SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing

Stony Stevenson writes "SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is now claiming that competition from Linux was behind the company's filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 'In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix.""

Comments

SCO's reason for lawsuits?

[mhollis]

Wasn't the reason why SCO started suing everyone who was using Linux due to their assertion that the code in Linux was "stolen" from SCO Unix? So now they're claiming that competition from Linux (now that the courts see that the code was not, after all, stolen from them) is forcing them into Chapter Eleven?

And their assertions of this poverty are not due to the enormous amounts they have paid lawyers to prosecute ostensibly innocent companies?!

From now on, when I think of the term "pinhead" I'll think of the people at the soon-to-become-defunct SCO.

Magnificently flawed business model

[Flying pig]

Assuming for the moment that the whole thing wasn't simply a Microsoft sock puppet, Darl McBride would seem to have failed very basic economics. SCO's competition was not Sun, HP, Red Hat etc. It was Microsoft. If he had actually wanted to grow the business, he would have known that when a type of product has relatively low market share, increasing the number of suppliers tends to increase that market share. If it's perceived that "everybody is doing Linux these days", cio and ceo are more likely to buy Linux.

So, reverting to the original argument, I suspect that McBride is not stupid, and that the whole thing is indeed a sock puppet. However, as a scam it is probably too arcane to be explained in a fraud trial. Expect McBride to turn up in a Microsoft advert before too long, explaining that it is the fate of all Linux companies to go bankrupt, so best stick with Windows.

Re:He will blame...

[Cheesey]

I'm impressed to hear him speaking the truth for a change. Paraphrasing: "we're out of business because Linux does what we did, but for less money, and more flexibly."

But I still think he's a dick for trying to solve that problem by suing. Adapting to Linux would surely have been cheaper than all this legal action. They might even have made a profit...

Re:Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source

[LWATCDR]

When Caldera first came out it was actually pretty interesting. It just died on the vine over time. Heck I really thought Red Hat was over rated and it has managed to do well. I think Caldera could have been a big hit if they had managed it correctly. They had DR-DOS so they could have bundled a Dos runtime environment. While by 96 DOS was pretty dead that would have been a nice feature for some users.They could have been a contender but failed to find any focus.

Failure to adapt.

[jellomizer]

Linux was a competitor But SCO failed to Adapt in time to face the competition they just tried to kill it. This is often the effect when someone first sees a threat they try to get rid of it. Linux by its very nature is much harder to get rid of then other competitors because it wasn't centralized. Attacking Linux is also attacking potential future customers. If SCO did nothing they may still be alive today like Sun and HP. They could have made tons of money from Linux Fallout. Those companies that tried Linux and realized it didn't fit their company (Yes they do exist Linux is not the perfect do all for everything OS). They could have competed more with Sun and HP for business. A Fully Commercially Supported Unix that Runs on your platform. And is not treated like the ugly step child like Solaris X86. There wireless technology they just started getting involved into. They had potential but it wasn't Linux that killed SCO. Is was SCO that killed SCO they abused future customers, they sued potential allies, welcomed other competitors, Lied to the public, wasted Taxpayer money, picked on the biggest strongest company it could find. In short they did everything wrong, a perfect example on what not to do.

Re:Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source

[ultranova]

Notice I said pretty dead which means a little bit alive.

It is not dead which can prettily lie, and with strange aeons, only the ugly die ?-) Or were you referring to the undead ? Hmm... Seeing how I've seen japanese OS-tan porn, I'd say it's only a matter of time before someone there makes an erotic DOS-zombie flick.

"Conventional memory! Must eat conventional memoryyyy..."