Slashdot Mirror
SCO's Biggest Investor Admits It Loves IP Lawsuits
Roblimo writes "A Baystar Capital spokesperson has finally admitted, directly and on the record to NewsForge reporter Chris Preimesberger, that they believe SCO's only viable asset is the potential proceeds of lawsuits against Linux users and vendors. 'We're looking for the best return we can, and we think the focus should be on IP licensing (and enforcement),' said BayStar spokesman Bob McGrath."
may be against Baystar. i would assume that a capital investment company, especially one that invests in IP would do a complete and comprehensive evaluation of what they are investing in. which leads me to this: SCO painted a picture with *so* much recovery (lawsuit/licensing revenue) that it blinded them to the reality of situation.
one hopes that when the countersuits start flying that baystar is named as a defendant right under sco.
eric
Thats funny.
When the slashdot crowd are actually starting to like Darl for sinking the ship, THEN its a good idea to get rid of him.
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Any public mistake a hedge fund makes, usally means the end to the hedge fund. Their multimillion dollar investors won't stand for this and will start moving their money to one of the many other hedge funds.
Hedge funds are in the business of making money, and I would bet the Baystar has same amount of money invested in Open Source companies.
Hedge Fund don't lose money, they just make less.
Chris Southern
Nah, they want him out because they believed every word he said and now realize their folly. ...didn't see that coming???....
-B
>When the slashdot crowd are actually starting to like Darl for sinking the ship, THEN its a good idea to get rid of him.
Not only is McBride our top pick for steering SCO into the ground (taking the investors with him) by using his large mouth to talk about "millions of lines of literal copying" that they have again failed to identify -- thereby again failing to comply to the court order to be specific (the next hearing will be very interesting. Will IBM finally ask for sanctions, or are they just too nice for that? :-) -- but he's also raiding the SCO coffers all by himself, lifting $968,000 out of the company last year! Almost a million dollars in salary+bonus from a business that's a COMPLETE FAILURE! Well, I guess it's not a complete failure if you count the core business as being 'stock scams', but let's just pretend they're a litigation company instead.
McBride, we're on your side! Don't step down now -- You've got to ride this out (...and into that orange jumpsuit...).
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I disagree. If you read the articles where BayStar speak out, you'll see that they're still believers -- unless they're lying about being believers for some reason, but that's just a little too tinfoil-hatty for me this time.
No, I actually think they're mad because McBride spends all his time travelling the world, with his big mouth, a big mouth that's hurting their chances (as it were) in court, and also all this talk about rebuilding the "core UNIX business".. BayStar wants none of that crap (and neither does anyone else, but let's not tell Darl).
BayStar still believes!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
What are the social and legal effects of this kind of business going to create? In the unlikely event that SCO were to win big money for BayStar, other groups will begin to seek similar "investments." I see a progression here:
1. Mutual funds and VC groups begin to seek out luctrative litigation opportunities.
2. People begin to invest in these groups, because of the high rate of return. Skilled lawyers scour the land for untapped "violations" or negligence.
3. The well begins to dry up. Investors need to keep the cash flowing in. but the only targets left don't carry enough cash to make them good targets. So they lobby the Federal Government to mandate the remaining targets to carry insurance.
4. The risk is spread out, and we all pay more to keep BayStar's numbers in the black... with no social benefit whatsoever.
5. Repeat, industry by industry.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
>Here's hoping Darl gets ousted.
Are you mad?! Whatever for?!
You're a SCO investor or what?
I personally find it relieving to see truth start to poke its head into play. This is why IBMs game plan is so strong, patience is a virtue, and they are execizing their power in a calm and controlled fashion. The key to a good lie is being able to use the lie and then put it behind you; SCOs lies and fabrications can't stand up to the light of this kind of media attention forever and now we see the curtain coming down. I dont think they realized how difficult continued deception can really be.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
I wonder why they want to be anonymous? The recommendation.
Does everything include nothing?
Darl McBride is the best thing to happen to Open Source.
Only problem is that it will still be a year or so before we realize just how great of a service he is/was to us.
Let's face it, life is about pleasure. If some individual believes in "doing no evil", it's simply because, in the opinion of the individual's intellect, "doing no evil" is a good way to make pleasure. On the long term, pissing everybody off is probably not a viable pleasure strategy.
