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Darl McBride Leaving SCO?
JoGiles writes "Linux-watch is reporting that while The SCO Group may go on to pursue its plans with a $100 million buyout, it will do so without its longtime CEO Darl McBride. Buried in the proposed MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) between Unix vendor and Linux litigator SCO and SNCP (Stephen Norris & Co. Capital Partners) is the note that "upon the effective date of the Proposed Plan of Reorganization, the existing CEO of the Company, Darl McBride, will resign immediately.""
hip hip!..
...is an anagram of Lard
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Assuming all of this stuff is approved by the bankruptcy courts for starters. I find it amazing how the tech media latches on to what MIGHT happen and not what actually HAS happened. "The SCO Group" didn't get any money yet, but many in the tech media act like they did.
Of course, that quasi-journalistic slut, MOG, projects that McBride's leaving was a goal of the Groklaw audience, when in fact, it never was.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
so long, and thanks for all the grief.
wanna bet one dollar that he'll sue SCO and/or SNCP as soon as he's kicked out ?
What ? Me, worry ?
A fairly important distinction, as anyone with Cable or ADSL will know.
I can assure you, when Novell is awarded the money SCOXQ.PK owe them, there will be none there.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I tought now it supposed to be Final Battle with ultimate evil of Carlyle group and SCO, all those good names like Bush, Bin Laden, Gates, McBreid, and all of sudden he is leaving? No Death Star explosion in the end?
839*929
This saviour of SCO appears to know what it's doing.
Darl has been a total idiot all the way, making FUD with no proof. In the end pretty much nothing he said held any wait.
I fear that we're in for a long ride on this one. Back in the Day, we all figured that the SCO lawsuit would be quashed within 6 months. I remember a talk at a LinuxWorld several YEARS ago where Eric Raymond or someone openly challenged them to show us all where the 'infringing code' was. Several years ago...
Lawsuits around the GPL and Linux codebase will become a permanent fixture. Our dreams of a single case to finalize up everything nice and tidy are never going to come true. I have every confidence that Open Source will survive, and the GPL will remain intact, but the lawsuit will always be there-- there's just too much potential money sloshing around, and law schools keep pumping out the evil.
davejenkins.com |
Luckily Darl McBride took most of the spotlight for SCO's action. SCO still has a fare amount of "Good Will" (In accounting it is not how nice or moral the company is "Good Will" is name recognition) With Darl Fired from SCO, SCO has a chance for a comeback because it is not their products that caused its downfall but poor and immoral leadership. As for the normal day to day business I never heard any major problems, I have heard more problems dealing with Microsoft, IBM, and Sun then dealing with SCO. SCO still has a huge battle but without Darl Pushing the path to hell, the company can, in time, redeem itself.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is not a $100 Million dollar offer. That was hyperbole. There will be a line of credit, but going in there is only a couple of million to take the stock profit and then what they need to pursue the case and pay off interest on existing debt as it is billed. Say $10 Million max. Remember that the Benchmark investment was unwound? This one will probably go through the same thing.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You know why Caldera/SCO has gone down hill so far? The name of the CEO.
I hear the name "Ransom Love" (Caldera's founder) and into my head comes a dude with a cravat, an ornate basket hilt rapier, a big black hat with a feather in it, possibly a lacy handkerchief in his pocket which was a favour of some Maiden in a past adventure.
I hear "Darl McBride" and I just think frilly pink dress and cowboy boots.
The Ransom Love look may look foppish today, but is still cool in a mid renaissance kind of way, but Darl McBride B-list Nashville crooner image is not what any public corporation wants.
The only way to save them would be to employ a CEO called "Max Power".
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Darl McBride will leave a rich man. At least richer than he is now. From my own estimates, he will leave at least US$ 10 - 14 million richer. At 4% interest in a fixed deposit account, Mr McBride can live a pretty decent life even in America's most affluent neighborhoods for virtually no work to be done.
