Even though I live in the socialist haven of Canada, I’m a strong believer in the free market.

If it is true that SCO has a right to charge licencing fees on Linux, then the SCOX market capitalization should include both the value of SCO and the “value” of Linux.

Today, the market cap is almost $160M. Before the whole fiasco hit, it was at less than $30M.

So, a gain of $130M is likely the value the market is assigning to SCO’s holding in Linux (assuming SCO hasn’t done anything drastic to increase their value otherwise in the same period). One way of looking at it would be the percentage chance of success times the value of the trademarks. That is, if (for sake of argument), the market sees the value of Linux as $1.3 billion, and SCO having a 10% chance of succeeding, then the value of SCO should increase $130M.

Now, I think the value of the right to licence Linux is worth a fair bit, at least into the $1.5B area, which would correspond to the market thinking there is a ~10% chance that SCO is right.

Just thinking out loud.