SCO: We'll win, but if we don't we'll survive

Although confident of victory against IBM, SCO executives insisted yesterday that losing the lawsuit would not mean the end of the company.

Speaking at SCO Forum 2004, chief financial officer Burt Young said: "If we lose the lawsuit I don't know that [it] changes everything.

"We are going to keep the company going and we are committed to that whatever happens with the lawsuit."

SCO is suing IBM, claiming that it allowed SCO's intellectual property to be added into Linux without consent.

Darl McBride, SCO president and chief executive, said: "If we can win in the courtroom we can get back in the game. [If] we get money coming in we want to reinvest in the products and the channel.

"There would be a stark contrast between 'if we win' and 'if we lose', but we are pretty confident about what the outcome will be."

Young explained that SCO considered the recent stock repurchase transaction with its investor BayStar Capital as completed, even though BayStar has maintained that it is not.

SCO said in a statement last month: "BayStar has notified SCO that it is BayStar's position that the repurchase transaction has not closed, pending resolution of claims by BayStar that SCO's recent public statements regarding SCOsource licensing opportunities are inconsistent with statements previously made by SCO to representatives of BayStar."

But Young insisted that SCO is treating it as a "closed transfer".

"As to why [BayStar is] doing this is conjecture," he said. "My guess is they are trying to wrangle something else out of us, but we don't intend to do that. The issue they have raised is frivolous and it's a red herring."