So maybe Darl will be a regular Joe Average employee rather than an executive? I'd hazard a guess that Darl will find a gracious home somewhere in recognition for his diligent service, but it's not out of the question that he might stay on to fetch coffee for the prince or something.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I think Darl was just a front, as Ransom Love was for Caldera. Ralph Yarro was the real boss of both. I guess he's out too (not sure), but IMO the new investor is pursuing the same program, and Microsoft is still behind it.
Bruce Perens.
SCO receives money from Stephen Norris, who is connected with Prince Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who can be seen here with Bill Gates?
If SCO dies, the community will go after Novel and other MS puppets. So it costs less to give $100M to resurrect SCO and keep it alive as a troll to take the role of the bad guy. What is $100M for a company with annual profits near $40B?
The headlines and article contents are not 100% accurate. After reading the MOU it turns out that they are only paying $5 million, not 100.
The other $95 million is a line of credit from which they can borrow at a whopping 17% interest rate.
I could be wrong but this looks more like a pay off for the perps and a privatization veil to cover their tracks once they pay off the coming judgments using the line of credit and then allow the entire scam to vanish into vapors.
This plan has a better chance than the York debacle, but IBM and Novell will certainly want to see the money. If Norris Capital Partners has to front the 100 million in escrow this could get interesting.
For Microsoft this has to be like being caught in an endless corporate version of Fatal Attraction. Backing the SCO litigation probably looked good when the Vista release was delayed but now SCO has them by the short curlies. MS has to keep coming up with cash for their demanding paramour. And it's getting harder to design deniable sources for that cash. Hard to say what SCO has on them, maybe they keep threating to go state's evidence on the anti-trust behavior. Maybe MS thinks it's worth a couple hundred million to keep the litigation cloud intact. I'm leaning toward the former. This can't be worth it from a business strategy perspective. It's expensive and it's not working. If anything it's backfiring. It's the kind of advertising that Linux can't normally afford.
It's really hard to tell if this is calculated malfeasance or serial incompetence. With Microsoft it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.
Most definitely this doesn't have anything to do with McBride, other than I'm sure they'll want to keep him quiet. Which means making sure he's happy, which will likely involve a large sum of cash when he leaves.
This whole thing is such a loser. If MS would put that time and money into developing an operating system and other software that provides value to the user, they could forget all this stupidity with SCO. It's tacky, pathetic and...should be...beneath the dignity of a world class company.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
To me, "Ransom Love" sounds like a pimp's name, and "Darl McBride" sounds like a drag queen.
Well, those are just the images that come to my mind, YMMV, of course.
Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
[...]
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
...let's raise $100mil and get this clown out of there. Isn't it worth that much to have him gone? Then again, he has provided a lot of entertainment over the years... :)
He wanted to spend more time suing his family for theft of his genetic source code.
Here come da fudge!
Here is the article: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140 After a lot of searching, the friends/money trail lead to a pig hiding in the corn field. I'm sure that his retirement from M$ will act as a poor excuse this time.
You know what? I kind of hope this gets approved. McBride's name is already mud, so he doesn't deserve to be with this company or running it. Some of the board have already left. (Is Sontag still there?) Basically, this would be a wise business and bankruptcy decision - resuscitate the company, but resuscitate it without those responsible for running it into the ground.
This comes back, then, to the pursuit of the legal claims. IANAL, but checking on things, just because they're "pursuing" them doesn't mean they are going to attempt to pursue them to an end that is in their favor (i.e., the original SCO vs. IBM case that brought this up in the first place), more properly it means that they're likely going to merely weigh their options and see if it's worth going in on. What I predict is that, if approved, the new SCO will settle with Novell, drop their claims against IBM, scuttle the SCOSource program, and focus on what they were doing in the first place. What they do with Unix or Linux dev is anybody's guess.
This sig no verb.
