Slashdot Mirror
EV1Servers.Net's CEO Regrets SCO Deal
spafbnerf writes "Everyone Internet's CEO Robert Marsh, when asked his feelings about the SCO deal almost a month ago responds: 'Would I do it again? No. I'll go on the record as saying that,' Marsh said. 'I certainly know a lot more today than I knew a month ago, in a lot of respects.'"
Someone coming out and admitting he made a mistake, but at the time was trying to do the best for his company deserves respect. We need more people like that in the industry!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Don't piss off geeks and nerds who drive your business.
IMHO there is no point talking about the past. The good question is what they will do about it.
why he is a CEO in the first place?
Who makes a decision like that only to turn around a month later and say he would have done the exact opposite. If I were a shareholder, that wouldn't inspire confidence in my CEO... sheesh!
-A
Some people said they didn't want Marsh using their money to fund SCO. Me, I don't care if he uses it to feed a massive cocaine addiction, AS LONG AS MY BOX AND HIS NETWORK ARE ROCK-SOLID.
The poor guy did the deal thinking he was just buying something akin to fire insurance, and boy did he get burned.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
If I were an investor, I would be asking why Robert didn't take a week and educate himself before bowing to SCO.
If I were an investor, I would be happy to have found a businessman who will admit to his mistakes.
The one thing that bugs me about this is that he did what he thought was best for his company. His job is ensuring the company's survival. Period. Ideals have a place and time, but ideals also do not put food on the table, pay the rent or mortgage, and do not ensure continued employment.
Now do I think he made the right choice? No, I think the idea of purchasing licenses from SCO was dead wrong. But I do NOT think this because of some idealistic idea I have about the SCO IP thing. I think it was wrong simply because so far, the legitimacy of SCO's IP claims is seriously questionable. Were I in that postition, I would NOT be paying money based on IP claims that are still in dispute.
That he did, is akin to me paying a license fee to Coca-Cola for use of the Pepsi formula. (assuming that Coke sued Pepsi claiming that Pepsi includes Coke's IP).
As I said, he did what he felt was in the best interests of his company, which is exactly what his is paid to do. I still think it was the wrong decision, BUT to fault him, and berate the company merely on an idealistic viewpoint is also equally wrong.
Its almost like people who refuse to buy a Honda because Honda is a Japanese car. Instead they spend money on a Ford (made with 80% foreign parts). They never stop to think that the Honda is built in Kentucky by American workers.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
What's been said on Slashdot this whole time != what's been said elsewhere.
At the time it might have been a smart decision or just the safe one, but by now SCO's a joke.
that implies that there was a time when SCO wasn't a joke....
He knew what SCO was, and what they had a reputation of doing. What he didn't know was the strength of the anti-SCO backlash, and how there's a tendancy to spread anti-SCO FUD that's just as bad as anything Darl does.
People claimed that EV1 didn't like the OSS movement, truely thinks that SCO owns the IP, or other such nonsense. All EV1 did was sign a deal that prevents them from getting the lawsuit that apparently landed in AutoZone's lap.
Yeah, they paid off the lawsuit extortionists, that's true. However, sometimes when you're running a business you have to make a decision you don't want to make for the safety of the business. Robert thought that he could explain that to the anti-SCO folks, but apparently those people didn't want to listen to him.
What I don't get is what this guy regrets, giving into SCO, the bad publicity for caving to them, trying to use SCO dealing to get him in the spotlight, wasting investors money, alienating his user base, etc.
I didn't see any news in the article at all. Just looked like more corporate speak designed to obscure any real meaning while trying to get publicity.
Being targetted by SCO would then become a can't-win situation. Either you pay SCO and then get shunned by the Linux world, or you don't pay and SCO sues you to death.
If SCO asks 5000 companies to make a deal, and each has a 1/1000 probability of accepting (because they rush their decisions or don't know much), you still expect a handful to accept.
EV1Servers.net's CEO should have wondered why all the 4999 other companies aren't making a deal. I guess there's a 1/1000 chance this questioning wouldn't occur to them.
Which of the following people used the following argument to justify their actions:
"Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't know any better"
Executive officers of companies take no end of credit for their brilliance when their business does well(despite it being almost entirely out of their hands) but the second something bad happens, will say "shucks, it wasn't me" or "I dunno" or "oops". Folks- he should be fired by their board, or(gasp) take a pay cut, for the damage he's done by ignoring clearly obvious publicity problems the deal would generate.
It's interesting to note that in Japan, if a high-ranking company official makes a major blunder or is incompetent, they resign with a public apology(taking responsibility) or take a voluntary pay cut. American CEOs and execs can demonstrate no end of incompetence and take pay raises, huge stock deals...or get enormous golden parachutes. They commit massive fraud and get away with a fine that is barely 10% of the profits they made, or maybe a few weeks in some state-run all-inclusive country club.
Please help metamoderate.
This is a business man folks. This is business.
1. Pay up. Support the other side. Get the licenses.
2. Say you're sorry for doing so. Your money STILL supports the other side...you STILL have the licenses...but now you can get pity from this side.
Best of both worlds.
No, not gonna happen. Until those licenses are null and void, I'll never send ev1 a penny of my money. SCO claimed this was a million dollar deal. Even if it was only 10,000 you can bet Robert Marsh knew EXACTLY what he was doing. He's just trying to keep his customers after doing EXACTLY what he wanted to do.
If you pity this man after this "confession" then you're the one that deserves the pity. He's making a fool out of you twice.
It comes from the realization that by paying, you have encouraged the criminal to repeat this sort of behavior.
The best thing everyone can do is to totally ignore SCO's demands for money.
Have no illusions, Marsh is not some warrior fighting for righteousness, he is a business man, plain and simple. With this statement, Marsh was hoping to invoke the exact response that he invoked in you in a large part of the community (I.E. customers and potential customers) that he drove away a month ago.
I seem to recall an aphorism about laying down with dogs and contracting fleas. I feel for the guy, don't get me wrong. But it's like feeling sorry for the guy who sunk his retirement account into a Y2k bunker. Or better, actually fell for one of those 409 scammers.
Actually I do feel for those people, they work hard their entire life, and a single indiscretion costs them their entire life's accomplishments. The people who take advantage of such vulnerable individuals are predators, and maybe it was a really stupid thing to do, but it still cost the person everything they had.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Classic craven executive behavior: when the chief exec of EV1Servers faces a puffed-up SCO, he caves. When he faces hate mail for caving, he caves to them. SCO can't revoke his BS license for whining about it, and haters can't do anything at all. This guy is a complete clown - I wouldn't trust him as accountable if anything ever happened to my site he was hosting.
--
make install -not war
1. Insist that his deal remained totally secret.
2. Refuse to deal with the extortionists.
3. Assuming he negotiated a better license agreement, insist that he would be free to publicise the text of that.
Just as businesses clearly have to pay off extortionists some times in order to survive, it may make business sense, but it is in no way "honorable".
Furthermore, it was clearly his intent to attract customers on the basis that he could offer safety from SCO's lawsuits: else why not insist on complete secrecy? Thus he hoped to benefit from SCO's FUD and should therefore be considered complicit. The only possible alternative explanation is that he reduced his own cost by allowing EV1's name to be publicized by SCO: once again, in this scenario, he is knowingly attempting to benefit from SCO's FUD.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't know if he saw that SCO would whore their name out like that. I think at the time he was concerned, probably got one of those "letters", inked the deal because it would be cheaper than a legal battle, and then got a public teabagging from SCO.
Basically SCO has humiliated one of it's new customers in public, which again is telling of the way they do business. And I'm sure that wasn't part of the bargain.
Don't pay, get sued. Pay and get pimped out as a public relations hooker for SCO's legitimacy campaign. Hmm, choices choices!
note: I've had dealings with EV1 through customers. They provide a pretty ok service for the cost I'd say. Just for reference.
