the board is
the president and CEO of Canopy (meaning he works for Ray Noorda the way
Darl McBride works for him). SCO/Caldera leases its office space from
Canopy. On page 67 we learn that SCO's largest creditor is the Canopy
Group.

Presumably, Canopy could stop the lawsuit with a phone call, but hopes to
profit from it instead. 
</quote>

Where's the benefit to Canopy over stomping on their Linux holdings?

jed
-- 
... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier