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

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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.