Seems like a good summary to me. Humans can do evil too. Why do many slashdotters seem to almost excuse corporations for being ruthless in the pursuit of their goals? Why it is presumed that the same social criticism we apply to individuals cannot be levied at corporations to pressure them to conform to acceptable business practices?
Perhaps we need some sort of "afterlife for corporations" concept to keep them on the straight and narrow... :-)
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Maybe that's why BayStar now wants their money back from SCO?
Not quite. My assessment is that they never expected Darl to go hog wild on the PR front, nor did they expect him to be "bright" enough (in his own parasitic, pathetic way) to realize he was being set up to drive SCO into the ground.
Looking at BayStar's backers, the initial move against OSS was tremendously clever and dangerous. By funding small battles in minor lands, the goal was to poison OSS. Apply a stigma to it, make it look shady, risky and dangerous and corporate America will stick with the institutions of Microsoft, Solaris, Oracle, SCO, etc. (this theory helps explain why Oracle and Sun have appearances of being on the "wrong" side of OSS and may be receiving subpoenas in the matter - Oracle already has).
Many of Groklaw's commentators have difficulty understanding why SCO, BayStar, Boies & crew, Sontag, and many other intelligent (ethics aside) people bet on such a ludicrous case. Sontag's recent copyright to patent morphing attempts, for instance, is terribly weak and Sontag clearly must be aware of it. But this case wasn't initially propped up to be the primary battleground between the proprietary software world and OSS. It was intended to be a lengthly skirmish between a pump & dump effort from a long-dead UNIX vendor and OSS.
What went wrong? They hired the right white-shoe legal firm for the job (Boies), greased the pols (Hatch) and got the right court. What they didn't expect is an effective, organized opposition (e.g. Groklaw) and more so, did not count on losing the traderag spin (you can bet there's been some money spent to protect that message, but you can't stop them from dropping the paid spin once the issue goes mainstream, although there still is the occasional hack for hire out there). Oddly enough, though, the greatest mistake was trusting Darl and Chris to remain stupid and unaware that they were being set up to fail. Darl in particular believed the lies and the thought that he could actually own the empire that controlled what is presently OSS got him. Imagine the power and wealth from being the CEO to own Linux? They shouldn't have underestimated Darl's ability to self-delude, let alone his greed and power drive. The created their own monster and can't control him (though BayStar is now trying to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle). BayStar has a slight problem in this move, though, as it won't immediately kill Darl and instead, may make him feel even more attacked. Having dealt with pump & dump schemers like Darl before, the last thing you want to do is corner him. BayStar should have moved to redirect (e.g. offer another $20 mil or so and slow things down and move the matter off of the front pages of the tech press. Either that, or promote Darl to some "critical" to allow him to focus on building the future super Linux company and "not be distracted from the day to day of nasty legal stuff" - anything to get him out of SCOg).
This truly is terrible news for the anti-OSS coalition. Fighting the main battle on this issue is a historic error. Should Linux be permitted to be decreed "legitimate and safe" through this process, you can expect Microsoft to lose its OS business within 5-10 years (being perhaps relegated to an office suite vendor), Sun left to push high-end AMD or Intel boxes, and Oracle simply to perish (hey Larry, can you say "Post-gres-ql?" I didn't think you could!).
IBM's motivation is tremendously historical. They got screwed by the OS play with Gates the first time around and are salivating at a royalty-free OS that frees them from bundling leverage and other annoyances, let alone the license expense. Although they derive their own benefit, kudos to IBM for escalating the skirmish into an all-out war.
*scoove*
what matters to 'outsiders' is whether they have a *chance* of winning a court case, not whether they have any real ip.
The day-to-day investors in this scheme are of little relevance. BayStar understands this case is a dog and it won't win. It had hoped, however, to fire off a plethora of anti-OSS IP cases to poison OSS for BayStar's real clients.
If you're trading on SCOG or any other BayStar venture, you'll eventually get hurt. Understand there are ways BayStar can make money while their investment tanks (I learned firsthand from one).
Should BayStar be working for anti-OSS clients (which it is), SCOG's litigation failure and demise is of no concern. It's a cost of doing business in the effort to make OSS untouchable to corporate America. That's the expected outcome. The grand-slam is getting Sen. Hatch and friends to push anti-OSS legislation, under piracy, homeland defense, etc. guises.