SCO Linux FUD returns from the dead
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
As someone who was trying to evangelize Linux in my Fortune 250 at the time, I was dismayed by this whole saga, because it had its intended effect. One particular manager (who simply didn't like me) used news of the trial to cast FUD on my efforts to promote that we should be doing more with Linux, and less with Windows.
I've read every bit of news on this. I digested Groklaw daily at the time. I've bitched about it time and time again on this forum, and many others. In all of this reporting and commenting, I've never seen any reference to WHO was behind helping SCO, inside of Microsoft. I want to know who the people were that made these decisions, and greenlit the transfer of money. I want f*king names. I mean, I'm sure Bill and Steve had to sign off on the amount of money involved, but who engineered it, and brought it to them? I want to know what else they've done in their career. Were they professional hatchet men? Or were they otherwise successful product people?
If so, this seems like very reasonable 'leave us alone' money that absolutely shouldn't be required but I can completely understand why they paid that to make the problem go away as a business decision in the world we currently live in. I'd probably have done the same myself.
Why criticise them for protecting themselves?
Do you think this funded SCO's legal activities further? $6M seems like a very very small amount for this kind of legal action and I can't imagine it funded anything except the paperwork required to get them to pay it. How many corporate lawyers does $6M pay for? Not many.
And again, $6M isn't really funding any serious legal action, is it? A couple of lawyers' lunch expenses, maybe!
What would be the first stages of the Extinguish stage? If I were them, I would start from neutralizing Stallman. He is the pillar of Free Software, a smart hacker who created GCC and devoted his life towards values that are completely at odds with Microsoft's vision. I would use every occasion to discredit him and eliminate him from exerting any influence.
It seems that licensing fees from Microsoft were not insignificant part of litigation costs.
[0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2566954/sco-caps-legal... [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2563673/update--micros... [2] https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/q=Microsoft&dateRange=all...
> I realize the last negotiations are not as much fun, but Microsoft will have brough in $86 million for us including Baystar.
> ...
> Microsoft also indicated there was a lot more money out there and they would clearly rather use Baystar "like" entities to help us get signifigantly more money if we want to grow further or do acquisitions
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween10.html
Microsoft was obviously playing a very significant role in their funding, more than would be expected of someone just paying licensing fees.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2820340/baystar-exec-s...
They offered to underwrite a 50 million dollar investment in a lawsuit and helped them raise 10s of millions more to fund what they knew enough to know was a felony pump and dump scam and a criminal attack on their competitors.
There isn't much daylight between what they did and a restaurateur paying the mafia to burn their competitor out of business if the mafia employed arsonists so incompetent they tried to effect their crime in broad daylight with zippos.
Keep in mind that while people are talking about the new and improved Microsoft that current ceo Satya Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 whereas this whole SCO debacle begins 10 years later while he was working in a leadership role within Microsoft.
The criminal culture never left Microsoft and their current leadership is at best tolerant of criminal acts.
I think you are going too far. Microsoft has been using tons of immoral and unethical actions, but most of the time they were trying to cover their asses and avoid doing anything illegal. Of course their aggressive strategy means they were often investigated and lost their cases in court, but in this particular case, I bet they played it in a way that nobody could make a legal case against them, even though what they did is public knowledge.
It is really a shame. Caldera looked like a good distro:
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=sco
https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2013/03/27/caldera-open-l...
It was other way around. SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) sold off its UNIX business to Caldera, and renamed itself Tarantella (it was sold to Sun some years later). After some business failures Darl McBride took over as CEO in Caldera, renamed Caldera to TSG (The SCO Group) and started these lawsuits.
It's too bad they ended up going that way. We used SCO OpenServer back in the late 90s and early 00s because it was a UNIX that ran on consumer PC equipment. That was a really big deal for installs in rural and remote sites where accessing custom hardware from Sun or SGI or whoever might've been tricky.
It was an interesting time, because seemingly overnight SCO went from being the company that made UNIX for the little guy into the biggest heels on the internet. We migrated most of our customers over to Red Hat and Postgres (from OpenServer/Informix), but still had some SCO sites running when I moved on in 2006ish. I can't imagine anyone moving back now. Linux killed them, and after how they behaved it's hard to shed a tear.
Even though I had long left the SCO world when all the lawsuits happened, but I still felt disappointed that it had come to that.
For example, even this current page http://www.sco.com/5reasons/ has a claim that McDonald's is using it. But the quote is from John Doty, who last worked at McDonalds in 2001.
Edit: Googling around a bit, it seems like they switched to something called "New-POS", which runs on Windows. It was originally from a company called Savista, later re-named Torex. The software was purchased outright with source code and is now maintained in-house, and called "NP6". So it seems unlikely McDonald's has any real amount of SCO left. Apparently McDonald's was their largest client, so that's notable.
They weren't the only company to have a bit of difficulty in 2020.
"[SCO] has cut a deal with the law firm Boise Schiller and Flexner to cap its legal fees at a maximum of $31 million in return for the legal lads getting a bigger cut of the spoils should they win." https://www.networkworld.com/article/2325008/sco-s-case-does...
"In return for agreeing to cap its legal fees, Boise, Schiller & Flexner is now entitled to a larger percentage of any legal settlement that may be reached in SCO's lawsuit over IBM's contributions to the Linux operating system. The law firm will now be paid between 20% and 30% of any settlement, depending on the amount awarded, McBride said." https://www.computerworld.com/article/2566954/sco-caps-legal...
Maybe instead of the monkeys and other stuff, MS logo appears from the middle of the Jumanji game board?! :D
When the SCO lawsuit unfolded I was always looking forward for the Friday afternoon threads on heise about the latest news about that suitcase.