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SCO Says IBM Hurt Profits

Posted by kdawson on from the and-a-bandaid-for-your-knee dept.

AlanS2002 sends in a link from a local Utah newspaper covering the SCO-IBM trial. The Deseret News chose to emphasize SCO's claim that IBM hurt SCO's relationship with several high-tech powerhouses, causing SCO's market share and revenues to plummet. "[A]n attorney for Lindon-based SCO said IBM 'pressured' companies to cut off their relationships with SCO. And 'the effect on SCO was devastating and it was immediate'..." As usual Groklaw has chapter and verse on all the arguments in the motions for summary judgement.

21 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Hurt Profits? by Sillygates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't that what competition is about? Taking business from competitors?

    --
    I fear the Y2038 bug
    1. Re:Hurt Profits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Uh, last I checked, it was about making profit for yourself, regardless of how profitable the other people are.

      Read it again. It's saying that businesses which were already in relationships with both IBM AND SCO were pressured to cut off contact with SCO.

      The truth of this statement is, of course, an entirely separate discussion.

    2. Re:Hurt Profits? by Danse · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Read it again. It's saying that businesses which were already in relationships with both IBM AND SCO were pressured to cut off contact with SCO.

      Nothing wrong with that unless IBM is considered to have a monopoly position in competition with SCO.
      --
      It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
    3. Re:Hurt Profits? by bonefry · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah ... when Microsoft got sued for the Eolas patent I remember a favorable reaction from the Slashdot crowd regarding Microsoft.

      Maybe companies should improve, innovate and respect their customers.
      Microsoft rarely does that.
      And SCO was the one that sued IBM, and its own customers, not the other way around ... from a moral point of view, it got what it deserves.

      So please stop bitching and moaning about how companies are supposed to make money.
      Companies should respect its customers, and because Microsoft is a convicted monopoly it has the liberty to screw its customers, and guess what, it does screw us ;)

    4. Re:Hurt Profits? by Volante3192 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So please stop bitching and moaning about how companies are supposed to make money.

      Well, that is the underlying concept behind a company: making money. That's why there's outsourcing and patent fights and the recall equation.

      The trick is making money while still respecting its customers.

      SCO is trying to make money suing IBM, ignoring their own target market (it is assumed for the purpose of this argument that SCO actually HAS a market). It should be no mystery why they're losing business, and it's not...to everyone outside SCO.

  2. Good by roman_mir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Probably SCO should have thought about this before suing IBM for billions of dollars (with fake claims.)

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
  3. Infinite variations on a theme? by el+cisne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The theme "not our fault". When will these jokers die? Wasn't it SCO suing it's own customers that might have had something to do with their profit loss? Or their millions spent on flimsy legal activities? Might it have been... oh what's the point, it is all too ridiculous anymore. There's just about nothing that can be said that hasn't not been said ad infinitum already. This stuff almost doesn't rate as 'news' anymore, just another spewing forth from the absurd. The news will be when this is over and their corpse rotting.

    1. Re:Infinite variations on a theme? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except in the case of SCO, the train is heading for a compact car, and we're all rooting for the train.

      Nah, a car isn't unsympatethic enough. At this point it's like a skunk that ran past the train station spraying all the passengers, then set off down the tracks. Right now the train is still steaming up but everyone knows it'll just be a small bloody smear left when it's over.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Almost 5 Years... by daigu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can we call this one a dead horse and move on?

  5. Source of the Hurt by pashdown · · Score: 3, Insightful

    SCO did plenty of hurt to their own selves when they fired letter-shots across the bow of companies using Linux.

  6. Re:finally by sanborn's+man · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh the irony! The master blamed of copying his most brilliant student ways. Who do you think taught Microsoft to behave like that?

  7. IBM did hurt SCO's relationship. by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IBM hurt the relationship between SCO and other people by fighting SCO's copyright suit. By fighting the copyright suit, it pissed off many people who decided to move away from SCO lest they may be sued in a few years.

    --
    Fight Spammers!
  8. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    SCO is still being backed up MS and probably Sun. Until they quite backing them, it will not end.

  9. The SCO story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    As I recall at the beginning of this lawsuit SCO held almost daily press conferences where they slandered Linux, Open Source, Users, and anyone even remotely involved in Linux. SCO threatened to sue their competitors, the customers of their competitors, and even their own customers! It took them a couple months to issue a clarification that they didn't mean to sue their own customers (most of them anyway).

    Despite the daily press conferences, SCO never came up with any evidence to support their claims. They did briefly claim copyright infringement on a specific piece of code only to have the claim shot down within hours when the original author was tracked down.

    While all of that was going on, blogs all over the tech world spouted off about how lousy SCO's products were, how there are better alternatives, and how SCO appeared to be running a pump-and-dump scheme to swindle investors just before the company finally died.

    Their quarter filings looked rather dim as well. They didn't even have enough funds to pay for their own lawsuit. That is until Microsoft came along and gave them a huge infusion of cash in return for something Microsoft had no use for. This reinforced the idea that the daily press conferences truly were nothing more than FUD.

    SCO encountered even more troubles with an SEC investigation and the deaths of two key board members who both shot themselves in the head.

    If you were a SCO customer watching all of this, would you stick with their product?

  10. Re:finally by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do a little research on "Amdahl". You'll learn very quickly how IBM used to treat competitors, back in the age of big iron, long before Microsoft was even a gleam in Bill Gates' eye. Sure, they've "re-invented" themselves in the past couple decades but we're still talking about Big Blue. SCO would have been better off tangling with the IRS.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  11. Well by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since when was IBM responsible for SCO's profits?

    SCO Xenix cough Openserver has the been the worst unix out on the market for almost 20 years and Caldera's Openlinux lite sucked goatballs. Old sco has the opportunity to make Openserver more like Solaris, AIX, and Linux for over 2 decades but decided to make it stagnant for decades.

    Worse SCO intentionally crippled its product by not having standard components like a TCP/IP stack unless of course you pay $1200 or something outrageous. No gnu tools, no debuggers, no well just about anything to troubleshoot a dying sco.

    But it seems IBM hurt SCO not by endoring Linux but SCO's crappy linux distro and lottery ticket. Darl McBride won over $26 million personally from the disk compression lawsuit from MS that was included with DOS 6. I think he wanted the same thing to happen with Linux and they were hoping old sco would provide. Bad move.

    SCO has itself to blame and they could have been the next redhat or maybe sun if old sco actually improved their os 20 years ago. Its time it died like other companies who made poor business decisions.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  12. Just how it goes by 26199 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    First you fight them, then you laugh at them, then you ignore them, then you win.

    (With apologies to Gandhi).

  13. Re:Not their fault by cgenman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    SCO is still around?

    I mean, this started out as gripping, then became fun to watch the train wreck. But it's over. Someone please let SCO know that they've lost.

    --
    The ______ Agenda
  14. What was that again? by rdieter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sorry, I tuned out everything after "SCO says..."

  15. What? by christurkel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I thought it was because theysued their own customers.

    --

    CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
  16. OMG! Sign me up for SCO! by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Think of all the benefits of going to SCO for your Unix needs:
    • An OS that hasn't be updated in forever
    • Absolutely no native software
    • A decent chance of being sued by SCO for no real reason.
    • A decent chance of being sued by IBM or someone in the Linux world for using software that SCO distributed in violation of the GPL
    • An absolute lack of techies with experience in your platform
    • The 50% "conscience" bonus you need to pay your admins to work with SCO
    I'm moving my servers to SCO today!!