... or does "Memorandum of Understanding" sound like the most boring D&D object ever? "You kill the orc. As he dies, he drops the Memorandum of Understanding, detailing the conflict between you and him and the specifics of its resolution. +2 mediation points."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
How much do you want to bet that he will pull a Rick Belluzzo and get a nice high-paying job at Microsoft or one of its proxies?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Epic win for the Van Wilder reference!
Gone!
Why does it matter if Darl McBride stays or goes? The people responsible for the SCO fiasco have already cashed out, are already flu$h, and are pretty much going to be above reproach. We knew this back in 2003 and I think it's still the case now. Our society rewards sleaze.
'Hello im ringing from Sco and my name is George Bush snr, can i interest you in an im not going to sue you this year license'
All /. laughs
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Law schools don't pump out evil. Venture capitalists with insane schemes that they want to get out of do.
Considering MS was tied to the case in a manner of giving some sort of support, perhaps it a who knows who line of financial support that traces back to MS?
Don't know but isn't it interesting that it seems SCO lawsuits may continue beyond bankruptcy of failed attempts?
pay no attention the man slipping out behind the curtain with all the money in his pockets and the plane tickets to the Caymans
I was hoping I'd get some of those, but that's apparently limited to Half-Human Wikipedia Staff.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Hopefully he'll remember to turn off the lights.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Dude, guys don't listen to music like that.
For my generation, it's the equivalent of listening to Barry Manilow
please tell us why this matters? I so sorry, I just don't see it...
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
I'm thinking the investors were approached for a loan/bailout. I'm thinking SCO said too much and the vultures decided on a quick way to make some money. As others point out, they are only out $5M in cash, the rest is a line of credit. Why push Daryl out the door?
They could approach IBM and Novell and agree to settle all claims. Between the two of them (IBM/Novell) , they could come up with $6M and the investors walk away with a quick 20%. IF they have information, it might be worth a lot to IBM and Novell, maybe worth twice that amount, especially if other people and companies are implicated. Well, we can wish for such an outcome. Also, aside from the $5M, the rest is a line of credit that probably has contingencies on how its used or taken.
IF microsoft was involved, you can figure they would cover any losses the investor would be facing, so, bottom line, it kind looks like a good bet to make.
If one takes the "dirty, deep pockets connnection - cost minimization exit strategy" hypothesis seriously, this deal makes a lot of sense - starting with a "separate (extricate) the point man from his crimes" strategy". That way, being "safely away" from the scene of final SCO act or implosion, this may enable some diffusion of hard earned hostility to SCO, muddle and bury evidence, and the (ex)CEO is much less likely to have to rat out the significant others, especially if everything "settles" for a few cents on the dollar and fades away with the normal "defend" clauses to previous bad management. Of course society has been the big economic loser all along here, and the moral justice is a farce on the way to a 3rd world, corporate run tyranny.
You really give lard a bad name.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The terms on the proposed loan read like the fine print in a credit card agreement. The interest rate starts at LIBOR + 17%. Some of the other fine print says:
"Payments: The Reorganized Debtor shall pay accrued interest on the outstanding principal balance in arrears monthly on the first day of each month commencing on the first day of the month following the Closing Date. The entire unpaid principal balance, together with any accrued interest and other unpaid charges, shall be due on the first day of the month following the expiration of the Loan Term (which date is sometimes referred to as the "Maturity Date")."
"Late Charges Default Interest Rate: Any payment not paid within ten (10) days of its scheduled payment date shall be subject to a late charge equal to the greater of $50.00 or five per cent (5%) of the amount of the delinquent payment. Upon the occurrence of an event of default, the margin used to compute the Effective Rate will automatically increase by an additional four percent per annum from the date thereof until the delinquent payment has been fully paid, both before and after judgment."