-- The unsig...
He's paid off SCO, so no threat of a suit (and the accompanying legal bills) but now gets to trash SCO publicly to his hearts content with no repercussions. If he's smart he'd come out and say he paid off SCO so he could slam then later. This could be the best thing for the anti-SCO folks that could have happened.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Reminds me of the Python trial skit where a judge reads of the string of horrific murder charges for five minutes and the defendant rises and says "I'm very sorry and I'll never do it again". He then proceeds to compliment the judge, jury and prosecutor and says he never had a chance after which he is acquitted by the jury. This is just damage control by a CEO and not very good damage control at that.
Possibly neither. It may be that he just wants to soften the negative publicity by public back-peddaling. It costs him nothing - he still has his deal with SCO but gets to portray himself as a hapless victim.
for caving in to a protection racket when the SEC and the govt. isn't even investigating it. How can SCO charge someone for services that they haven't even been legally determined they have a right to provide?
You can legislate morally you can't legislate morality
Either you pay SCO and then get shunned by the Linux world, or you don't pay and SCO sues you to death.
The courts may be going down hill, but it'd still be hard to lose a case when the other side has absolutely no evidence. They haven't proved any code infringes on their copyright so they can't use it as evidence to the contrary, can they?
I've seen countless people saying 'why didn't he explore the issues' blah blah blah before signing on with SCO. What they neglect to consider is that as a for-profit business, the company's role is not to care about the issues, but decide which is going to cost more, signing the contract (and suffering the resulting backlash) or getting their asses sued so they can make a stand on principals. As they don't have IBM's warchest of cash and IP for cross-licensing deals I think he chose the right course of action.
Instead of a poorly informed CEO making a bad decision and in need of a PR guy, this looks to me like he made the right decision for the bottom line (no more churn than normal after the announcement) to the company and now he's paying lip-service to the user community so he can perhaps lower his already "normal" ratio of sites lost to sites gained.
All in all, looks like a win-win. Covered from the law suits and now looking like he agrees with the anti-SCO crowd.
Looks like he's got his cake and gets to eat it too.
If I were an investor, I would be happy to have found a businessman who will admit to his mistakes.
Yeah, at least that way you'll know why you don't have any money left!..........oh wait, maybe it would be better if he just spent the money wisely in the first place.
Life is too short to proofread.
All EV1 did was sign a deal that prevents them from getting the lawsuit that apparently landed in AutoZone's lap.
EV1 was using Redhat!
Even if they DID get sued, Redhat would have indemnified them.
What EV1 did was 100% stupid. Not only did it "cover" an issue that was already covered, it also opened them up to the possibility of a breech-of-contract lawsuit where none existed before.
Life is too short to proofread.
What I haven't seen is anything along these lines:
Sounds like a gamble, but a good way to nail the coffin of SCO if/when they lose; also a great way to send a message to anyone else that might try these SCO tactics.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Ok...we're not naive. Whether this deal was for $10,000 or 6 figures as SCO claimed, we realize it wasn't something done hastily and overnight. They thought this one out. However, this is also something I think they thought out:
1. Let SCO use you as their poster child. Any company that is illeducated, wants to use linux, but is afraid of SCO now comes right to your doorstep.
2. This WILL hit slashdot. Face it....you have a product for geeks. SCO is geek enemy #1. This is going to generate LOTS of traffic to your site....LOTS of geeks will be talking about your company.
3. A month later, after you've gotten your share of customers that are afraid of SCO, announce that you're sorry and that SCO is a bunch of bad people. You KNOW the story will hit slashdot.
Now what happens? The slashdot crowd starts feeling sorry for you....and all that advertising starts to work for your benefit. You've got the licenses and now you've got more geek advertising than any banner ad could provide.
Maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist, but man...this seems WAYYYYY too convenient.
Are very vaguely and cunningly worded, so chances of financial recovery are minimal. All licenses permit you to do is use SCO IP if by any chance there is some in Linux. They don't say that there definitely is some there.
