McBride Says No More Lawsuits From SCO

thephotoman writes "Well, Darl McBride gave an interview to IDG News Services in which he said that SCO is not going to sue any more customers. They do bring up the issue of the SCOsource Linux licensing, and how much of a failure it has been. Instead, they plan to start marketing their flavor of Unix. However, as he's not dropping the current lawsuits, there's no good reason to believe him on this change in strategy."

Comments

Good Idea

[ackthpt]

SCO is not going to sue any more customers.

Not suing customers, particularly your own, is usually somewhere high on the list of Winning Business Strategies.

"Smithers, how much did our iron-fisted grab for licensing fees get us?"
"$11,000, last quarter, Sir."
"Ehhxcellent! They must be crowding around like lemmings, eager to hand over their money!"
"Uh, No Sir, it cost us millions to get that much."
"In the parlance of that oafish brute Homer Simpson, D'oh!"

Re:Good Idea

[Ayaress]

Very winning business strategy. You know what's more profitable? A betting pool on when exactly SCO will file their next lawsuit.

Re:Good Idea

[bstone]

A betting pool on when exactly SCO will file their next lawsuit.

But ... Darl said he wasn't going to do that any more.

Of course, if they ever do want to have any more customers, or keep some of the ones they have, perhaps not suing them is a reasonable first step.

Re:Good Idea

[jc42]

A betting pool on when exactly SCO will file their next lawsuit.

Yeah. Note that they didn't promise to stop suing non-customers. And that includes all linux users.

Or maybe this time they'll claim that there is stolen SCO code in OSX. That could supply our SCO news fixes for a while.

Re:Good Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

He also said he would produce extensive and incontrovertible evidence that Linux violated SCO's IP in a timely manner. If the guy told me the sky was blue, I'd have to go outside to make sure it hadn't changed.

Re:Good Idea

[ackthpt]

Yeah. Note that they didn't promise to stop suing non-customers. And that includes all linux users.

A problem for them, in this regard, would have been a couple of my previous employers. They used both, SCO Unix and Linux for separate purposes. They may not need to be sued, but feel the change in climate and decide to dump SCO. Most companies could care less about the politics of operating system backers, they just want stuff to work and get on with business.

Re:Good Idea

[cmacb]

But more interesting will be a betting pool on when SCO will cease to exist.

Re:Good Idea

[Performer Guy]

Yes, but it is a new one for SCO. Because SCO had no copyright case they actually sued former customers on trumped up charges, and so far have lost. I mean it is one thing to sue a customer who screws you over, but SCO were suing customers who had done NOTHING wrong other than perhaps not do as much business with SCO as SCO would like. All this just to create the public impression that SCO was somehow valuable through the public pretence that the lawsuits were over SCO copyrights.

You'd have to be a raving lunatic to do any business with SCO or accept any EULA with them. Thay HAVE used this to sue customers frivilously IMHO. Daryl McBride as the architect of this strategy should be high on the list of assholes to avoid in the business world, wherever he may go in future, AVOID.

Re:Good Idea

[jhylkema]

Or when they'll file bankruptcy.

Re:Good Idea

[Esion Modnar]

Next thing, they'll find there's stolen SCO code in their SCO code. Who will they sue? Darl's other brother Darl.

Re:Good Idea

[pdbaby]

1. Get customers
2. Sue customers
3. ...
4. Profit!

</cliche>

Re:Good Idea

[arose]

They won't. They'll sue everyone who comes with a bill...

Re:Good Idea

[CyanDisaster]

I think you may have missed a step...

1. Get customers
2. Profit
3. Sue customers
4. ???
5. Profit more?

Hope be with ye,
Cyan

Re:Good Idea

[gcaseye6677]

It makes a lot of business sense to migrate away from SCO. Who wants to be stuck with an unsupported operating system when SCO goes belly up?

Re:Good Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for God's sake, drop it. This effectively amounts to a surrender on SCO's part. If they're lying, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

As much as I love the open-source community and despise SCO's litigatory strategy you have to give them the option of backing down.

Beating this dead horse any further simply hurts our image and will drive people away from our cause.

Re:Good Idea

[Nunar]

When do the fantasy litigation leagues come out?
I'm spending so much time reading these articles that I'm losing in all my sports leagues...

I had a sig... in my pants.

Re:Good Idea

[dolson]

Actually, my employer is about to launch a pilot test to move the top 7 most critical systems from SCO to SUSE Linux. Thankfully, I'm going to have some involvement in it personally.

They told me that the move had to wait until they saw what would become of the SCO lawsuits, and I guess they've decided that SCO basically was a flop and they aren't scared anymore.

Re:Good Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Darls brother write in italics?

Re:Good Idea

[luwain]

Of course SCO isn't going to sue any more customers -- they don't have any left. Is anybody buying SCO Unix??

Re:Good Idea

[budgenator]

My experience is that's pretty normal for people using a SCO system, at least through the 90's. To i nstall the Y2K patches, I had to download them through the internet on a win98 puter, use a linux cd's rawwrite to put the images on floppy and then sneaker-net the floppies to the SCO box.

Re:Good Idea

[freaksta]

Darls other brother is Carl, you insensitive clod!

Re:Good Idea

[DChristensen]

The real Darl writes only in Italics...

Re:Good Idea

[Fred_A]

SCO is not going to sue anymore customers.... ... because it ran out of customers, it sued all six.

Re:Good Idea

[H8X55]

Jesus too.
Or is it red that He rights in?

His financial backers turn tail?

[dhakbar]

He must have lost his funding.

It seems strange that he would give up for any other reason... he's shown himself to be hell-bent on his mission.

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[ackthpt]

He must have lost his funding.

Actually, Darl's backers lost their nerve before he lost his.

Burning through a fat wad of cash in endless legal battles does tend to do that. Ask Ashton-Tate, if you ever see them again.

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[RetroGeek]

I would not debase myself....

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[Bull999999]

Darl already made millions by inflating the SCO stock so I don't think that he gives a damn what happens to SCO now.

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[Maserati]

You go to hell, you go to hell and you DIE !

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[vsprintf]

Darl already made millions by inflating the SCO stock so I don't think that he gives a damn what happens to SCO now.

From what I've seen of insider sales figures, it doesn't seem that Darl has made millions for himself, only for the previous SCO management, which is probably what he is being paid for.

The other possibility is that the interviewer offered Darl a dollar bill and a couple of lines. Evidence from the linked article:

McBride [with rolled dollar bill in nose]: . . . It's really a situation of going back to the future, if you will. [Sniffff].

Linus was mostly right.

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think he's dumb enough to want to be paid in SCO options? He got paid over a million cash last year for these games he's playing

Re:His financial backers turn tail?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think? I don't think Microsoft lost their nerve, just laying low. Once all this nonsense with EU and Japan is resolved, Microsoft will blackma^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrecommend another company to invest in SCO.

Bottom line?

[SIGALRM]

Though SCO's lawsuits against IBM Corp., Novell Inc., DaimlerChrysler AG and AutoZone Inc. have attracted a great deal of attention in the last year, they have not helped SCO's bottom line

And a marketing push for SCO Openserver/Unixware will?

Re:Bottom line?

[PCM2]

Darl has to pretend that Unixware is a viable alternative to everything Linux, but in reality SCO has a more targeted market than that. As I understand it, they have a big presence in areas like point-of-sale terminals at McDonald's. Those kind of high-volume sales will probably continue to form their core business, particularly if they can continue to create FUD as to whether the Linux alternative will be a viable long-term proposition.

Re:Bottom line?

[drinkypoo]

SCO has one kind of customer, and that is legacy. McDonald's used to use Xenix, and for all I know they still might. If they're still SCO it's only because SCO promised them minimal effort in the upgrade department. Sooner or later they're going to decide they need something SCO can't give them and go to Linux.

Xenix was basically the ideal OS for point of sale applications because it ran entirely reliably on 286 and 386 class machines. Now that point of sale systems are typically pentium or above (celeron, anyone?) there's no reason to be quite so miserly.

Re:Bottom line?

[Lacutis]

SCO Unix is the operating system used by one of the more popular retail POS systems on the market named Micros.

From http://www.micros.com/products/table_service_resta urants/ :
"8700 Hospitality Management System (HMS)
The 8700 HMS is composed of MICROS-developed application software running on the multi-tasking, multi-user SCO UNIX operating system."

Micros is really popular in the restaurant industry in general.

Re:Bottom line?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they apparently still have an engineer on staff somewhere.

They just posted to Bugtraq the other day fixing vulnerabilities mentioned in a CERT advisory which was well over a year old. And CERT advisories are usually only issued once the isses raised in them are old hat...

Re:Bottom line?

[drinkypoo]

That doesn't surprise me, they've probably been using SCO for ages. But, how long will it be before there's no point whatsoever to using SCO Unix? (Arguably, that time is actually in the past, but they might have a long-running contract or something.)

Re:Bottom line?

[snake_dad]

Well, what a big part of their market used to be was smaller companies. UnixWare isn't a crap OS. I wouldn't call it good either, but for a long time it was a nice option for small budget companies. And then Linux happened :)

Choice quote from the previous vice president of our IT company (about 5 or 6 years ago): "Linux? We won't spend time and energy on that, it is just a hype"

Re:Bottom line?

[Anonymous Coward]

You kinda have things backwards. The company really doesn't have to justify being with SCO what they have to justify is putting up the money for change and that really depends on if they get decent competition that warrents the change. Like it or not for a business like this there is no point venturing onto untested (particularly when doing so costs lots of money) ground unless there is a external force that will force them to.

Re:Bottom line?

[Pharmboy]

And a marketing push for SCO Openserver/Unixware will?

<form action="smoke" value="crack">

Sure. Now that they are not the litigious bastards they once were, wouldn't you want to do business with them? I am sure they will start contributing code to GPL projects, maybe even the same code in questions, to prevent any further problems in the future. I would not be shocked if they released a new version of SCO Linux with the 2.6 kernel in a few weeks, and refunded what few license fees they received. When all is said and done, most people will just let it pass and understand that they were just mistaken in their belief that they owned Linux IP. I mean, its not like anyone was actually hurt, right?

</form>

Oh wait, wtf was I thinking?!?

Re:Bottom line?

[abandonment]

another big company (that i'm aware of) is squirrel systems, all of their stuff runs off windows NT (ugh)...

Re:Bottom line?

[RWerp]

They'll put it on GPL and watch everybody's jaws dropping to the floor.

Re:Bottom line?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

As someone who works for a major software publisher, that's the way we now refer to SCO Unix, except we're not so kind as to use the word "hype". Tripe would be closer...

The market that SCO Unix represents ceased to be worth the R&D to support about a year before Darl and his cronies started throwing their tantrum. It's far cheaper to hire sales engineers to migrate the customer to a platform with a future (such as Linux or Solaris) than to put the effort into supporting an OS distribution with such a restrictive list of supported hardware (in comparison to even SOlaris/Intel), that is so much of a pain to track down (in comparison to Solaris/Sparc).

I'm sure they've added AGP support to SCO by now, but I'm likewise sure it's a seperate, per-seat license, and problably $250 or so a seat at that. That's typical of them, going back to the Xenix days (when I used to work for a re-seller).

Re:Bottom line?

[FFFish]

...should develop an open-source competitor, then. Make the money on installation, maintenance, and customization contracts. Anyone in any reasonably large city, say 100k+ population, would be able to make a decent living just providing the tech support.

Instead of one company making tens of millions, you'd have hundreds of people making a good living.

Re:Bottom line?

[jtwronski]

I have experience working in a few restaurants that have used the Micros system, and to my knowledge the backend was NT based, except for one place that had some kind of *nix backend; it definitely could've been sco. Another poster mentioned Squirrel systems. I haven't used any of their modern stuff, but the two setups i've seen ran on os/2. Yes, they were both really old.

Re:Bottom line?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of point of sale companies out there. IBM comes to mind. SCO is dead meat.

Re:Bottom line?

[toby]

Micros is really popular in the restaurant industry in general.

Gee, I wonder if they've ever thought about porting it to Linux? Just maybe?

Re:Bottom line?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, McDonalds uses some IBM-based software that runs on top of PC-DOS. Heck, I've even seen it crash to the prompt before.

(Posted as Anonymous so I'm not marked as a McDonalds employee by the world and banned from Slashdot for not having an über geek job)

Re:Bottom line?

[budgenator]

Squirrel wasn't always a NT shop, they probably sold as much SCO products like Xenix and Openserver as any other company. My guess is that when app producer's like Squirrel migrated to Microsoft, they drove a bigger spike in SCO's coffin than Linux ever could. These systems were absolutly necessary to the people who used them, and when the vendor said "we run on SCO period." you paid for SCO, you paid for installation of SCO, you paid for support of SCO. The only problem was that SCO was pretty stable, the apps were pretty stable, sooner or later the upgrades start to thin out and users realised that they hadn't had a support call for 3 years and hadn't installed a patch for 2 so people let the support contracts run out.

Re:Bottom line?

[ckaminski]

In this case, it's profit.

Build POS system:
1. <cost of software for POS system>
2. <cost of hardware for POS system>
3. <cost of OS for software that runs POS system>

If they can put #3 in their pockets, they'll do it, even if it inflates #1 a little bit, since #1 is a one-time cost.

That is what McBride was afraid of. Linux is more compelling to SCO's users than SCO is.

Re:Bottom line?

[Stuart Poss]

As reported by the BBC about two weeks ago, the SCO lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler was thrown out of a Michigan court with no damages awarded to SCO. Although there has been little coverage of this development neither in the general press nor for some strange reason on Slashdot, it would suggest that SCO's other suits are likely headed in the same direction. So its no surprise that they have stopped running up legal fees adding venues they are not likely to win. SCO is in an odd predicament now of having to realistically assess its business strategy in the absence of any benefit the lawsuits might accrue to them.

Re:Bottom line?

[drinkypoo]

Having run both SCO Unix and SCO Xenix, I think I can safely say that Linux warrants the change.

Re:Bottom line?

[Lacutis]

From what I've gathered from talking to people from the company, basically they have created new products that run on windows back ends and basically deprecated the SCO Unix stuff.

Wrong quote

[MoxCamel]

To quote Mark Twain, the rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated.

Someone gave McBride the wrong quote. He actually meant to quote Hudson, from Aliens:

"Well that's great, that's just fuckin' great man, now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man... That's it man, game over man, game over, man! Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?"

Re:Wrong quote

[kzinti]

Sontag: How long before we're declared losers can we expect a buyout offer?

Tibbits: Seventeen days.

McBride: Seventeen days? Look man, I don't wanna rain on your parade, but we're not gonna last seventeen hours! Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before. And they're gonna come in here...

Sontag: MCBRIDE!

McBride: ...and they're gonna come in here AND THEY'RE GONNA KILL US!

Re:Wrong quote

[evslin]

haha. GAME OVER MAN!

Re:Wrong quote

[_Sprocket_]

Engage the suit and nuke them in court. It's the only way to be sure.

-- IBM

Re:Wrong quote

[vigilology]

Build a campfire? Sing some songs?

Re:Wrong quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... Aliens has a lot of apropriate quotes:

Ellen Ripley: I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!

Re:Wrong quote

[shadowbearer]

Sontag: I say we just nuke the whole thing and start over with another IPO.

McBride: Uh, this company represents several millions dollars of investor property...

Sontag: ... ..
.

Sorry, I can't continue. Comparing Sontag to Ripley makes my brain bleed. (Although McBride and Burke have a LOT in common :)

SB

Re:Wrong quote

[Hido]

If McBride is Hudson from Aliens then I would assume that Linux is the Aliens? After all Hudson was taken and used for god knows what :p

Incubator anyone?

Re:Wrong quote

[Ark]

You forgot the part about putting the little girl in charge. Hell, it'd be an improvement for them.

Re:Wrong quote

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to chime in with a "me too" post, but that was classic. Just the summoning up of Bill Paxton's whiny voice in connection with McBride is enough to give me a bigger laugh than I've gotten from Slashdot in a long time.

Thanks...

Re:Wrong quote

[iainl]

Sontag: This little Scandinavian lasted a lot longer than that with no funding and no lawsuits.

McBride: So why don't we put him in charge!!!

Re:Wrong quote

[hymy]

And the list goes on and on...

Newt: My mommy said that there were no real monsters... But there are.

Re:Wrong quote

[SirLanse]

I don't know if you have been keeping up with current events, but we just got our asses kicked.

SCO stops sueing?

[zalas]

What's coming up next, Duke Nukem Forever or Doom 3- .... oh wait...

Re:SCO stops sueing?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he said he'll stop suing customers. Since
SCO has no more customers they can sue anybody
else they want. Actually that last statement was wrong.
SCO has two customers left and neither of them
will be sued.

Re:SCO stops sueing?

[QuantumRiff]

I actually hope they come out with Duke Nuekom forever. Just slap that title on a silly old-fashioned side scrolling game. Then we'd get a whole new range of jokes..

Re:SCO stops sueing?

[u-235-sentinel]

Doom 3 wins :-)

Re:SCO stops sueing?

[Anonymous Coward]

totally unrelated.. but a funny thing happened with doom 3. somewhere late on the game(with the teleporters) the bad guy says something like "welcome to your hell"(it seems like a portal would take you to hell or something i dunno).

just seconds after that doom3 crashed. hell exactly :D.

hmm...

[Valar]

I guess the acid finally wore off. Spend millions to extract THOUSANDS!!!!!! in licensing fees. I am trully in awe of your threeleet business skillz, Darlzor.

Bankrupt

[CodeYoddler]

$20 that they will be bankrupt within a month.

Re:Bankrupt

[Ayaress]

As said in my post above, I'm in for $20 that they sue somebody before that happens.

Re:Bankrupt

[crossconnects]

I'm in. It'll take 5 weeks.

File it under "duh"

[SoTuA]

McBride says they wont sue their own customers any more, but those "communist, anti-american, pro-terrorist" linux users got them just desserts coming, ayuh.

Re:File it under "duh"

[sinnfeiner1916]

"communist, anti-american, pro-terrorist" linux users

admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.

Re:File it under "duh"

[Anonymous Coward]

Any woe be to any SCO users that defect, because they've just lost their customer status.

SCO Linux? Again?

[Matt Perry]

Instead, they plan to start marketing their flavor of Unix.

Good luck! SCO's pretty much lost the good will of nearly everyone in the computer industry. I doubt people are going to give any legitimate offering from them a second look. Companies that sue their customers will slowly find themselves without customers.

Res judicata

[lothar97]

I think the posting is incorrect regards the "change in strategy." As Darl says in the article:

"I think right now we've got the claims in front of the various courts that we need in order to get our complaints heard and to get them argued and to get resolution. With respect to being more vocal or going after new targets at the customer level, we don't see the need for that. We had the need to get the basic issues on the table, but we're fine to argue the merits of what we have out there right now (in) the current litigation setting."

There's something in law called "res judicata," (incorrect definition here) which means if something is decided by one court, it's binding on a court in another jurisdiction. The definition given is incorrect in stating that it applies only to the parties in the original suit. It can be used against a party in the original suit, if it's the same facts/situation, and the original party had ample and adequate opportunity and reason (motivation) to provide a full defense in the first case.

If there is going to be a lot of cases, usually a company will do several, in different forums/jurisdictions, and see if they get a good result. If they do, such as SCO getting a ruling that all Linux violates their copyright/trade secrets/whatever, then they can use that in subsequent cases when suing. The inverse is also true. If a court finds that SCO is a bunch of mindless jerks that will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes (e.g. their claims are totally without merit), then they really cannot go after anyone else without overcoming some really large hurdles.

Not only do I play an attorney on TV, I am an attorney in real life as well.

Re:Res judicata

[tongue]

WTF? Aren't real lawyers banned from slashdot? you asshole, you're going to kill the market on free legal advice here...

Re:Res judicata

[dcam]

Not only do I play an attorney on TV

Which show?

Re:Res judicata

[Indigenous Cowbird]

Q: In all of its various court cases (IBM, AZ, DC, Novell, etc.), how many of SCO's claims, if decided in SCO's favor, would affirm SCO's public assertions that it has the legal right to claim royalties from Linux users?

A: None. In every single case, each and every one of SCO's legal claims covers issues that are specific to SCO's relationship (or lack thereof) with its adversary. In other words, none of these cases sets a legal precedent that's binding over the general Linux user base.

Re:Res judicata

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do I play an attorney on TV, I am an attorney in real life as well.

Stick with playing an attorney on TV. Because you're a poor attorney in real life.

The cited definition for res judicata is entirely correct. Res judicata bars a party from relitigating an issue that has already been litigated between BOTH parties to a suit (as an actual issue, or as a compulsory claim that someone failed to raise in the initial suit) on the theory that judgements should be final absent an abuse of discretion or an error of law. Res judicata is useless in a subsequent suit brought against or brought by a different party. [Plain english: A sues B. A loses and the judgment is not vacated or reversed on appeal. A sues B again on the same facts. The suit is dismissed due to res judicata. A sues C on almost identical facts. If B and C are not related to each other, the suit goes forward.]

