SCO Delays Earnings Report

The SCO Group, which is preparing a legal challenge of the open-source movement, said Friday it has postponed its quarterly earnings report by two weeks in order to account for a $50 million investment.

The Lindon, Utah, Unix software maker had been scheduled to release its fourth-quarter report Dec. 8, but needed more time to "finalize the accounting treatment for its recent $50 million Series A Convertible Preferred Stock transaction," company officials said. The investment would not affect the company's revenue or cash balance.

SCO on Friday also reiterated its revenue forecasts for the fourth quarter ended Oct. 31 of $22 million to $25 million.

On Thursday, SCO moved closer to filing a copyright-infringement lawsuit against a customer of open source Linux. Company CEO Darl McBride released a public letter outlining SCO's case against the open-source movement and the General Public License that governs the distribution of Linux.

SCO claims to own the copyright of some Unix code in Linux, and has filed a $3 billion lawsuit accusing IBM of violating its Unix contract with SCO by contributing some of its protected code to Linux. IBM denies the claims.McBride has said the company is preparing a lawsuit that will be filed soon against a major user of Linux. In the open letter posted Thursday, McBride stated the company's case. "The GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws."