Submitted by “Darl McBride has the unenviable reputation as the man who tried to milk Linux.
As CEO and president of SCO Group, McBride has spent the last few years trying to collect billions in licensing fees from companies using the Linux operating system, earning the wrath of the world’s open-source geeks. For scores of programmers, here was a lawyered-up copyright troll trying to shake down Linux – the free, open-source operating system built by idealistic hackers working for the common good. But McBride insists he’s just misunderstood.”
As far as I can tell, Darl is an attorney who tried to take advantage of the law to cover up his lack of ability to lead a technology company.
While I don’t know everything that is going on within SCO, I used to work next door to them and had several friends who were engineers at SCO. Right before launching his attack against IBM, SCO laid off the majority of their engineers and replaced their internal Linux servers with Microsoft Windows servers, which broke a lot of the build and testing automation related to producing Caldera’s distribution of Linux.
All the available clues point to the fact that Darl had no intention of furthering the technology of Caldera and SCO, but instead planned to rely on litigation to make his company work.
Am I misunderstanding?
‘Wired’ did an interesting & lengthy article in July 2004 about how McBride and his friend Mike Anderer had a long previous history of IP litigation as a business model at Silicon Stemcell.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/linux.html
So when McBride joined Caldera in 2002 replacing his friend Ransom Love, he hired Anderer as a consultant, so the path for Caldera was set.
About a step away from having horns.
Spookily…I agree..
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/toybox/images/2004/mar9/review_hellbo…
“About a step away from having horns.”
Yup. Looks like he’s been drinking pretty heavily.
His arguments seem like that too — but they always have.
I thought this one was particularily brillian:
“nice picture, just a step away from thug. What, no nylon track suite and brass nuckles?”
(aproximate quote from memory)
just like a bedbug is misunderstood. he isn’t that bad after all, he just wants to suck your blood.
It’s so much fun watching Darl McBride try spinning this out as some kind of win. As far as pretty much everybody is concerned, SCO shot themselves in the foot. That’s not gonna change with something as picky as this
He states that you can’t own a work without owning the copyright but fails to understand that by signing the deal, SCO basically bought the right to collect royalties only.
Everybody who invested in SCO was watching this case. The minute the verdict was announced, SCO’s shares dropped like a ton of bricks. If that doesn’t spell what your business is actually about, i.e. patent trolling, then what does? Yet he goes on to tout Openserver as some kind of sought after product. He then goes on to speak, in very general terms, about some kind of mobility products.
With the low interest investors are showing in SCO, I wonder where they are going to get the money from to actually develop this mobility platform. Don’t tell me Openserver.
If SCO’s share prices continue on at this low level, instead of bothering to go through with a bothersome court case, somebody might just buy them for much less than they originally wanted and put them out of there misery.
Then again, IBM might just decide to grind the poor sods into the ground.
Then again, IBM might just decide to grind the poor sods into the ground.
Where’s the ticket line to the show?!
If they develop their mobility stuff like OpenServer, then they are wasting their time. OpenServer hasn’t had a release in years, many major enterprise apps such as Oracle haven’t been released for it in a decade. It uses X11R5 (no R6, no X.org) and it doesn’t ship with a GCC newer than 2.95. You can buy a compiler from them for more $$$.
In short: its outdated and useless. No on one is going to dump Solaris or Linux for it.
OpenServer hasn’t had a release in years, many major enterprise apps such as Oracle haven’t been released for it in a decade.
Funny thing is, if they wanted to, SCO could have improved OpenServer to make it competitive, and they could have made half-decent mobility whatever-it-is. Even if none of it was all that successful, they still wouldn’t be in shit as deep as they are now, and they wouldn’t be the most-hated corporation in IT.
They have always been that way. I remember starting with linux using the Cladera (now SCO) OpenLinux distro annd they have always been at least five years behind Red Hat, Mandrake (now Mandriva and what I use) and SuSE amongst the commercial distros. espercially in Kernels and the glibc libraries. I don’t think Caldera (SCO) was ever designed to be anything but an orphan IP (DR-DOS) hog and lawsuit factory.