The concept that you're looking for is called collateral estoppel. Definition. But the name is not the important error. The important error is that collateral estoppel can only be used DEFENSIVELY against a party that participated in the original suit. That pesky constitution thing requires that a party actually have the opportunity to litigate a claim. Thus if SCO loses a decisive issue in a case, it has had the opportunity to litigate the issue, and other defendants in subsequent cases can use the ruling against SCO under collateral estoppel. However, if SCO wins a decisive issue in a case, SCO cannot use collateral estoppel to prevent other defendants from relitigating the same issue in their own defense.

Summary: From a legal point of view, it's all downside, no upside. From a business point of view, a good win will change the other defendants' or potential defendants' perception of the risk of losing a suit, and encourage a settlement.

Thank you for playing the remedial Civil Procedure law school game. God help your clients.

Re:Res judicata

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely correct. The SCO v. Novell case will create a binding ruling concerning copyright ownership and the rights transferred in the various business deals. It's not a conclusive issue, but it will resolve whether SCO has standing to bring copyright claims against members of the Linux user base.

With respect to the suits against customers or licensors that are rooted solely in the license agreements and/or contracts, you are of course correct.

Re:Res judicata

[Indigenous Cowbird]

SCO vs. Novell doesn't establish that SCO has any copyrighted material in Linux, let alone enough material to demand royalties from the user base. As you say, it argues only that SCO rightfully owns certain copyrights to certain System V sources. That's a long way from showing that Linux violates those copyrights.

Nor would the IBM case, since all that's been argued (at least in public) is that IBM somehow violated some nebulous right SCO has by contributing IBM's own copyrighted material to Linux.

Re:Res judicata

[lothar97]

So I made up that first part, but I did play a law student on an episode of "Win Ben Stein's $" I did not win any of his money.

Re:Res judicata

[lothar97]

Free advice? You kidding? How else am I gonna pay off my $100,000 in law school loans?

Re:Res judicata

[dcam]

I was just interested. I thought it would be rather unusual.

They still have customers?

[Kenja]

"SCO is not going to sue any more customers."

In other words, now that they have no customers, they will only be sueing ex-customers.

Re:They still have customers?

[kfg]

Modded as funny, but actually describes the suits against Daimler-Chrysler and Autozone.

This is precisely the reason that if they had anything I was actually interested in I still wouldn't go near them. Who needs to deal with the ever present threat that they might sue you if you simply chose to use or switch to a competing product?

At this point I'd need a contract specifying that they wouldn't sue me, ever, for any reason, even if I burned down their headquarters.

I hardly think I'm alone, so just who do they expect to market their products too?

KFG

I picture this setting in their boardroom

[tekiegreg]

McBride: We've got to figure out a creative way to market our brand of Unix or Linux will wipe us out. Anybody know how our product is better then any Unix flavor or Linux. We're not leaving this room until we get some ideas!!!

*fast forward 12 hours later nothing said*

McBride's junior exec: Sir, I believe this is known as the "oh sh*t moment in business" sir...

Re:I picture this setting in their boardroom

[snake_dad]

Anybody know how our product is better then any Unix flavor or Linux... in Japan!

well

[jford235]

thats awfully nice of him. thanks buddy.

Trying to save the company

[oudzeeman]

Since there doesn't seem to be much hope for the lawsuits, and since the Linux licensing was a flop, for the sake of his company I hope he is being genuine.

Although I wouldn't be heart broken if(when) SCO goes under.

What about C++?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any plans for SCO to sue Stroustrup over him stealing the C++ programming languages?

I'm sorry

[ajs]

It's kind of like saying, "I'm sorry I kicked your dog, but I'm not going to be kicking any more dogs because it seems to get dog owners upset," while kicking the dog several times...

My personal opinion is that Darl actually loves Linux, and he's been working as hard as he can to, on Microsoft's dime, paint the anti-Linux crowd as raving maniacs... I mean, he's not really this broken, is he?

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

"My personal opinion is that Darl actually loves Linux, and he's been working as hard as he can to, on Microsoft's dime, paint the anti-Linux crowd as raving maniacs... I mean, he's not really this broken, is he?"

In retrospect, I think you're right. It's so surreal, but there was probably no better way to give GNU softare credibility in the business world. Look at how it looks to the corporate world:

Big companies (Daimler/Chysler, etc) use Linux.

Big companies like Linux so much, they'll fight in court to keep using it.

IBM will stand by Linux's IP and defend it legally

HP will stand by Linux's IP if you pay them for indemnification/insurance

The code is so clean, despite being a "unix clone", even the owners of unix can't find any infringing code.

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

damn it, every time I post as an AC I get modded up.

Re:I'm sorry

[Elwood P Dowd]

I mean, he's not really this broken, is he?

Well, he is Mormon. He believes in magical underoos.

Re:I'm sorry

[Secrity]

I would not be surprised if his sense of morality IS broken. I have seen people who get into upper management totally lose all sense of perspective in terms of morality (and reality).

I wonder if this loss of morality at upper management levels has any relationship to motivational propoganda such as exhorations to WIN, no matter what. Employers' motivational propganda used to emphasize "win/win" strategies, now it seems that employers' motivational propoganda exhort employees to WIN, no matter what it takes (unless you have to spend money).

Another change that I have noticed was the employers used to try to give all customers good service, now it seems that employers seem to give most customers mediocre service and to kiss the ass of the top handful of customers. It used to be after an outage that upper management would ask operations how many customers were affected and how long they were affected, now it seems that upper management only cares about how badly the top two or three customers were affected.

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone likes our upstanding /. member Anonymous Coward.

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too!

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse, it happened to me twice for this same article. Aargh. 2 +5 mods wasted 'cause I thought I was offtopic (really mods? Aliens on topic?)

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Make that three wasted +5 mods. :)

Re:I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

So when exactly did ignorance become a positive trait within your family?

Re:I'm sorry

[Elwood P Dowd]

Hey, coward. Make your point or don't. What about my post indicates ignorance about the Mormon faith? If I'm full of shit, I want to hear about it. Everything I've witnessed of Mormons makes me think that they're a little separate from reality.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

Re:I'm sorry

[KnarfO]

Everything I've witnessed of Mormons makes me think that they're a little separate from reality.

I think your second post is much less of a cheap shot than your first:

Well, he is Mormon. He believes in magical underoos.

I think being a Mormon is going to improve anyone, but unfortunately for people like Daryl, giving lip service to a faith or creed will do little to change you into a saint from an asshole.

Re:I'm sorry

[Elwood P Dowd]

I think your second post is much less of a cheap shot than your first:

Well, he is Mormon. He believes in magical underoos.

I think being a Mormon is going to improve anyone, but...

But you also believe in magical underoos, so I'm not sure why I should take your opinion seriously.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. But even if that's a cheap shot, I don't see what's incorrect about it. That and many other Mormon beliefs indicate to me that any Mormon who has given any consideration to their faith has also invested serious effort in ignoring reality.

Re:I'm sorry

[KnarfO]

...any Mormon who has given any consideration to their faith has also invested serious effort in ignoring reality.

Quite the contrary. I entered this faith as a skeptic attempting to de-bunk it. I eventually reached a point where the only way I could deny its veracity would be to in fact deny reality.

Nevertheless, I completely understand how certain aspects of the religion can seem peculiar to those who have only a partial understanding of it.

Re:I'm sorry

[Elwood P Dowd]

Nevertheless, I completely understand how certain aspects of the religion can seem peculiar to those who have only a partial understanding of it.

i.e. All nonbelievers.

The beginning of the end...

[sribe]

This is just confirmation that they have committed corporate suicide. I don't think they would do this unless they'd figured out that they have scared off prospective customers (and partners) and sabotaged their sales efforts. But if things have gotten to that point, McBride telling a magazine they're going to refrain from suing customers in the future has exactly zero chance of restoring enough trust in the company to revive their sales.

Re:The beginning of the end...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if things have gotten to that point, McBride telling a magazine they're going to refrain from suing customers in the future has exactly zero chance of restoring enough trust in the company to revive their sales.

Yup. But it may slow the attrition of their current customers. SCO may be trying to convince their customers that OpenServer is going to be maintained by SCO for years yet. With the rate that SCO is already burning through money, their customers are probably getting antsy. But who knows what McBride thinks?

No guarantee

[yamla]

I love Linux. I think SCO's claims are totally without merit. But please remember, just because Darl McBride says he won't sue any more customers does not mean he'll follow through. Remember, he's made all kinds of claims and promises in the past, almost none of which turned out to be true. His lack of honesty (or, optimistically, his lack of knowledge) cuts both ways.

So, if you are an SCO customer, or even if you aren't, and if you run Linux, BSD, or Windows (all of which SCO has stated a claim to), you are still not safe. They may still sue you, even after claiming they won't.

Re:No guarantee

[Virtex]

Darl didn't say anything about non-customers. I can see it now -- their next marketing campaign: We won't sue any of our customers, so take the safe route and become a SCO customer today!

Re:No guarantee

[yamla]

In fact, he claims SCO has no intention of launching new lawsuits against "Linux users" (not just SCO customers), at least until the claims currently in front of the various courts are worked out.

Of course, you could well be right, he may change his mind and claim later that only customers are safe. Of course, this has so far proven incorrect, SCO customers are the least safe.

Re:No guarantee

[Alsee]

Hell, if McBride gets any more deranged he's likely to start suing Microsoft customers.

-

Re:No guarantee

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of people have reading comprehension problems. What I read his statement as meaning is that there is no need to initiate new lawsuits right now because the issues are all on the table. I'm sure in his mind he imagines a floodgate of lawsuits to be unleashed after SCO wins the IBM suit.

What?

[theparanoidcynic]

SCO has a product and engineers to maintain it? When the hell? I thought they were just a group of ninja-attack lawyers based out of a defunct Taco Bell store owned by a Microsoft operative . . . . .

Re:What?

[Ayaress]

Drop out the "ninja" part and you're halfway there. If they had ninjas, I think they would have actually won a few fights.

Re:What?

[ajservo]

Ya know, not all ninjas are good ninjas...

I've met some really stupid/poor ninjas in my life...

Re:What?

[ChaoticLimbs]

But they have gimpy mongoloid ninjas who wear bicycle helmets covered in teletubbies stickers.

And that's just the investors!

Try the veal.

Re:What?

