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Notes From The SCO Roadshow's First Stop
compactable writes "Just got back from the first half of the SCO roadshow's first stop in Toronto. No unfurling of IP, no NDA, however an interesting view of what's running this litigious blip of a corporation. Full details at my weenie write-up (feel free to mirror the contents so that my ISP doesn't kill me)."
Notes from the SCO Road show
... it may be worth putting yourself on the list for future stops of the show ...
...
I decided to go to the SCO "City to City Tour" (%s/City to City/Farewell/g) out of morbid curiosity - what did SCO say about itself? I was especially interested to see if the time allotted to "roadmap" would even mention shippable product (o; It was interesting - not exactly as I expected, but interesting nonetheless. Highly recommended.
And apparently easy to attend. 64 seats, less than 20 attendees. Considering that when I applied I went to a waiting list, I was expecting a higher turnout
Grandest cheese at the presentation was VP of Marketing, Jeff Hunsaker. He started out with an hour the company's report card & backgrounder. Here's the view of SCO painted: 330 employees, 2+ million deployed units (no mention of OS breakdown - would be interesting to see what % of that is Caldera Linux), target market is small-ish business. Reference accounts seem to be franchised fast food & drug oriented. Think Pizza Hut & Wallgreens (Arnold Clarke & Argos were UK references, Shoppers Drug thrown in for us Canuks). Nothing IT-intensive. Avaya & Lucent were mentioned on the laundry list, however no detail was given, and I cannot imagine descendants of AT&T paying too much to some guys in Utah for hideous product (searches on their sites for SCO only brings mention of their "Special Customer Operations" group).
Oddly enough, market cap & stock price were mentioned extensively (who'd have thought?). Reference was made to using their capitalization as a means of acquisition; however no details were given (assuming there were any details to give). The fabled '2 quarters of profitability' was also mentioned. The name Caldera was dragged through the dirt, as they were never profitable. From the slides you'd think SCO had roots much, much deeper than the MS Xenix junk they spawned from. In fact, the analogy they whip out is that of Harley-Davidson (HD was purchased by AMF, went to hell, then arose re-branded as the mega-label you know today). I refrained from pointing out that pre/post-AMF Harley produced respected product, and did not send threatening letters to Yamaha owners
Mention of the legal battle? Nothing technical. Representatives were up-front about their lack of legal knowledge, and inability to comment. It never got past the mud-slinging stage. Same old, same old. Their interest is in protecting their IP. This is about a breach of contract. Linux 2.4 code review shows Monterrey-esqe code relating to memory-access that must have come from AIX 5L. Caldera Linux customers are indemnified against legal action. Blah blah blah.
Interesting bits?
Their definition of IP (I've never seen a formal definition, and so some of the things on the list amused mildly): Copyright, Contracts, Methods, Trade Secrets, and Know-how (Know-how? How about "stuff we have" - can that be a IP subject too?). Their mention of McBride making some soon-to-be-published "top 5 influential executives list" (that'll be a keeper of an article). And heavy mention of HP's support. Reference was made to their web site removing their logo, however they emphatically associate SCOs current operations and HP's approval. Nothing to substantiate, however.
Really interesting bits?
The crowd. I was expecting Linux zealots. It was mostly a room full of SCO resellers. And they were not too big on having a love in. Nothing hostile, however not one positive comment for the morning's session. During the "we be so profitable" section of the spiel, one reseller in the crowd asked "where does the money come from?" The response was largely a pointer to the SCO source initiative. The response? "What you are profitable in will not make me profitable.". Wow. That was good. One raised the points that this quibble is hurting his business. SCO's stance is that they'd love to settle this tomorrow (har
a world in progress...
Australian Mirror.