It is unlikely that SCO will actually be able to make monthly payments so why all of the penalties and escalating interest on what is probably an uncollectable debt? One possible reason can be found in the motion (346) which SCO filed with the bankruptcy court. There SCO asks the judge to treat the money owed by SCO to SNCP as debt on an equal footing with the debts owed to other creditors. Thus if SCO goes into a Chapter 7 windup then SNCP would get the same % partial pay out as all of the other creditors. If the judge agrees to treat the SNCP money as debt then it is to SNCP's advantage to balloon the amount of the debt as high as possible through missed payment penalties and escalating penalty interest. If the judge turns down the requests to treat the money from SNCP as debt then it doesn't really matter to SNCP whether SCO is missing 1% interest payments or 26% interest payments.
----------------------
Steve Stites
I hope they give him a real golden parachute--made out of real gold, and make him test it--from the space shuttle. It would be worth the $100 million just to see the Darl-th Star like a meteor...
Just kidding. I just hope he's happy living under the bridge in retirement.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I am getting so SICK SICK SICK of hearing about SCO.
Let's examine the meaning of life!
At least until some of those lawsuits actually get resolved or settled, that's about the only thing more newsworthy than this slowly moving train wreck.
*bangs head against brick wall*
Perfect solution to the whole SCO controversy:
1. Novell buys up all the outstanding shares of SCO
2. Novell performs a short-form merger with SCO
3. Novell drops all the lawsuits with prejudice
4. Novell milks out what it can from SCO's assets
5. SCO ceases to exist.
The beauty of step 2 is that you don't even need the approval of SCO's directors to do it. All you need is posession of 90 percent of SCO's outstanding shares.
The MOU also spells out that as part of the "Proposed Plan of Reorganization, SCO will continue to pursue aggressively the Company's claims in the Novell/IBM Litigation and other pending litigation, including The SCO Group, Inc. v. AutoZone."
There is no mention in the legal documents of any intention to devote any resources to SCO's software businesses. So, while McBride may soon be gone, if the bankruptcy court approves this deal -- SCO's board has already approved it -- SCO will be more aggressive than ever in pursuing its anti-Linux lawsuits against Novell, IBM and AutoZone.
Meet Blaine the Pain. Even after its mind disappeared, it continued on its nightmare track to its doom, taking all who boarded with it.
The Penguin Producer
Darl managed to pay the lawyers a lot of money. Kevin McBride (Darl's brother) made a good bundle out of the whole SCO fiasco.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Well why is it not a goal? Darl McBride was the reason SCO turned against Linux afterall. He was the one who had SCO sue open source. I remember my dad had bought SCO Xenix for like five billion dollars a copy ...er more like 5,000 but anyway it was a well run company back then vending it's version of SysV and really working on issues like hardware drivers.
Unix/Linux should always be about working against fascism. We can make money and make massive advances at the same time with open source code and freedom. It's all this taking over/mergering and requisitioning and Darl's suing that poisons the water for tech advancement. A healthy free market and completely free press is essential to a free society. We need to not allow situations where a few can control the marketplace. One way will be to reduce copyright and patent terms so people have enough time to make a fair return on their labors and yet not stifle competition and tech advancement. I think we'd be a lot further along with tech in our society if we didn't have mostly a bunch of criminals trying to control and take over the marketplace. At some point mergers should become illegal or very very difficult.
But truth be told you are correct that the major press especially never reports tech issues correctly.
He's going to work at McDonalds.
*ring ring*
BK: Hello, Burger King, how may I help you?
Darl: Hello, my customer, McDonalds, has patents on the meat you use.
BK: I'm sorry, what?
Darl: That is our beef and you aren't authorised to use it.
BK: Can you prove it? I'm going to get my manager.
Darl: You can sell those whoppers but you have to buy a license from us for $699.99 for each one
BK: *click**beepbeepbeep*
Dark: Hello? Hello? I'm getting my lawyers to send you a letter, they're going to arrest you.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Do you know how many people found Herr Hitler charming? (i know, I lose the discussion, yeah, whatever).
That is simply not a defense of character....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.