[Ayaress]

Even a bad ninja should be able to beat up one or two Linux geeks before running into one with a gun, though.

He didn't say anything about not suing Linux users

[Anonymous Coward]

who are not SCO customers...

Verbally

[usefool]

Verbal statement is nothing, SCO could be planning for another lawsuit while everybody's relaxed enough to step into a trappy.

A trappy is like a trap except there's nothing in it, but this doesn't stop people from being frightened by it.

Re:Verbally

[Micah]

Maybe, but I would like to think they know enough to figure out that the suits they have need to be settled, or at least SOMETHING needs to go their way, before it would make any sense to start something else.

One reason: Lawsuit department too busy...

[FerretFrottage]

playing Doom 3.

Re:One reason: Lawsuit department too busy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, which side are they on? The Marines, or the demon spawn from hell? "Oh my God! The portal to Hell has opened up, and we're being invaded by LAWYERS!!!"

Re:One reason: Lawsuit department too busy...

[Anonymous Coward]

The weirdest thing about Doom 3 is how in the future we'll be a advanced enough to be able to bring hellspawn into this world (not taking about Darl McBride), but we can't manufacture and issue our troops a regular weapon+flashlight combo.

Re:One reason: Lawsuit department too busy...

[Anonymous Coward]

{sig response} No, I think it's, "No wait, Clark.....I think it's a jack-ass and a Democrat....what's the difference again?"

Re:One reason: Lawsuit department too busy...

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking turd, his sig is a Family Guy quote. Go boil your fucking head, dipshit.

Not helping...

[Greg Larkin]

News like this really isn't helping Darl's attempt to become more evil than Satan.

Darl vs. Satan

It's The Platform, Stupid

[aredubya74]

Ah Darl. Silly, silly Darl. SCO Unix had its day 7-8 years ago, when Linux was still a hobby. The key market they owned was the x86 commodity hardware Unix. Linux absolutely owns x86 hardware-based *nix now, official Unix name or not. No ounce of marketing muscle you could possibly muster will change that fact. You're dead. Go away. And no, "Linux" didn't steal your IP, which you're quietly admitting now. Thanks for the 2+ year roadblock. Now fuck off.

Summary

[0racle]

Well damn, we've really screwed ourselves and this has been a whole failure. Sorry everyone, we're going to stop being jackasses and pretend we have a business and get some marketing going along those lines. We have to keep the existing lawsuits going because we don't want to look like complete idiots. If you could just forget about the last 18 or so months, it would be appreciated.

The article's title is incorrect.

[Jaywalk]

Darl never actually says they're going to stop suing customers. What the actual interview says is:

McBride: Rather than trying to pound through all of those issues on a daily basis, we've been content to say, "We're going to work our issues through the courtroom, and when everything is resolved there, we'll be good to go . . .
IDGNS: By saying you're fine with things, do you mean that you don't expect to be launching any new lawsuits against Linux users?
McBride: I think right now we've got the claims in front of the various courts that we need in order to get our complaints heard and to get them argued and to get resolution. With respect to being more vocal or going after new targets at the customer level, we don't see the need for that.

At best, he's promising to stop customers for now, which is nothing more than acknowledging that this is all they can do at the moment. Without a win in IBM and/or Novell, SCO can't win customer lawsuits. They would all end like AutoZone; the judge would tell them to wait until the other cases are done. Or worse, like Daimler-Chrysler, which got thrown unceremoniously out of court with DC's lawyers entering sarcastic letters into evidence about how they did not verify the CPUs the code was not installed on because DC hadn't used the stuff in seven years. Since SCO has no other choice, they make contented noises like everything is going their way. But everything he's saying is predicated on winning both the IBM and the Novell lawsuits and then figuring out a way to get customers to pay SCO. And none of the court cases have been going SCO's way.

Nothing to see here. Just Darl's usual nonsense.

Re:The article's title is incorrect.

[Panoramix]

Nothing to see here. Just Darl's usual nonsense.

Indeed.

Also, I understand that a bit of PHB-speak is called for if you actually are a PHB... but this is well beyond ridiculous:

"...going after new targets at the customer level..."
"...we're fine to argue the merits of what we have out there right now (in) the current litigation setting."
"...the majority of the company resources are very directly pegged to the SCO Unix business."
"We haven't gotten to the point yet, where we think that is the play we should be taking on, but it could evolve to that point, and I could see a number of reasons why that would be a good play."
"...we have new things we're working on, and are seeing an opportunity to continue to advance it in the form of upgrades."
"Primarily, as you look at the new higher end chipsets coming out on the AMD or the Intel architecture, we expect that we can add some real value in that space."
"...we expect to come out and put even more emphasis behind the future growth of the industry-leading platform that has been UnixWare."
"On the software developer side of things, I believe there's going to be a move to a develop-for-fee model, rather than develop-for-free, which is currently in vogue."
"We're going to have more details of that as we get into the fall time frame."

The "customer level?" "Very directly pegged?" The "fall time frame?" Man, it doesn't get any cheesier than this.

You kick my dog!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Kerpal! You kick my dog!

Re:You kick my dog!

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved that skit - can't find the link to it anymore - please post the link.

Re:You kick my dog!

[KnarfO]

"Don you tell me to f**k!"

Last line of the posting

[Macrobat]

"However, as he's not dropping the current lawsuits, there's no good reason to believe him on this change in strategy."

That should read, "However, as it's Darl McBride, there's no good reason to believe him at all."

Speechless?

[dacarr]

I really don't know what to say here. On the surface, it looks like a Big Win for the *nix community, but in the grand scheme of things they're doing the right thing. We now have to wait and see what the courts are going to do in the cases against Autozone and DC Motors - and if the other issues are any indication, it may just be "nothing" - or nothing of significance.

Something's not right here...

[Snap E Tom]

Cloudscape donated to Apache, new Helix, Open-XChange going GPL, now this...

Things are going too well. Look for Microsoft patent lawsuits to be unleashed tomorrow.

There are no more ISVs left...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who would even dare think of writing their apps for the SCO Openserver/Unixware platform anymore. In fact it would not surprise me one bit to hear of all the major players begin to announce dropping all support for their products to run on SCO's flavors of *nix in the very near future.

Re:There are no more ISVs left...

[thogard]

Isn't a a matter of scp -r project scobox:src/project
and running make clean && make on that box?
If it runs on linux, it should be a recompile away from running on a sco box.

Oh, yeah..

[k98sven]

Exactly who in their right mind would buy SCO Unix?

With features like:

Risking having to migrate again in a year or two when they're bankrupt?

No 2Gb+ file support

No 64-bit support

Ever-diminishing support from the OSS community, which ironically provides the most useful server apps for the platform?

Risk future lawsuits from SCO if you do migrate?

I mean.. SCO Unix has been uncompetitive for years now, while their management has been throwing all their effort into last-ditch lawsuits.

Naturally.. it's all bullshitness as usual from SCO. But it's always worth the debunking, in case someone actually thought SCO had something of value.

Re:Oh, yeah..

[hurfy]

In case you are wondering, since we have one of the rare 2004 copies of SCO software. A third party vendor is still selling them as part of their accounting package because thats what it has always used and stability is priority number one (or damned close). None of the customers are gonna risk a $50k accounting package gettign messed up to see if it works on something else. I imagine there are other third party vendors the same. SCO sure better hope so since ours probably only uses a couple dozen copies a year! All the issues listed are not issues for these uses. Support is from the third party anyway, dont need SCO ;) We dont use 2G files or 64-bit systems to run it. I doubt many of the users mess with the unix stuff at all so other programs availble dont enter into it. Anyone doing their own thing on Unix would probably have a running box and not buy the preloaded one anyway. They are still out there, but the vendors using it seem to be small specialty programmers. Dont really blame them for using what worked. Course that didnt keep me from giving them a hard time about it ;p

Re:Oh, yeah..

[k98sven]

Your point is a good one. Perhaps the only reason to use SCO Unix:

If you're existing systems depend on SCO, I'd probably stay with it as long as it worked too.
(I'm running some legacy Alpha systems with Digital Unix on them myself. They're more stable than our Linux boxes, but were also far more expensive in their day)

But still what I was expressing was that noone in their right mind would migrate to SCO Unix today. Which is what Darl was trying to imply, I believe.

Re:Oh, yeah..

[njj]

Exactly who in their right mind would buy SCO Unix?

Well I've been wondering this for several years, actually. Last time I used it, it fell over abruptly and spectacularly, with the kernel dumping core in /var/log/syslog.

Perhaps I'm a bit old-fashioned about these things, but I don't consider that a reasonable way for an OS to behave.

We took to calling it `Skoda Unix' around the office - which I now realise was deeply unfair to that much-maligned brand of car.

Re:Oh, yeah..

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you make that comparison, because I did so myself.

A friend of mine once pointed out that "Nobody wants a Skoda". I replied that I didn't understand, a Skoda is a pretty reasonable car.

He then asked: "Yes, but if you could have ANY car you wanted, would you want a Skoda"?
-"I guess not."
-"Hence, noone really wants to own a Skoda."

In that sense, I'd say the situation is the same. Nobody really wants to be running SCO Unix. The ones doing so are only doing it because they can't migrate easily.

Back to the future?

[argent]

He actually says "Back to the future"? How about this for back to the future:

"You're now hearing those guys talking about incorporating the Unix technology into Longhorn. "

Um, NT has used components from UNIX since before Darl could spell "SCO". They have huge chunks of the BSD networking code (look for license strings in the binaries) and unlike USL they didn't file the Berkeley copyrights off.

Not to mention that the original SCO's first product was "Microsoft Xenix". And it was much faster on our old PC/XTs and PC/ATs than the first versions of Windows... I think I've still got the manuals somewhere.

Anyway, there's Microsoft copyrights all through SCO's code.

Crowing about Microsoft "incorporating the Unix technology" is like crowing about GM using your "new internal combustion technology".

It's so 1984...

Re:Back to the future?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anyway, there's Microsoft copyrights all through SCO's code.

Not any more. Originally there was code in Xenix that was Microsoft's and SCO paid licence fees to MS for every copy of SCO Xenix and OpenServer sold. Eventually all the MS code was replaced, yet fees were still paid to MS because it was in the sale agreement for Xenix. This was resolved in court many years ago.

Re:Back to the future?

[argent]

You're thinking of the Xenix emulation code: that was the only thing they were paying license fees to Microsoft on. I was half-relieved when they dropped it, because the only reason we were running SCO was to run an old Intel toolchain under the Xenix emulator.