Besides, technically SCO does have IP in Linux; IP covers copyright and like all Linux developers they still hold the copyright to the stuff they wrote. However they have released the stuff on a non-revokable perpetual license (the GPL), so there is nothing stopping free use.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
And does SCO really care what EV1 says? SCO fucked 'em up the ass, got their jollies, left a present on the night stand, and has moved on to other FUD. As far as SCO is concerned, EV1 served their purpose, no suprise, EV1 feels dirty! And, I don't think SCO has ever actually planned to make money on the license business. Lastly, note that SCO stock is up today.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Also, more on topic, I think you're on the right track here. Simply admitting that he made a mistake is not enough. He may not be able to get his money back but if he truly does wish that he hadn't done business with SCO he could at least terminate his license with them. Suing SCO for fraud or extortion might be nice, but probably too expensive. With MS backing them SCO can afford a *lot* more lawyers than a lowly webhost can.
OTOH, if everyone who got one of SCO's "pay us or we sue you" letters sued them for extortion it'd force SCO to hemorage a lot of money on the legal defense. Kind of like a DOS of legal filings. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but doesn't threatening lawsuits on false grounds count as extortion? Since they've sent letters to people outside Utah, can't we get the RICO act in on this?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
This is BS. You cannot kill a person and then walk in his funeral. EV1Servers.Net betrayed the Linux community and telling lies is not going to fix the damage they made.
Businesses go bankrupt. People lose interest in pet projects. If projects had to pay for hosting on sourceforge, how much churn would there be, do you think? Big hosting companies host hundreds of thousands of sites, churning a few thousand a month is no big deal.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's simple. He can't get out of the SCO contract. but by public stating that it is a bad deal, he is warning other companies not to make the same mistake. He could have not said anything at all, or simply apologized at a confidential board meeting. By making this public, he instantly made it incredible difficult for SCO to get any further business. I would say that is a solution to the problem we call SCO.
I can't afford a sig!
For example: why doesn't he release the details of the deal with SCO, if SCO has insinuated some details that are not true? Surely the secrecy clause works both ways!
Additionally, why doesn't Mr. Marsh donate, say, $1MM (the purported value of the deal, as per SCO) to OSDL? Call it a token of appreciation for the OSS community that has helped his business get to where it is today.
Words, by themselves, don't mean much Mr. Marsh when your deeds have done tangible damage. If I break a neighbors window, I will have to replace it; just saying "Gee, sorry!" doesn't help.
Until Mr. Marsh takes tangible steps to balance his mistake from March 1, his words are meaningless. The most likely explanation, IMHO, is that he's trying to douse the protests and just move on, with complete disregard for the ramifications of his deed.
I agree. Just because a person is responsible for their own tragedy doesn't make it less tragic. In many cases, it makes it more tragic.
Compassion isn't some delicate commodity we must hoard and only dole out in specific, predetermined circumstances. We all make mistakes. Usually those mistakes are when we need help the most.
------ What's sadder than realizing you've filtered out your own comments?
Yeah, yeah. Every car theif who gets popped in the lot, every wall street insider who gets caught making trades, and more often than not, serial killers, regret their mistakes when they're already caught.
This individual didn't regret a goddamned thing until he was confronted with it.
Of course, as this point there is some backlash against EV1, from the supporters or OSS. But the thing with a company like EV1Servers, is they offer a great product, I know first hand from my experience and some of my clients experiences, so even though people dont support him for moral reasons now, when everything blows over and people start forgetting what happened, people will go to ev1 for the simple fact its a great service. I am not worried about the future of EV1.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
As the old saying goes: Words are cheap!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
This one's from a couple of days ago.
Let's see. He's posing as an officer of the bank, looking to divert funds for his own personal use, and asking me to lie in order to help him. I'll grant you he doesn't actually use the word 'illegal', but it shouldn't require any special expertise to know that he's up to no good.I'd have some sympathy for anyone who fell for this, but it would be hard to describe them as 'innocent'.