Updated: SCO goes bankrupt

Gee, who'd have thunk it? (OK, I did, but that was a couple years ago.)

After all those optimistic forward-looking statements about how SCO Group would be able to soldier on despite its recent legal losses in its efforts to squeeze royalties out of every Linux user, it turns out that SCO is broke.

On Monday, SCO was scheduled to finally go to trial in its lawsuit against Novell -- a case that has now mostly been whittled down to the question of how much money SCO will have to pay. How confident is SCO of a positive outcome? Yesterday its board of directors decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to one bankruptcy-filing document, SCO's largest debts include $800,000 in unpaid legal bills and and $125,000 owed to Microsoft. But that list doesn't include the amount SCO may be found to owe Novell, which could go as high as $25 million.

According to SCO's press release announcing the Chapter 11 filing, SCO "intends to maintain all normal business operations throughout the bankruptcy proceedings." Presuming they can continue to find lawyers who will take a postdated check.

Update: Well, almost all normal business. It seems that filing for bankruptcy automatically puts all other court cases on hold, according to Novell. That means after saying for four years that it wanted to get to trial as quickly as possible, SCO has found one more way to avoid going to trial.

Who'd have thunk that? Turns out that Novell did, back in January -- when it told the court  that SCO's bankruptcy was "imminent" and "inevitable."