Looks like this is turning out to be a really bad year for those poor folks at SCO. As usual, they have blamed their reasons for the consistent financial losses on the “major drop in the company’s effort to license its Unix intellectual property”.

Right, that must be it. Well even if it is, they have a leak in their financial boat that desperately needs to be plugged asap before these losses start to snowball on them.

The company reported a loss of $6.5 million, or 37 cents per share, for the quarter ended Oct. 31, compared with a year-earlier loss of $1.6 million or 12 cents per share. The Lindon, Utah, company’s revenue dropped from $24.3 million to $10.1 million over the same period.

SCO blamed the revenue decrease on competitive pressures and a major drop in the company’s effort to license its Unix intellectual property. No analysts surveyed by First Call had financial projections for the company.

SCO also will have to reckon with the fallout from a major shake-up at the Canopy Group, the investor that owns a majority stake in SCO. Canopy Chief Executive Ralph Yarro, who also is SCO’s chair, has been replaced at Canopy by Bill Mustard, a Canopy representative said. The executive shake-up was reported Tuesday by The Salt Lake Tribune, which also said Chief Financial Officer Darcy Mott lost his job.

Yarro and Mott remain on SCO’s board, SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said. Yarro and Mustard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.