Josh Richards "jrichard"

Linux is Legal (Still)!

Today SCO (the idiotic falling over themselves almost to the point that I almost felt sorry for them but decided to simply laugh at 'em instead company that has claimed broad intellectual property rights over the Linux kernel and has lawsuits pending against Novell, Red Hat, and IBM) received a big blow today in the three year old court battle with Novell over whether or not SCO even owns and controls the IP they claim to (they bought/licensed/borrowed? so-called original UNIX from Novell in 1995).

Short answer: Nope, nada. Read more elsewhere on the web or take a look at Groklaw.net which has followed the whole thing since the beginning. Sorry, Darl, but your claims have never made any sense. On the upside, SCO is now a household name (again) within the Linux and IT communities. Too bad, its got sh*t all over it too now. Maybe Darl is really a super secret undercover marketing researcher mad scientist who was just out to prove wrong the clique that "there is no such thing as bad publicity".

Investing and Temptations

A couple months ago, in order to insure I would not make any foolish decisions and to stay focused on near-term cash flow sources (such as my consulting business), I stuck most of our uninvested cash into government securities. You see, a serious hobby has become analyzing public companies and investing in them when a (rare) gem at a good (or, more rarely, great) price pops up on my radar. The plan was (is) to leave things alone for six months or so. It had nothing to do with believing it was the best place for our cash -- I just didn't want to have too many distractions keeping me from focusing on what should be my near-term priorities. And, knowing I had other things to be worrying about, I didn't want to risk half-assing my investment analyses.

Well, then the market had to spin a bit. Most folks are looking at their holdings being down the last few weeks. A few of the stocks on my On Deck and Watch lists have dropped into more attractive price ranges. I really shouldn't be spending time on this right now, I have a consulting business to build, but damn it -- some of these look to be pretty attractive transactions to step into now and let play out over the next one to five years. Doh!

(And, no, SCO's most definitely not on the candidate list).