In addition to that, Microsoft's code was in the baseline SVR3 and SVR4... it was in Unixware, completely independently of Openserver.

In any case, the point is that what Microsoft is incorporating in Longhorn has nothing to do with SCO. They have a lot of UNIX-derived code in NT to begin with, and the UNIX code in Interix (Services for UNIX) comes mostly via OpenBSD and the FSF!

Translation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Both customers were sued...

In related news...

[teamhasnoi]

Slashdotters will no longer hold 'Darl McBeat-Down Planning Meetings'.

The next one is at the Mall of America @ Camp Snoopy, BTW. 7pm. Bring tokens!

sounds good

[EvilSheep]

1. shoot self in foot
2. empty cartridge into foot
3. market product instead?
4. profit!?

Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

If we see a courtroom victory against IBM, than obviously that number will jump up significantly. Its Called Wishful thinking

Darl is a sick F*#K

[l0ungeb0y]

McBride saying "No More Lawsuits" is like an alchoholic saying "No more alchohol" after beating on his wife and kids.

Who knows, maybe there's some 12-step program he can join.

How can you tell when Darl is lying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy -- his lip are moving!

At this point, I beleive a state from SCO about what they will do in the future carries an information content of zero.

Darl McBride's Island

[Eberlin]

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from a "Unix Port"
Aboard a sinking ship.

The mate was a mighty selling man
The skipper wasn't sure
Six passengers sat sail back then
For a legal language tour (a legal language tour)

The language started getting rough
The chrysler case was tossed (almost)
If not for the "courage" of the fearless crew
The lawsuits would be lost (the lawsuits would be lost)

The ship held ground on the shore of this
Old Mormon Desert Isle
With Billy Gates
And Ballmer too
Some millionaire
Named McBride
A Courtroom Star
McNealy and Canadians
Here on Darl McBride's Isle

Engage Universal Translator!

[raytracer]

TRANSLATOR ENGAGED:

We know from our experience in bringing suits against customers like Daimler-Chrysler that we are unlikely to reach settlements which generate cash for SCO. We are unwilling however to fold our cards on other corporate lawsuits, having tossed so much money into the pot. After all, the judge could show up drunk. _pause_. Hey, go order a case of schnapps and send it to the judge with our compliments.

From the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

As The SCO Group Inc.'s reseller and developer community gathers for its annual SCO Forum convention in Las Vegas this week...

Apparently they still have resellers/developers left too. I assume both of them are going to show up at the party in Vegas for the free booze.

SCO UNIX you say?! Sign me up!

[Kurt Gray]

I definately want to invest my entire IT budget into the flagship product of company that is surrounded with the stench of certain failure. How much is it? $699 per CPU you say? Is that all? Well that's just giving it away! Here, I'll pay you $5000 per CPU because the more I pay the more I get my money's worth, right? I mean afterall you get what you pay for and nothing is free, right? My CEO will be so happy with my informed decision to bank our IT operations on SCO products and support.

Risking sanctions

[www.sorehands.com]

It is not just the issue of expenditure of money and time to fight the lawsuits, if they bring more -- but the risk of sanctions.

In Damler, the judge threw out most of their case, so they can't argue that the next one is brought in good faith.

pissing all over your consumer base

[spacerodent]

I wonder if they are just now figuring out pissing all over your cunsumer base is a bad idea. Pretty much everyone who is studying computers and programing right now hates the SCO. They think of them as horrible throwbacks and a sign of everything that is wrong with the software industry. Now the SCO is realizing what this does to the bottom line. These same nerds eventually end up with a job in a major company and make decisions not to use SCO products. Simple and highly effective. I hope the same thing happens to the RIAA.

Re:pissing all over your consumer base

[RWerp]

With Microsoft it somehow doesn't work.

HA HA

[superpulpsicle]

That's like saying M$ no longer makes operating systems because they have too many bugs.

SCO is going to find a new revenue route. And it's going to be nastier than sueing nontechnical grandmothers.

Did Darl really say this???

[kwelch007]

Quote "We think in the future, software developers are going to be more motivated by getting paid for their work rather than contributing and not getting paid."

Um. Ya. I haven't cared about getting paid so far. I'll think about that in the future.

Sheesh.

Re:Did Darl really say this???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, there are thousands of Open Source / Free Software developers who DO get paid for their work. RedHat, SUSE, Mandrake, IBM, Sun, and hundreds of other commercial companies pay people to write free software.

When Darl says something like this he just proves he has no clue how the Open Source community actually works.

Re:Did Darl really say this???

[kwelch007]

Of course. And I think it's safe to assume that those that volunteer their work on Open Source projects are not doing for SCO's benefit.

Is Darl McBride under the elusion that up to now, SCO has had an army of volunteer slave programmers?

Re:Did Darl really say this???

[Anonymous Coward]

The other thing:

Many people have other jobs that they get paid for, software is something they do because they like it.

Also, if you're getting paid for it, it's not yours.

If you work on something yourself, you have the option of getting credit.

Re:Did Darl really say this???

[zurab]

Is Darl McBride under the elusion that up to now, SCO has had an army of volunteer slave programmers?

Of course. SCO includes a lot of open source software with their product - Apache, Samba, MySQL, many tools and libraries, etc., etc.; even Linux Kernel Personality which is likely a copyright/GPL violation (IANAL).

Re:Did Darl really say this???

[Velex]

Yeah, I suppose when you're living with your parents you don't need to worry about getting paid, but it really does suck when you get out of college and you get a job as a developer for just about less than a living wage.

What if...

[Azureflare]

Whenever I see Darl in the news I always think "What if.."

What if, instead of pursuing hopeless litigation against other behemoth companies, you just tried to please the customers you had and try to make your product a better product?

They would have failed, yes. Probably. But, who knows? Maybe they would have been able to garner a reputation for good service, and hold onto their core base for a longer time then they are now. Maybe they could have even segued into providing linux solutions, and made partnerships with other major companies (like IBM) instead of suing.

Would SCO be a more successful company if they had? They might have failed yes, but they would have a good reputation, and they might have even been successful (or bought out), if they had played their cards right. Alas, they threw it all to the wind on a shot-the-moon scenario that will only end in tears for everyone.

It just saddens me that people have such a lack of perspective.

Re:What if...

[Vexler]

Your points are well taken. However, SCO should have made these decisions from the onset, when they were still testing the water - not right now, when anybody can play the "should have, would have, could have" game. The damage is already done to their reputation, and their existing customers will think twice about continuing their relationship with a vendor who, in your words, lacks perspective to such an extent that they have thrown all caution and reason (as well as money that could have been better spent on development) to the wind.

Re:What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Had SCO been a viable business, they would have looked ahead to where the market was heading, then partnered with the leading point of sale companies and created the defacto standard POS distribution with Linux as the base OS (--- note business opportunity for those aspiring young entrepreneurs out there).

Even if SCO changed its ways today, I cannot imagine any business trusting them enough to buy their products after all of this.

Re:What if...

[Ohreally_factor]

From a purely financial standpoint, SCOX is in a better position today than it was before it undertook it's current course. The stockprice, despite taking a beating, is still higher than it was before Darl took the helm. The company is flush with cash from the PIPE deals.

SCOX was dying. It's still dying, but it's managed to buy some time through some pretty outrageous maneuvers and complete loss of credibility. It's also made some insiders a lot of money.

The only way SCOX could possibly regain any credibility would be if they replaced their entire upper management and then dropped or settled their law suits. I say possibly, because even if they did these things, I doubt it would be enough. Oh, they'd still need a viable strategy going forward.

Mcbride's Thousand Year Reich is nearly at an end.

No New Lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

A probable backpedal: "I didn't say 'No New Lawsuits', I meant 'No GNU lawsuits.' I mean, a gnu is an animal.. not anything related to linux, so if I sue Home Depot that's not GNU! Er damn linux is GNU/Linux. Hmm i'll have to work on that again.."

favorite quote from the article

[QEDog]

According to Darl, everything is fine:

We look into the future and fully expect that we're going to have some sort of a win against IBM in the courtroom. [...] We think that there's a very bright future in the company to return to the model that we had in the past with Unix Systems Laboratories.

Uhm. Yeah Darl. Whatever you dream in Utahland.

Darl Still Dillusional.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We look into the future and fully expect that we're going to have some sort of a win against IBM in the courtroom." - Darl McBride

Nice to know they've still got access to some excellent drugs in Utah...

SCO Forum

[_Sprocket_]

From the article:

...SCO has apparently chosen to make the company's core Unix business, and not its legal adventures, the center of this year's show.

Can you imagine what it'd be like if they hadn't decided this?

"Alright! Welcome to this year's Forum! We've got some exciting things to discuss this year. Now... before we start... how many of you are Solutions Providers and Software Engineers? How many hands? That many. Huh. I have no idea why you guys are here. Now... how about the lawyers? How many? Yeah! Hello. And Buisness Strategists from other companies competing against Linux solutions? Hello! Good crowd! We've got some really exciting news for all you guys...!"

Granted - any solution providers who DO show up should still be asking themselves what they're doing there.

Re:SCO Forum

[Ohreally_factor]

Litigators, litigators, litigators!

I. Love. This. Company!

Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaoooow!

What he meant to say was....

[Gigantic1]

Translation: "Due to the fact that the courts will not allow us to successfully pursue additional lawsuits until the lawsuit with IBM is settled, we won't be pursueing additional lawsuits in the near future. Uh...especially considering the fact that IBM has been handing our arse to us on a silver platter."

FLASH FLASH FLASH

[Anonymous Coward]

FLASH // PERSONAL FOR SCO PATROL
REPORT DISTRIBUTION //
FM USS MICROSOFT, MS-1, RADM BALLMER
TO COMSCOUTAH
SUBJ DIRECTIVE 0802
TOP SECRET TERMINAL RUN
AUTHENTICATOR TWO SIX NINE ECHO MIKE FOUR
AUTHENTICATE ONE FIVE FOUR NOVEMBER DELTA
FOXTROT QUEBEC TANGO //BT//
1. (TS) QUIT WHATEVER IT IS YOU ARE DOING.
2. (TS) YOU ARE SCREWING IT UP FOR EVERYONE.
3. (TS) ALL FUNDING FOR FUTURE VENTURES, CUT.
4. (TS) FINISH CURRENT PATROL.
5. (TS) GOOD HUNTING AND REMAIN UNDETECTED.
6. (TS) BURN THIS AFTER YOU HAVE READ, JUST TO BE SURE.
7. (TS) LOVE AND KISSES. STRONG MESSAGE FOLLOWS.
8. (TS) AUTHOR OF TERMINAL RUN, BILL GATES, SENDS. //BT//

ha ha (obligatory fuck sco post)

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK SCO.

