Microsoft Shown Involved with Baystar and SCO

baryon351 writes "Back a few years ago, when SCO looked like it was hemorrhaging cash, a surprise investment came out of the blue from venture capitalists Baystar. They invested $20 million in SCO and aided their anti-Linux cause, enabling McBride & co. to continue with (now shown incorrect) claims of line-by-line code copying of SCO IP in Linux. Now one of IBM's submissions to the court reveals Microsoft was behind it after all. Baystar's manager says about Microsoft's Richard Emerson: 'Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would backstop, or guarantee in some way, Baystar's investment ... Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO.' Despite the denials about their involvement, Microsoft helped SCO continue this charade — and on top of that halted all contact with Baystar after the investment, reneging on their guarantee."

Comments

New Vocabulary Word.

[the_REAL_sam]

New Vocabulary Word: "Allegedly."

It's a good word. I highly recommend it.

Re:My firm only uses BSD.

[hackus]

BSD licenses suck.

I am sorry.

But there is no way I am going to publish anything with a BSD license unless I want to start a state run slave labor system for software engineers.

GNU is where Linux is, and consequently, where all the differences that matter are being made in OS technology and application design AND the new economy of complete knowledge of software systems.

Sorry, but I like retaining the rights to my software, and I want those rights to improve the software. Call it a protection against HUMAN GREED.

People have an inherent right to source code, they also have an inherent right to be paid for the labor they do...

AND more importantly, that labor shouldn't be able to be compromised in any way by stealing source code and incorporating it into software we now don't get the source code for, and are stuck with: ALA Micosoft's IP stack for Windows 2000.

If software is ever going to improve, the leachers have to stop stealing other peoples work, incoporating that work into software and then claim its all theirs and you don't get the source code.

People everyday reap the benefits of GNU software licensing, and fail to make the connection that its the source code and the restrictions to force people to PLAY NICE and not be greedy little thought police wishing to control our lives and wallets because they don't want us to see what the hell the machines are doing with our data.

All in the name of some kind of "intellectual property" B.S.

This is a scary world proprietary software is building, complete with voting machines which nobody knows how they work except the power brokers.
(Well, that and the Chinese investors who are funding a lot of the software for these "Voting Machines".)

Stop, refuse and just do not use proprietary or BSD software or more importantly, any software that doesn't allow you to see how it works, or even WORSE, BSD style licenses that do not force restrictions on individual who use it to ABUSE it, by not sharing the source code back into the community, or building bastard products that can be used to destroy our civil liberties, freedoms by conceiling how it works.

Sometimes in this industry I feel like the serfs....way back in the dark ages where anyone caught reading and wasn't a noble was run through with a sword.
(i.e. If you don't have a lawyer, and your reading the code you can end up in jail without a intellectual property agreement.)

BSD=Sucketh to the Maxeth.

BSD the OS is nice though, it just needs to be nicer and relicensed under the GNU License. :-)

-gc