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McBride Interview from Utah SCO Protest

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the daily-dose-of-sco dept.

Andrew McNabb writes "Some of you may remember the protest we had in June in front of the SCO offices in Lindon, UT. Afterwards we had an interview with Darl McBride, where he said some very interesting things. More on the scoop, including a transcript and ogg of the discussion is available at Groklaw."

10 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. groklaw = quickly slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    or at least it was last time. mirror of article

    1. Re:groklaw = quickly slashdotted by filtrs · · Score: 3, Informative

      Its been changed from groklaw.com to groklaw.net and moved over to Ibiblio. I don't think we have much to worry about from now on ...

      --
      My mother always used to tell me: If you can't find anything nice to say, say something bad about Windows.
  2. Boies fatal error by Dav3K · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The biggest mistake Boies made was to continue letting McBride et al to continue to speak publicly. So much of what they have said is now coming back to haunt them, especially in the Red Hat case.

    It seems pretty obvious that McBride can stall this through his 4 quarters of profit, but his big payoff comes one year after that - I wonder what tricks he has up his sleeve to hang on that long?

  3. Re:There was a protest? by etymxris · · Score: 3, Informative

    Now do you remember?

  4. Here we go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    Back in June, there was a protest by Linux users at SCO headquarters,which received some coverage in the press, including here on Groklaw. Inow have a transcript of the conversation between SCO CEO Darl McBrideand the protesters. I've also listened to the tape to verify theaccuracy of the transcript, and you can do the same if you can play .ogg files, here. There are a couple of places where thesound isn't clear, so I've indicated that in the transcript.

    McBride talks about a number of issues, such as SGI, whether SCOintended to sue end users or commercial only, how and when theydiscovered the alleged "infringement", Caldera's contributions to Linux, and whether Debian is a safeversion of GNU/Linux to use because of its noncommercial nature. He also tells them that SCO isn't interested in suing individual users or even small commercial users. Its beef, he says, is with the "Unix vendor community", UNIX-licensing companies switching to Linux and donating code to Linux so they don't have to pay any more royalties to SCO for Unix code, "the vendors that are getting aneconomic incentive to reducing the amount of royalties that they payby virtue of taking our property and putting it into Linux, then turnaround and saying it's a free system." He mentions that they were talking about 64-way systems, not home users.

    He also says they found "hundreds of thousands of lines of code that are infringing against our contracts." Note the plural on contracts. He claims the increase in functionality in Linux is because of "vendors" that SCO has "confidentiality agreements" with. Again, note the plural.

    A lot has changed since June, but it's clear that when this began, SCO had in mind a very small pool of targets, UNIX vendors being a small group of companies. What stands out is that I think you'll see how polite the Linux group is,how friendly the conversation was even when strong points were being made by each side, McBride praising them several times and at the end thanking them for their input and calling them "awesome". How different this reality is from the ugly portrait he has tried topaint in the media of users of GNU/Linux software allegedly "attacking" SCO. And when you hear or read it, ask yourself, how accurate were news reports of this event? But judge for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

    Transcriptof informal group chit-chat with Darl McBride

    June20, 2003

    Members of the Provo LinuxUsers Group (PLUG), along with other Linux and Unix group members andconcerned individuals in the area held a protest against SCO on June20, 2003. This protest began in front of SCO headquarters in theafternoon. The officialPLUG protest web site, with pictures and video, can be seen at http://mirror.lug-nut.com/

    After protesting in frontof the SCO corporate offices (on a cul-de-sac), many in the groupmoved to a more visible location, a busy intersection nearby. Alittle while later, Darl McBride stopped by for an informal chit-chatwith the demonstrators on his way home. Here is what was said during the 23-minute conversation.

    TheCast:

    Darl: SCO CEO Darl McBride

    P: Protester (thecollective group, with various individuals asking questions)

    C: Cameraman

    Pleasant Grove PoliceOfficer: Pleasant Grove Police Officer

    Darl: So, how's theday going?

    P: Oh, pretty well. We had more people than we expected. We talked to some of yourengineers outside, and they're really nice people.

    Darl(0:11): So howdid all that go?

    P: Oh, really well . . .

    Darl(0:16): So youguys are just convinced that we're Satanic? Is that it?

    P: No, no, no.