Mate, OpenServer is dead, hence the ‘OpenServer personality’ for UnixWare. They could have invested heavily into UnixWare, reduced the price to something more palatable to the market, but they chose to sue than invest.
SCO were living in 1980s thinking they can charge for every single component of the OS, from the networking stack to mirroring technology – things which are part of the default licence of Linux, Windows or any other commercial UNIX.
Had SCO faced reality, we wouldn’t be in this discussion right now. The fact is, I find it funny when shareholders appoint clueless MBA wizzkids and lawyers to run companies who have the charisma and vision of a wet blanket, and wonder why things don’t succeed.
You quoted what was probably the best part:
And finally, it has nothing to do with our new mobility products we are working on. All of our product business is really unaffected by this ruling, other than the noises in our market places.
LOL. Yeah, okay. If this trial was not some kind of big deal to SCO, then why did you even go to trial in the first place and waste nearly all of your resources on it? Why didn’t you, you know, make stuff instead of intellectual-property trolling?
When McBride opens his mouth, all you can hear is, “IP FUD, IP FUD, IP FUD. Vaporware, vaporware, vaporware.”
Sometimes I wonder if Darl McBride is as incompetent as he looks, or if all that perceived incompetence is really the byproduct of greed, trying to get something for nothing.
No amount of PR spin can save SCO now.
McBride: Most investors have never read the opinion. They’ve read the conclusion. If that’s all you read, you would probably run too. Even as employees, the first hours this was out, it was amazing how big of a deal it was, how damaging it was to us.
It wasn’t until we stepped back a little bit and took a deep breath and said, “OK, let’s plow through this opinion,” and started looking, that we realized: Hey, wait a second, we have non-compete (issues) still on the table; we have Project Monterey still on the table against IBM; we still have copyrights against Linux users for post-1995 work.
——-
Who can blame investors for not wanting to fall in line for another round of lawsuits? Sheesh.
have wiped out SCO, I hope the SEC investigates the whole pump & dump scheme. Darl & his Canopy buddies set up a nice stock options plan that IMHO was so just too close to insider trading it was darn fishy. They seemed able to manipulate the pro SCO media so well to indirectly affect SCOX price swings almost as if according to their stock plan.
Darl surely deserves some time in the big house.
Man does not toe FSF party line, is mauled in the blogosphere. Film at 11.
I’m interested in what the FSF party line is? If you could point me to some material outlining the FSF political manifesto, or maybe some propaganda that supports your claims, I’d be interested.
“I’m interested in what the FSF party line is? If you could point me to some material outlining the FSF political manifesto, or maybe some propaganda that supports your claims, I’d be interested.”
Here ya go…
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
So I read the GNU manifesto, did you read it?
It says that the aim of the GNU is to create a Free, open source operating system (actually: software system) that is Unix compatible.
How this can be called the FSF Party Line, or be used in an unrelated Copyright argument is beyond me.
That’s because you are using logic. You need to embrace your irrational FSF fear and let loose the inner MS astro-turfer.
Then you will see the light.
False. He simply had nothing to back his claims up with.
Worse than that. His claims were utter fabrication, and he knew it.
He is shown to be nothing but a con-man, a liar and an wannabe thief (he is not clever enough to make the grade of actual thief).
Edited 2007-09-11 03:51
I think this gets to the heart of the matter.
The man was simply dishonest, lets not even discuss technology, his track record.
McBride was dishonest, fraudulent and worse, knew it as you said he did.
The man deserves to never work in this industry again.
If any company even thinks about hiring this guy, think again, because I don’t care if your RedHat.
I will format every single one of my Fedora machines and switch to something else in a second the minute this guy does anything in your company, including cleaning the toilets.
-Hack
This has nothing to do with FSF. FSF is not a part of this.
He is being vilified because of his own actions. He claims to own the proprietary products of Novell and IBM, and has nothing to support his claim. How would you feel if somebody tried to claim ownership of your IP?
He also has quite the reputation from making money on ligitation rather than making money on technology. He is a patent troll.
Say you agree to rent someone a house that you out-right own (no mortgage) and built yourself.
The renter pays the security deposit, then claims to own the house. This house that you put together with your own tools, hands, friends, etc is the subject of a court case. The renter keeps loudly proclaiming to be the rightful owner, even though everyone in town knows you built the house years ago, and had only agreed to rent it to the man.
