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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.""
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.
And are there any possibility to let the court know what the public opinion on this is? The Chapter 7 should be more appropriate.
At least SCO weren't eligible to file for Chapter 12. Wonder what would have happened if they also were owning a huge farm in the midwest too...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It is not something that companies would normally do, but in this case there are exceptional circumstances.
Good point. The quick headlines that were generated for stories are highly inaccurate, i.e. its not a $100 million buy out and it looks to be only $5 million at first glance.
It could turn out after a full review of the facts that this is just another attempt to perpetrate additional theft of Novell's cash through the bankruptcy court as was the last attempt to sell Novell's assets.
We'll have to wait and see how Novell and IBM respond in the bankruptcy court.
And the interest rate is LIBOR + 1,700 Basis Points. That translates to 20% - 22.5% annual interest (using LIBOR rates over the past 1 year) which must be paid MONTHLY. SCO has lost money every single quarter of its existence, except for its blockbuster one in which it sold licenses to Sun and MS (which the court found to be improperly converted in its preliminary summary judgments). And now they have to pay credit card rates for financing?
Hello conspiracy theorists! This "deal" is nothing more than a cover to take the company private in an attempt to protect it from investigation into the PIPE fairies who funded its litigation from the word go. And you can bet (based upon the failed York deal they tried to shove down the BK court's throat in November) it was cooked up by people more powerful and "financially creative" than the existing SCO management.
Don't be surprised if an attempt to limit his liability is Darl's Golden Parachute.
I would think that whatever subsequent cases happen, judges and defense will be informed by this case.
I think this is probably the most important point you make with regard to future lawsuits.
The courts in the SCO cases have given SCO every opportunity to produce evidence to back their case. SCO has spent millions trying to find that evidence and by the time they realized it did not exist they had already dug themselves in way too deep and could not back out.
Also, as a result of the SCO cases, the BSD lawsuit agreement was brought out in to the public. What is interesting here is the amount of Unix code that is now licensed under a BSD license. It is my understanding that BSD licensed code can be included in the Linux kernel and released under the GPLv2 along with the rest of the Linux kernel.
Being that there is no Unix code illegally included in Linux, it would seem this avenue of attack is no longer open (or at minimum, not feasible). What worries me more is the next logical vector of attack, patents. I agree with a statement you made earlier, "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.".
Microsoft themselves could never sue a Linux company directly for a couple of reasons. First of all MS does not need the bad publicity it would bring. They currently have the perfect scapegoat, why not continue using it? Secondly, Microsoft has anti-trust issues to concern themselves with that their scapegoat does not have.
The only solace that I find in the fact that the next war will be based around patents is that the courts have become better educated in technology and that Linux has been virtually exonerated of any copyright issues. Quite frankly, patents scare me.
It's not truly a buyout. However, it is not uncommon in bankruptcy for a company to take out a new loan that is used to pay off all the old ones (aka consolidate loans). In this situation its kinda shady how they're doing it, because they're trying to save Darl from being responsible for everything...that is the bigger kicker here if this actually goes through, not just the money infusion.