    P: Just greedy,that's all.

    P: We wouldn't usethose words. We would use different ones.

    P:

  5. Spanked by BWJones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is this an unedited version of the transcript? Wow, if so, reading through the transcript, it appears Darl is not a very good spokesman for the company. He completely lost the initiative with the debate, has no real direction with which to respond to questions. On the other hand, not to defend SCO or anything, but the interviewer does things that always piss me off in interviews. Namely interrupting and quickly changing the subject before the interviewed gets a chance to adequately respond.

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    1. Re:Spanked by dimator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They asked McBride (more than once) why it wasn't just OK for the linux guys to remove the infringing code. He didn't answer the question at all, and instead danced around it. In fact, I can hardly find any question where he did answer in a straight-forward manner.

      It would be cool if he just answered "Greed." to every question, because that's what we're all thinking anyway.

      --
      python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  6. That Darl... by Jameth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is a pretty smooth talker. He managed to almost always sound like he was saying something, even though he wasn't on quite a few occasions. Also, he only repeated himself about ten or twelve times.

    And that's not an insult, not by a long-shot. It's damn hard not to be repetitive in a situation like that, and he held out pretty good.

    Also, if I recall correctly, he distictively said SCO wasn't going after end users and Linux developers, just after IBM:

    P: The thing that we ask is that you just make it clear that you're attacking IBM, not us.
    Darl(22:38): I appreciate what you're saying. OK.
    P:Thanks.

    Of course, it's a little vague, but it's something.

    He managed to dodge all the questions about if running a specific configuration was in any way a violation (On a single proc? On a handheld?). Also, he seemed to imply that Debian was clean.

    Darl(8:55): I can't... Again, when I look at Debian versus what we're talking about with enter... I would really draw the line on enterprise class Linux versus what you're talking about. Right? 'Cause I think that there's a huge difference. I mean, when I hear what you're talking about, the thing that is interesting is, I would argue the point which is that's not where we're trying to go. Okay. Because our real beef is where the thing has been highly commercialized. When you get a 64-way system, and my guess is that the one you're using at home is not a 64-way system, right? That is really where we have a lot of concern.

    Also, the protestors were very level-headed, which was good. They had good questions and pushed hard without being rude.

  7. FUD follows FUD by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Note how Darl never, ever addresses the GPL issue directly. He never says, "in regards to the allegations of copyright violation in regards to distribution of the Linux kernel, which is protected by the GPL, from our server all this time..." or anything similar. Here's the only time he seems to address the issue of the GPL, though again he does not mention the GPL:

    Darl: We obviously have problems. Now one issue here is a distribution is not the same as a donation, right? Somebody donated code that is protected by us through other agreements in there. When it goes in, it doesn't say "this was SCO protected code." We only found out about this a couple months ago. That's when we said "we've gotta stop this until we get this figured out."

    It seems that the phrase a distribution is not the same as a donation is an allusion to the fact that they are still distributing linux, but they don't seem to think that distributing the code under the GPL is the same as donating it.

    Well, in a sense, Darl is correct. It's not donating it; it is making the code available for all to use under the terms of the GNU Public License which states some things quite clearly which demonstrate that SCO itself is releasing this code to us under the terms of the GPL, for such use as we see fit, so long as we accept the license.

    4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

    (WHEREIN SCO cannot terminate our right to use their source code which they have themselves distributed under the GPL, within the linux kernel, even if SCO themselves does not follow the terms of the GPL...)

    5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

    (WHEREIN SCO has agreed to the terms of the GPL, which as per the prior paragraph they cannot revoke, by distributing the code under the GPL...)

    6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

    (WHEREIN SCO grants a further license for distribution to anyone and everyone, under the terms of the GPL...)

    7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not perm

    --
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  8. So here's the part that jumped out at me... by Ironica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let me paraphrase one section of this exchange:

    "So, show us where Linux is in violation."

    "No, we can't do that, because then we'd be revealing protected code, and then there would be a problem."

    "So there's not a problem?"

    "No, there is a problem, which is that there's SCO protected code in Linux."

    "So if there's a problem, just tell us which code, and we can fix it."

    "No, I can't do that, it would cause a problem."

    This sounds like one of those loops that those AIs get into when talking to each other...

    --
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