Interview did its job.

[CedgeS]

As I would have expected, and was the sole intent of these responses, the SCOX stock price took a nice step up on Monday following the interview in which SCO's CEO heighlighted SCO's other enterprises.

Re:Interview did its job.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Up to to $4.47 from its opening at $4.77.

Math hard :)

Cost of Doing (Suing) Business

[GrnArmadillo]

SCO's got a bunch of lawsuits going against people with a lot more money than they've got. (Not counting the smackdown they got from I think it was Autozone.) He's probably telling the truth that they won't be suing anyone else right now - I doubt they can afford the expenses. A few wins as precedents and that cost/benefit equation may change but for now....

McBride is sexist

[Camel Pilot]

Note how Darl always uses the informal "guys" when referring to a group of people, such as:

those guys talking about incorporating the Unix technology into Longhorn

Are there not any woman that work at Microsoft?

So IBM does what...?

[ajservo]

Does Darl think that they'll drop their countersuits at this news? Like a sociopath moving into a hippie commune "We're not crazy anymore... We've changed! We love everyone now. ALL BETTER!"

Netcraft Confirms It

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO is dying...

"One question"

[boots@work]

As The SCO Group Inc.'s reseller and developer community gathers for its annual SCO Forum convention in Las Vegas this week, one question on many attendees' minds will be whether the company's future will be as a software vendor or as a litigator.

The answer is No, they do not have a future as a software vendor or litigator.

Mission Failed

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like 'Operation Tie-Linux-Up-With-Litigation-To-Buy-Time-Cos-Longh orn-Aint-Ready' failed miserably!

Surely now Darl has to land on a Carrier with a 'Mission Acomplished' banner behind him? :)

And the Wrights

[CedgeS]

Or ask the Wright brothers. They sunk their company by investing all their time in litigation against competitors instead of development and innovation.

they have 10 engineers (but more lawyers)

[gradedcheese]

from the article:

"Within the company, less than 10 people... We do have, obviously, a lot more attorneys than that, who are focused on SCOsource."

Sounds like a plan!

One part left out.

[Bull999999]

IDGNS: What's the budget for the SCO Marketplace?

McBride: To start off, it will be in the millions of dollars. If we see a courtroom victory against IBM, than obviously that number will jump up significantly.

Darl left out the part about what would happen if they lose against IBM and IBM countersues with a vangence.

Will they sue LESS customers?

[Lost Penguin]

We have all heard the sickening sound of SCO-Speak before, does this really mean SCO-X will not sue Linux users?

Darl has a real talent for worm-tongue.
I wonder if SCO stands for
Satans
Corporate
Office

SCO Community Forum?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>As The SCO Group Inc.'s reseller and developer community gathers for its annual SCO Forum convention in Las Vegas this week, one question on many attendees' minds will be whether the company's future will be as a software vendor or as a litigator.

Just who is attending this thing? How large is their "reseller and developer community", and does it have anyone in it other than SCO employees? Where is it being held, the back room of the Denny's on Fremont Street? Anyplace else, and the hall is going to look rather empty.

I'm pretty sure the question about their future as either a software vendor or litigator has already been answered in the marketplace.

Re:SCO Community Forum?

[dixon]

Here's the website for the event. It looks kinda pathetic, with a lame 007 theme. There definitely is a dirge of anything at all of substance on that page. It all seems so sad.

Tim

Re:SCO Community Forum?

[dixon]

Wow, I'm retarded. That was last year. This year's is just as substance-free.

ObSmithers

[sharkey]

McBride: We've got to figure out a creative way to market our brand of Unix or Linux will wipe us out. Anybody know how our product is better then any Unix flavor or Linux. We're not leaving this room until we get some ideas!!!

"STOP!! This is the same old Unixware that embodies all the software patent nonsense that you despise. They just added a stupid, cheap hat."

...

...

"But it's got a new hat!"

BSD

[rd_syringe]

Didn't they already half-implicate BSD in one of their interviews?

They love to make those vague implications. For a while there, we were hearing a new one every week. So much for that?

Re:BSD

[tekunokurato]

regardless of whether or not people stole the game, you really think they lost 2+ mil? That's idiocy.

And anyway, I downloaded it to see if it would run decently on my box, and it definitely did not. So I'm not buying it. You want to whine about that?

Re:BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

If it did run, would you have bought it?

Yeah thats what I thought. You fucking leech.

McBride's past lie

[rd_syringe]

McBride, who in the past claimed SCO wouldn't sue Linux users but later did, is now claiming they won't sue Linux users anymore.

At what point does McBride's ideas of lies and truth begin and end?

Mormons have a SERIOUS lieing problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it's just becoing apparent.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040731/D84609484 .html

Too late for Darl and SCO

[hdparm]

They've selfinflicted too much damage for anything they plan on doing in the future to have any success. I predict slow and painful death - that's exactly what they deserve.

Re:SCO Linux? Again?

[zurab]

Companies that sue their customers will slowly find themselves without customers. [emphasis mine]

It's a relative term, but I'd say "pretty quickly" instead.

And I'm not sure what they plan with SCO Marketplace either. I'd love to see an NDA on that contract.

Prove it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, prove it. I disliked Darl's "business plan" as much as the next guy, but prove that he made a pile of cash off of this whole debacle. Insider transactions are public information and can be easily found. Darl hasn't sold any shares since this whole mess went down.

I, on the other hand, sold short 1000 shares and did make a few dollars per share. Just for fun. I didn't see how they'd ever make any headway against their legal opponents.

Re:Prove it.

[Bull999999]

I didn't say he made money from selling the inflated stocks, he's too smart for that. He made his millions from his salary and bounuses for the "job well done".

So what....

[davmoo]

And how many times before has McBride said "we're not going to do [insert action]", and then a few weeks later SCO did just that. He has no honor, and is about as trustworthy and reliable as a politician.

If I were Darl McBride

[tbjw]

I think the idea here is that he doesn't want to lose face by having to withdraw. If he fights the remaining cases, he can hold up competitors, and when he loses, he can claim that he lost for some reason other than being in the wrong. He might claim the courts didn't understand the technical merits of his case, or some such.

Also, he probably wants to mantain SCO's reputation as litigious bastards, to threaten people with later.

More revisionist history....

[linuxtelephony]

Anyone notice this?

IDGNS: Why did SCO recently decide to file a trademark claim for AT&T Corp.'s old Unix subsidiary, Unix Systems Laboratories (USL)?

McBride: There are a couple of reasons around going back to the USL part of the business. ...

We think that there's a very bright future in the company to return to the model that we had in the past with Unix Systems Laboratories.

Quite a bit of revisionist history going on there, with Calde^H^H^H^H^HSCOG along with McBride and company at USL.

Look! Up in the Sky!

[Phillup]

It's... a pig!

SCO ninja-lawyer: mental image?

[MachDelta]

Judge: "Prosecution? You may present your case."

SCO Lawyer: "I know... KUNG-FU!! HHYYYAAAAHH!!"

Judge: "Uhh.. Defense? Yours?"

Linux Laywer: "We beleive the fact that the prosecution is attempting to break his desk in half with his forehead is representative of our case, your honour."

SCO Lawyer: "OOH!! This hurt head!! Must try, ancient technique! KKIIIAAAAAAAA--DDAAAARLLLL--!" *WHACK!* *Passes out*

Judge: "....um, case dismissed."



Hmmm. Damnit, now I wish I could actually see a ninja-attack lawyer in action... stupid overactive imagination...

Re:SCO ninja-lawyer: mental image?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ninja-lawyers...vanish without trace?

Re:SCO Linux? Again?

[-kertrats-]

They've still got great marketshare in the casual computer users that prefer unix. Both of them.

offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig:

id Software lost $2.75 million to record-breaking piracy on the weekend before Doom 3's release. Thanks, guys!

Sorry, but I don't buy into this. I was one of those that downloaded Doom3 over the weekend, so I could play it NOW. I will be buying it, no question there, even if it cost $100. But when it is easier to pirate it than to buy it, perhaps the distribution model is the problem. I do the same with movies. If they don't suck, I buy them for the better quality and the other goodies. If they DO suck, then I would have asked for my money back anyway, so they get deleted.

I am not some kiddie saying this, Im an old fart who has bought DOZENS of CDs, games and movies ONLY because I pirated them first. I would never have paid for them to try them to begin with, or never heard of them until I got them for almost free. With CDs and movies, what you pirate is usually much lower quality that the real thing. And before you say "Some are very high quality" go fucking download and see for yourself, no skipping to chapters, lower res, etc. Its still great to try before you buy, but its not the same.

I know not everyone is this way, but to say they lost millions is as bullshit as the stuff coming out of Darl's mouth. Many (if not most) of the people who downloaded it this weekend will buy it next week when it is actually in the stores, or not play it. Likely, you will have to have a real purchased copy of the game to play online anyway, which is the ENTIRE reason I wanted it. So the pirated copy is probably useless for that anyway.

Funny.

[H8X55]

Mod parent up! It's a Bob Newhart reference for chrissakes!

But i think actually it's Darl's other brother, Durl.

Important question!

[Pervertus]

Does McBride have a bride?

In related news..

[adeyadey]

McBride Says No More Lawsuits From SCO..

Bill Gates to refund every Windows XP users money "because its rubbish"..
An end to all wars in the world..
A pony for every child..

Sun?

[polyp2000]

It looks like the Microsoft funding has moved elsewhere. Next in line ? Sun anyone ?

Clarification

[xihr]

He most certainly does not say that they're not going to sue anymore people. He's just saying they're not going to sue any more people right now. Big difference.

Could this be a strategy...

[borgheron]

To give them some leway to show that they do need the UNIX copyrights in court, or something?

GJC

Is Darl really this broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an excerpt from a posting attached to a GrokLaw Article

"McBride took the stage after a montage of "Rocky" clips that showed the bloodied fighter winning a boxing match while in a state of near-collapse....To hammer the point home, he showed a scene from the film in which Wesley is being tortured to death, and emitting a wail of 'ultimate suffering.' Linux Insider

"The movie theme continued as McBride began his keynote, when he compared the SCO litigation to 'The Princess Bride.' He said he identified most strongly with the film's protagonist, Wesley, who was filled with righteous anger as a result of being wronged."