It takes years before the judge in the case finally sees through the renters lies, and does the only right thing to do in such a case.
Evicts the renter, and tells them to sod off.
Sorry, but SCO never had what they claim, they -knew- there were extra conditions on the broad terms of the contract (these terms are not contradictory, they are merely finer detail of the terms of agreement), and they still tried to claim they owned something of which they merely purchased a right to use.
Novell and IBM are totally justified in making this personal, and I sincerely hope they crush, rather than acquire SCO. Send a message. Don’t *uck with us.
If you don’t like the product don’t buy it.
All of this drama is for nothing because Big Corporations are going to milk anything the CEO’s can make money on.
Just like all Big Corps it is all about making money.
Maybe you don’t understand the case “GENIUS.”
There is no problem with anybody making money with Linux. The problem is: extortion, barratry, securities fraud, mail fraud, slander, liable, vexatious abuse of the legal system, and many other felonies.
“If you don’t like the product don’t buy it.”
Well, that pretty much was the problem and the reason this whole thing started.
…that feeling when you read something and you’re really angry, but then you realize that writing a comment would only be a waste of your time (and the readers’) because this loser/idiot/troll/sco ceo/wanker doesn’t deserve a single penny of your time and words? And then you just say “naaah… let it go”.
It may be that Mr. McBride doesn’t understand what he’s doing, rather than being misunderstood by the rest of us.
If you don’t have anything but marketing rights to UNIX, it’s unlikely that you can sue other people who have more rights to it and get away with anything.
Caldera was practically built to sue anyway. Ray Noorda started there by buying DR-DOS and filing suit against Microsoft for trying to keep Windows 3.x from running on top of it.
Quote: “But McBride insists he’s just misunderstood.”
And in other news today, pink martian pigs were discovered flying upside down in the Earth’s atmosphere, their farts are suspected to having caused our massive global warming problem.
The man deserves to go down big time, for knowingly trying to extort money from Linux vendors/users when SCO didn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
Dave
McBride isn’t at all hard to understand. But then again, neither are Linux users.
Basically it goes like this:
McBride: “I want bucketloads of money from Linux users even though I don’t own anything at all of Linux”.
Linux users: “No”.
Seriously !
j/king.
lets be fair. SCO likes to play the lawsuite and lawyer game so the means they like making deals. So on behalf of every linux user everwhere I make this deal with SCO
We will agree that McBride was just missunderstood, if SCO agress to just roll over and die.
then everyone wins
> We will agree that McBride was just missunderstood, if SCO agress to just roll over and die.
No deal. Scox is as good as dead anyway.
If that is really a picture of Darl in the article, I’m imagining an orange jumpsuit with a number on it instead of a suit/tie. His face already has the right expression on it.
)
Whoah, you should have warned that they had a picture of him in the article. That is one ugly man!
We got attacked, vilified and we got branded as pariahs. When you pay 149 million dollars for a property, do you have the right to defend it or not? I think it’s a matter of principle. I think anybody in their right mind who was in my position would have done the same thing if they had half a backbone.
Ummm, I wouldn’t have. Let’s say for the sake of argument that you were justified in your actions. However, even if you win, as long as your potential customers (some of whom you have tried to sue) think you’re a seal-clubbing bastard, what have you really accomplished? It’s like somebody who goes to court and spends $10,000 just to get 50 cents. Sure, you stood up for your principles, but there was probably a better way to go about it.
Edited 2007-09-11 03:19
SCOG’s claimed “property” had nothing to do with Linux. Nothing at all.
SCOG attacked Linux without reason, and effectively accused many thousands of developers of being cheats and thieves without any justification whatsoever. None. Zero, nada, zip, zilch, didly squat.
SCOG got branded as pariahs because they were pariahs. Simple as that, nothing more to it.
Edited 2007-09-11 03:34
Also, it was scox that filed all the lawsuits against: IBM, Novell, Chrysler, and AutoZone.
As Rambo said: “they drew first blood.”
Those who have a strong need to convince others of how misunderstood they are usually aren’t.
