Here's the official press release from SCO, and an article from Heise (German) about what's happening. This is a lot of money for SCO, whose market cap is USD 120 million: USD 20 million in preferred shares plus USD 4 million in interest. The Heise article also points out that the Royal Bank of Canada has a larger investment of USD 30 million, but that they are still waiting. The SCO announcement doesn't say anything about the Bank of Canada. Baystar wants their money because of an alleged breach of contract, which SCO doesn't agree with.

Here are the two year and three month charts for SCOX, SCO's common stock. It will be interesting to see if this makes investors nervous and what happens to the stock this week. It's pretty easy to see the various FUD releases roughly corresponding to the volume spikes in the two year chart. Note also that these are logarithmic scale charts, so the price movements are compressed. Look for a volume spike on Monday!

Monday Update: Here's analysis from TheStreet.com, and opinion from eWeek.com This also from eWeek.com, covering what the allegations are; this leads to the question "What does Baystar know?" There's also another article in German from DerSpiegel Online. It concludes that the air may be getting thin for SCO.

Thursday Update: IHT is reporting that Baystar director Lawrence Goldfarb gives reasons for the company's move:

Goldfarb described a company that had become too engaged in publicity and debate with the passionate advocates of the Linux operating system. SCO's management, he said, was traveling too much and spending too much money on its publicity efforts when it should have been concentrating its attention and resources on its legal strategy.

In other words, litigation is their core business and profit center. And if that's what you're going to do, do it right.