"I think that what we got drawn into was that IBM has a lot of agents that are out there day in and day out that attack us." -Darl

"And we felt like, from a defense standpoint to protect our shareholders that are on the call today, we were like the only guys in town to fight back." -Darl

Darl's speech is laced with violent expressions. "Sock in the mouth." "Only guys in town to fight back." "Pounding my fist on the table." "Stepping up with the key generals."

Darl sues his ex-partners and customers...he claims to need a concealed firearm to protect himself from Linux zealots, claims of hiring a sharpshooter at Harvard to protect him from assasins...

This guy's speech, presentations and, (if these movie clips are truly how he thinks of himself) self image all revolve around violence. And he identifies with Wesley, who has "righteous anger." "Righteous anger" has been responsible for some of the worlds worst atrocities.

What do these patterns of behavior say to you?

Re:Is Darl really this broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do these patterns of behavior say to you?

They say this guy is potentially a dangerous loony who should probably be committed in an institution.

SCO outsources development...

[wintermute42]

Darl: One announcement that we are making at the show is called the SCO Marketplace, and that's a marketplace exchange whereby we are going to allow developers to come and bid on work-for-hire projects that we have, to fill in the gaps where we're going with our development plan.

Given that software developers in low cost countries like India and Eastern Europe can develop software far cheaper than developers in the US, does this mean that SCO is outsourcing their software development? I can see it now: SCO will fire their engineering staff (what little is left) and announce that they are a "virtual company" consisting of lawyers, suing IBM, and outsourced software projects. SCO will consist of Darl and a few hench-weasels to manage the lawyers and Indian software engineers.

duh.

[fanatic]

However, as he's not dropping the current lawsuits, there's no good reason to believe him on this change in strategy.

It's not a change of strategy. It's a rout. The suit based on copyrights (SCO v AutoZone) was stayed in favor of the original IBM suit and copyright counterclaims - as was Redhat v SCO - so it's clear that any other copyright-based suit will get the same treatment, making the filing worthless, even as intimidation. The other customer suit (SCO v Diamler ) was a joke that was almost entirley dismissed. There's probalby not enough left for any action.

So it's not a change of strategy, it's a smackdown, one of many they will endure, tho not necessarily quickly.

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

SCOG is Caldera who started as a Linux solutions company. They used to have a nice business.

yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, they plan to start marketing their flavor of Unix.

Translation: I have enough money to pay off my debt with and retire on, so now I'm going to bolt before SCO goes bankrupt.

Re:Not helping the stock price...

[shanen]

Kind of an interesting idea, but it should have more options. Yeah, I'm a little surprised that it says that Satan is statistically more evil than Darl, even though Satan had a head start. But there are lots of other concepts to check. For example, I'd bet that "stupid" is more often associated with Darl than with Satan.

Interesting to see that there's no mention of SCO's stock price in this discussion. Since they've gone below the $5 floor for shorting, it looks like there's no more interest there. Why would anyone play with SCO stock if you can't sell it short? Hey, but it's at least theoretically possible they could get back above $5 rather than sinking to the penny stock levels.

"SCO is not going to sue any more customers."

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!

Oh, were you being serious?

I'm pretty sure they already did this once.

[GoClick]

They said they wouldn't and poof like 2 weeks later they did

Wait, wait

[mcc]

SCO's seriously going to try to start picking up customers again?

I hope IBM, Sun, HP, and everyone else who competes with SCO has marketing departments with the good sense to swoop on on any of SCO's potential customers and tell them "you know if you start buying SCO's products, if you try to start using competing products they'll sue you... they've done it twice already.."

Choice of words?

[xlsior]

"If we see a courtroom victory against IBM, than obviously that number will jump up significantly."

Interesting choice of words: so far SCO appeared to have convinced themselves (and trying to convince the market) that it wasn't a matter of "if", but "when". Are they slowly coming to the realiziation that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually a train on a collision course?

This f***ing meme is SO FRUSTRATING

[GojiraDeMonstah]

...they didn't promise to stop suing non-customers...

Please provide at least one instance of SCO having sued a non customer.

SCO has only ever sued customers (or partners or former customers/partners, or entities that have had a contractual agreement of some sort with SCO specifically). Such as IBM (project Monterrey partner), Autozone (former customer), DaimlerChrysler (former customer), and almost Bank of America (customer).

Since they have never sued a non customer, they can't stop suing non customers (akin to the old "when did you stop beating your wife" question). You should realize that making such misleading statements propogate the FUD that make PHBs shiver. And despite their occasional stupidity, the battle won't be won until those at the bottom "get it."

Get it?

Re:This f***ing meme is SO FRUSTRATING

[boots@work]

Yes, to date SCO have not sued a non-customer in regard to Linux. Take home lesson: don't deal with SCO.

However, they have subpoenaed various Linux contributors and other parties who didn't have any business relationship to SCO. In some cases this seems to be merely a fishing expedition or harrassment. Not as bad as a suit, but still not something I'd like to see in my mailbox.

SCO have also sent letters to non-SCO-customer Linux users threatening a lawsuit, although they have not actually filed suit against one of them as far as we know. It would be accurate for the original poster to ask that SCO stop *threatening to sue* non-customers.

So people should be precise in what they say about SCO, but SCO still suck. I welcome their new future as a Caldera (literally "crater").

Re:This f***ing meme is SO FRUSTRATING

[GojiraDeMonstah]

You are 100% correct in saying that precise language is important. News outlets have implied that because SCO have sued AutoZone (gasp! a Linux shop) and DaimlerChrysler (yikes! another Linux shop) that somehow running Linux puts one at risk. When in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Exactly ALL of the lawsuits today show that instead, being an SCO customer puts one at risk.

Agreed that being subpoenaed is no day in the park, but people and companies are subpoenaed for various reasons all the time all day every day regardless of whether they are right, wrong, or merely loosely associated with whatever legal proceeding is at hand.

My problem is with furthering Darl's FUD meme that running Linux is risky. It's so far from credible. OK, let's speculate that contributing to Linux is questionable. Let's further speculate that *distributing* those contributions is questionable. How on God's green Earth is RUNNING a piece of software you acquired in good faith a risky action? Where are examples of any other lawsuits against end users for running software from a reputable vendor, regardless of whether that vendor happened to be embroiled in legal trouble? I don't recall being sued for having .GIFs on my local machine when Unysis started their patent crusade, nor do I recall being called to testify as to whether Windows 3.1 had the same "look and feel" as Mac OS during that memorable lawsuit.

The chicken little act is what Darl WANTS. Aren't we all smarter than that? What sane, intelligent person honestly thinks they'll be sued for *using* Linux?

Re:This f***ing meme is SO FRUSTRATING

[jc42]

What sane, intelligent person honestly thinks they'll be sued for *using* Linux?

Hmmm ... I'd think that any sane, intelligent person who has been following the "Intellectual Property" development of recent years would be very worried. To be more precise, while I might not think that I'll be sued, but I certainly should fear that I'll be sued.

And the main reason for such fears is not that I might know personally of people who have been sued. The reason is that I keep reading things by reasonably knowledgeable techies and lawyers who have looked at things like software patents, and said that 1) They don't really know what these things mean due to their vague wording; 2) The legal situation is sufficiently vague that we must wait for the courts to decide; and 3) The courts' decisions will be made by judges who don't understand the technical details or by juries who are chosen explicitly for their ignorance of the topic.

We have read stories about donations of computers to charitable organizations who are then hit up by the vendor (Microsoft) for the price of the software that was pre-installed. The vendor has already been paid for it, and it seems that the laws might actually say that they can demand to be paid again. So I can become a criminal by merely opening a gift and turning it on.

We also read the stories about people who bought CDs or DVDs that didn't play on their equipment, but they were programmers, so they wrote a few lines of code to make the thing play, and suddenly they're criminals for using the disk for the only thing that it's goood for on their own equipment.

SCO have sent threatening legal notices to people who are not their customers threatening them with lawsuits if they run software from some of SCO's competitors. Maybe this will come to nothing. But you'd have to be rather foolhardy to remain unworried, given recent stories in this subject area.

Also, note that "receiving stolen goods" is a crime in much of the world. So it's sane and reasonable to guess that, if the courts decide that linux contains stolen goods, then everyone using it is a criminal. Or not; we can't know because the courts haven't told us yet.

It sure seems that the legal system has gone berserk when it comes to computer software, and the only rational response is to be very worried. Nobody can quite determine what the laws are any more. We can only watch and wait, and hope we're not caught in the crossfire.

Re:This f***ing meme is SO FRUSTRATING

[Java Pimp]

Also, note that "receiving stolen goods" is a crime in much of the world.

Actually, receiving stolen goods is only a crime if you accept them knowing they are stolen or suspect they might be stolen. If you accept goods in good faith and have no reason to suspect the transaction to be anything less than legal, the worst that can happen is you will loose the goods and probably whatever you paid in the deal.

It's up to the prosecutor to prove that you knew what you were doing was illegal.

Up to this point SCO hasn't shown they own anything Linux. Anyone using Linux has no reason to believe they are using stolen IP. If by some freak occurance we are all transported to some universe where SCO is shown to own parts of Linux, then users will have two choices. Stop using Linux or pay the license fees (or three, have the IP removed and continue using Linux). SCO may be able to collect retroactively (possibly?) but no one is currently or will be prosecuted as a criminal.

The result

[boots@work]

It's worth remembering that Darl is likely to walk away with millions of dollars in his pocket. Linus gets at most a sense of vindication. There is no justice.

Monty Python Music Plays...

[chipmeister]

First they came up with "The Plan": Don't buy our products and we won't sue you.

This failed and they came up with "The Other Plan": Buy our products and we will sue you.

They finally tried "The Other, Other Plan": If you don't buy our products we will sue you.

And they had a hit!

I guess he's not counting

[Anonymous Coward]

No more lawsuits filed by SCO, by there certainly will be a few more filed against SCO:

- BayStar's recent press release says they intend to file for declarative judgement against SCO's

- Daimler Chrysler sent a letter to SCO (and attached it as an exhibit to their summary disposition motion) saying they reserved the right to file an unfair competition claim against SCO, hinting they would if SCO didn't voluntarily dismiss their own suit (and SCO didn't).

- Novell seems likely to file counterclaims against SCO

- The Open Group has indicated that SCO's attempt to register a trademark on Unix System Laboratories is a breach of the Trademark License Agreement contract. And they will be taking it up.

What about Slashdot?

[DustMagnet]

If McBride throws in the towel, what are we going to talk about on slow news days?

Don't believe McFaggot

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if McFaggot is telling the truth, he is going to sue someone else, SCOX's only business plan has been suing other companies. Burn in Hell, you fucking despot.