Edited 2007-09-11 07:34
Basically, he talks about Linux and IBM and Novell the same way George Bush talks about terrorists.
OMGZ, SCO might have written some code post-1995 and some of that might be part of Linux! Still no evidence, still absolutely nothing to support any of the claims he’s continuing to make.
Next week: Saddam really did have WMDs!
This isn’t slashdot. Please don’t mention Bush & Co. in every article.
Although I can’t stand Bush either, and think he should be prosecuted for his crimes, there’s little if any reason to bring him into every little conversation. It considerably weakens your position and just makes the rest of us who oppose him seem like rabid monkeys who can’t go three feet without thinking of him.
I’m sorry?
Take a look at my comment history and see where I’ve mentioned Bush previously anywhere.
Do some research—and get the hell off your high horse—before you post.
Edited 2007-09-11 19:18
newsflash: Everyone thought Saddam had WMDs ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAc01vjnw ).
I agree with the point you are making about McBride’s slippery language though. The man really has nothing to stand on and it’s fun to watch him squirm.
Er, actually they didn’t. This is going to severely off-topic, but there was a great many people who knew perfectly well that he didn’t, not least the one guy better placed to know than almost everyone (Hans Blix, the guy in charge of finding the damned things).
Everyone in the US might have thought he did (though I doubt that’s true), but the same certainly didn’t hold true the world over.
This still reminds me of a quote from some guy on a forum:
“Watching the IBM vs SCO case is like watching a train hurling towards a compact car. It’s just in this case, everyone’s cheering for the train.”
Personally, I think he is a very handsome man.
I would like to go hunting with Mr. Darl McBride and Mr. Bruce Campbell.
We would cook wild boar on a spit and talk about the War. About women and whisky and song and file handles.
And oh, how we would laugh! Bruce would shake up a can of Coors Light and pass it to Darl, and it would spray everywhere when Darl opened it, and Darl would give Bruce a look of mock anger, and we would all have such a laugh!
Then later, Darl would send Bruce around to other campsites looking for grass fluffers and left-handed smoke shifters and we’d have more laughs.
And then we’d make Smores, MmMmMmMmmMMmmmMmmMmmMMm! And we’d tell ghost stories around the fire and Darl would put the flashlight under his chin and startle us so with stories of ghosts and lighthouses and Frank and Joe Hardy and the Mystery of the Purloined Code and Chet and his jalopy, until we grew sleepy with laughter in the wee hours.
It would be such a grand day.
Best. Post. EVER! =)
Wow I bought the entire published works of JRR Tolkein and about half of Isaac Asimov’s novels.
What was I buying if not the copyrights to these books?
Woohoo!
All you sci-fi readers out there need to pay me an “I” “P” License.
All your books are belong to me!
we payed $149 mil for the rights to UNIX, that is almost as much as the big are making a year in selling UNIX- combined that is..
Hey Darl, I see a promising future… as the next CEO of Amiga!
In all seriousness, before Darl and co started their bull, I was a huge Caldera fan. I ran OpenDOS w/ GEM on my laptop, OpenLinux on my desktop.
And 4 weeks ago I landed a job which involved running 3000 sites, including setting up the server. If SCO hadn’t been such pricks, likely I would have insisted that my favorite OS been put on. Instead, Red Hat now resides in all of the machines (8 achines in total). Caldera, while not the top selling Linux, was a respected Linux. If they had pushed their strengths (UNIX-compatibility listed on the box, DR-DOS support through virtual machines, whatever they could come up with) they would be a solid player. Instead, they’re ruins, a shell of a company waiting to be gobbled up…
Hey, how many shares do they have anyways? Come on guys, let’s do a little hostile taker why don’t we?
When you buy out a company, you buy not only its assets but also its liabilities.
Anyone buying SCO is looking at having to pay out both Novell and IBM for damages.
The lawsuits, and in particular the counterclaims, don’t go away just because someone buys out some shares.
Which is why interested parties just buy interesting “assets” of the company, like the caldera brand (which they aren’t using anyway), I too used to think a lot of Caldera’s Linux distro. At one point I think they had the best and easiest installer around. It would even let you play solitaire while you waited for it to finish copying files. That has been a few years ago.