Translations

[Anonymous Coward]

(some information added from SCO's 10-Q filing)

anemic sales of its SCOsource Linux licensing program, which brought in just $11,000 in revenue during the company's most recent financial quarter.
---
yes, you read that right. SCO has sold less than 20 licenses for linux in the last quarter. wow, there's a GREAT business model! And it only cost them $4.5 MILLION to sell $11,000 worth of licenses.
---
In the face of these challenges, SCO has apparently chosen to make the company's core Unix business, and not its legal adventures, the center of this year's show.
---
Let's think about this in terms of the DaimlerChrysler lawsuit. SCO sued DC for not certifying their UNIX license in January. Only DC hasn't used SCO's UNIX in 7 Years, and loudly proclaimed that to anyone who would listen. This case was thrown out recently and is dead, but ask yourself this: would you do business with a vendor who has proven they will sue ex customers? That lawsuit has virtually assured that
nobody will ever willingly buy anything from them ever.
---
IDG News Service: Why haven't more customers signed up for your SCOsource licensing program? ...after explaining that it's because of Red Hat without naming them, he says:

"So we're fine with where things are right now."
---
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You spend $4.5 MILLION DOLLARS ON SCO SOURCE, BRING IN $11,000 IN REVENUE and you are "fine with where things are right now"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That's the single dumbest statement I have ever read.
---
We had the need to get the basic issues on the table, but we're fine to argue the merits of what we have out there right now (in) the current litigation setting.
---
Translation: We have run out of money to litigate with, based on the fact that we lost $15 MILLION in the last six months. Our unix revenue has been cut in half because of the fact that we are suing everyone, and now we are up shit creek without a paddle.
---
IDGNS: How many people are working on the SCOsource initiative?

McBride: Within the company, less than 10 people.
---
If there are less than ten people working on it, HOW THE HELL DID YOU SPEND $4,500,000 LAST QUARTER ON IT???
---
IDGNS: Why did SCO recently decide to file a trademark claim for AT&T Corp.'s old Unix subsidiary, Unix Systems Laboratories (USL)?

McBride: TWe look into the future and fully expect that
we're going to have some sort of a win against IBM in the courtroom. ...
We think that there's a very bright future in the company to return to the model that we had in the past with Unix Systems Laboratories.
---
Translation: Nobody in their right mind will do business with SCO anymore, so we need a new name. We are hoping that by resurrecting an old trademark that had goodwill attached to it, we might make a few sales to dimwits who aren't aware of the connection.
---
IDGNS: In what areas?

McBride: Unix kernel development. Let's go back to the 64-bit side of things: 64-bit on Intel (Corp.) was why IBM had come in and partnered up with us on Project Monterey (IBM and SCO's aborted effort to jointly develop Unix for Intel's IA-64 processors). We have a lot of development know-how around that.
---
The project was a complete failure, and this amounts to "development know-how?"

I expect SCO to sue everyone now for copying their 64 bit code they haven't written yet.
---
IDGNS: So what do you see for SCO in the year ahead?

McBride: To quote Mark Twain, the rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated. ...
We think in the future, software developers are going to be more motivated by getting paid for their work rather than contributing and not getting paid.
---
In other words, nobody will allow us near their code. We have been forever locked out of the GPL community and the Free software community would rather set us on fire than allo

About as believable as...

[Wolfier]

"Gates Says No More Windows From MS"

Good to Go?

[arch17c7]

Rather than trying to pound through all of those issues on a daily basis, we've been content to say, "We're going to work our issues through the courtroom, and when everything is resolved there, we'll be good to go

Good to go where, exactly? The unemployment line? A beach in Tahiti? In search of more infringing code in other programs? C'mon, Darl, give us a hint! It's not like you'll be doing a booming business in selling your SCOmware after this is all over.

I read that quote too, and...

[bloggins02]

...personally, I was just amazed that the word "attendees" was plural.

He's just catching up to another corporate giant

[Anonymous Coward]

Howard Hughes

Bill Gates Kisses McBride

[Anonymous Coward]

The love goes on with MCBride as a pawn of Bill Gates.

Perhaps

[tkrotchko]

Perhaps SCO is not sueing any more customers because they've pretty much reached the end of their list of customers?

You're talking about windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

# No 2Gb+ file support

Windows (on fat32 for compatibility, dunno NTFS), check.

# No 64-bit support

Only in a beta, check.

# Ever-diminishing support from the OSS community, which ironically provides the most useful server apps for the platform?

Half-check. The second half...

# Risk future lawsuits from SCO if you do migrate?

Check... SCO owns unix, unix includes the "cd" command, Windows uses "cd" - hello lawsuit.

# Risking having to migrate again in a year or two when they're bankrupt?

Well, they might last three years, this is MS...

C'mon

[tkrotchko]

"None of the customers are gonna risk a $50k accounting package gettign messed up to see if it works on something else."

Well, that isn't really the customer's job, that's the ISV's isn't it?

Seems to me that an ISV that doesn't have a migration plan away from SCO already is one that I wouldn't want to do business with. They should have been migrating to something else 2-3 years ago.

And even if SCO were to win the lawsuit against IBM, how does that help their core business? More to the point, how are current SCO customers helped by a win?

A Google Bomb is in order

[Le Marteau]

I can't stand the guy. Check out this steaming load if you havn't had the displeasure of seeing his mug. He stands for, and looks like, everything I am against. It is too bad that steaming load in Google points to William Shatner (understandable). It would be great if steaming load were to point to that guy. I mean, look at him. Breathing through his mouth. What a frat boy. If anyone was worried about what SCO was doing,and how it pertains to Linux, have no fear, because it really is that simple. Darl is a shithead and a frat boy and a simpleton. He only got where he was because he starches his shirts, golfs, knows how to glad hand and back slap, laugh disingenuously, and do all those other things required of executives in America.

Re:A Google Bomb is in order

[zz99]

Is he using lipstick or have they just touched up the picture with Photoshop?

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

he knows his law

Not another upmoderation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop it. Stop it! STOP IT!

I Believe Him...

[devhen]

He has nothing left to do. SCO has failed. Their current cases will fall apart, albeit slowly.

Corporate Litigation for Dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

The company is facing mounting financial losses, which have been spurred by millions of dollars in legal fees

Corporate Litigation for Dummies Rule #1: Stay out of court.

Corporate Litigation for Dummies Rule #2: When the lawyers won't take on your newest gold mine of an idea to sue everyone (and especially your own customers) on contingency, see Rule #1.

Corporate Litigation for Dummies Rule #3: Really big corporations have really big legal expense budgets, so if your corporation is smaller than those you are targeting and you are paying the legal bills, unless you are really sure about your position (i.e., no groundbreaking case law need be created to win your case), see Rule #1.

Corporate Litigation for Dummies Rule #4: If your legal adventures are fast eroding shareholder equity see Rule #1 - also see Corporate Governance for Dummies and The Securities and Exchange Acts of 1932 and 1933 as amended, to understand why you have a fiduciary duty to your company and shareholders.

And they want to put Martha Stuart in the clink? Sheesh.

e-bay scammer

[Anonymous Coward]

like that e-bay scammer in philly. i'm not the daryl mcbride that was filing all those lawsuits. that was a different daryl. i was in the hospital, and somebody was using my lawyers. it might have been my dad, so hey, let's just forget about it. let's get this deal done. send me that linux license money.

will the a/c

As PJ says..

[Anonymous Coward]

How could anyone imagine ever wanting to work on SCO code?
As a developer, your career is finished the second you see even one line.
Nobody in their right mind would hire you after that.

An innovative business strategy, certainly.

[ChaoticLimbs]

In the 21st century, I find Darl's new, revolutionary business model refreshing. To actually MARKET your own product instead of simply suing the users of competing products is truly visionary.

Much can be learned here. And maybe he isn't the bloodless vampire that I thought he is. Maybe he does have a little blood.

Let's see if this works...

[anothy]

No more lawsuits from SCO...
...in Japan?

hey, cool! see, it is believable now!

I have this one figure out

[Cobalt Jacket]

"How about we just let things go back to the way they were?" -Darl

SCO can never legally distribute Linux again

[FreeUser]

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.

[source]

SCO has violated the GPL (and the IBM countersuit will get that fact into the public legal record, perminantly).

Their rights to modify and distribute Linux have therefor been terminated. If they try to distribute Linux now, they will in fact be guilty of willful copyright infringement.

SCO has locked themselves out of the Linux industry forever. Their own outdated, buggy, and next-to-useless UNIX system is their only future. Which means, in effect, they have no viable future at all. Not even frivolous litigation, as the courts are ruling.

IANAL, etc.

Re:SCO can never legally distribute Linux again

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but if someone else distributes a copy to them (say, they download one from redhat), don't they get a license to distribute that other ditro?

So SCOsource was a purely legal initiative...

[carlos92]

...as we knew all along.
He says

"Within the company, less than 10 people [are working on the SCOsource initiative] ... We do have, obviously, a lot more attorneys than that, who are focused on SCOsource. But the majority of the company resources are very directly pegged to the SCO Unix business."

It's no surprise, but it's interesting that it comes from him.

Abridged translation:

[CarrionBird]

P-P-Pleeese buy our stock!!!!

It was a Darl double!

[Baikala]

You are right! Right before the Q&A section it says: "This is an edited transcript of that conversation".

That means that the editor was on crack or the interviwer actually interviewed a Darl double (the one that apears in public acts just in case). The answers are far too articulate to come from the real Darl's mouth, I've never read anything where he talks about thechnology at all.

(Note: The Double hint us about the charade when he mentions those "new higher end chipsets coming out on the AMD")

.

Name change

[gidds]

I'm surprised no-one else seems to have picked up on this. Put this announcement together with their interest in acquiring the USL name, and all this means is that in future, SCO won't be suing people; USL will be suing them instead!

IBM Contribution Song

[Anonymous Coward]

Straight from the Republic of Moldova

I-B-Coool
I-B-Fuun
I-B-Goood
I-B-Emm-emm!
(x 4)

Hello! Salute! Or else you get... the boot.
IBM's corporate culture is absolute!
Hello! Hello! I am a Watson!
It has revved! *beep* And all is good!
AND KNOW THAT WE ARE ALTRUISTIC!

Hail the RAM! We have
NUMA NUMA YAY, NUMA NUMA YAY,
NUMA NUMA NUMA YAY!
Hail the RAM! We have
NUMA NUMA YAY, NUMA NUMA YAY,
NUMA NUMA NUMA YAY!

(Americans won't understand this)