Darl McBride Interview

mpsmps writes "vnunet.com has a long interview with SCO CEO Darl McBride devoted entirely to the SCO/IBM suit. McBride radiates confidence, describing SCO's contracts as "bullet-proof." He says he thinks IBM is desperate to buy SCO because "the last thing [IBM wants] to hear is the testimony that is going to come out," but that SCO isn't interested in being acquired. Read the interview for much more on these and other topics." See also part 2 and part 3 of the interview.

Delerium

[Znork]

Now, this must be the final proof that McBride is delerious:

"You go back to SCO's brand in the 1990s and it was Unix on Intel. SCO was primed to seize the multibillion-dollar server market of Unix on Intel that hit in the early 2000s that has in fact shifted over to Red Hat."

SCO was primed to go down the drain, even without Linux anywhere. Most people were already migrating or had migrated off SCO before Linux became a contender; migrating to Solaris or Windows, or basically anything that wasnt quite as bad as SCO.

The man is completely delusional and should be locked up in a small padded room for his own good.

Slashdotted already! Here's the text of part 1:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the text I was able to snag from part one before the site underwent "maintenance". I added the Q/A style for legibility.

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Interview: SCO chief Darl McBride part 1
By Peter Williams [25-06-2003]
In the first of a three-part interview, SCO chief Darl McBride talks exclusively to vnunet.com's Peter Williams about why he believes his company has a rock-solid case against IBM.

The SCO Group has terminated IBM's right to sell its AIX operating system and is seeking $3bn in damages.

The company has also filed a permanent injunction that requires IBM to "cease and desist all use and distribution of AIX", and to return all copies of Unix source code to SCO.

SCO's lawsuit claims that IBM broke its contract with SCO by allowing parts of SCO's Unix V source code, licensed to IBM for use in AIX, to be used in the rival Linux operating system kernel.

vnunet.com spoke exclusively to SCO's chief executive, Darl McBride, about the court case, Linux and the future of SCO.

Q: You've filed your injunction against IBM. When is the hearing due?
A: There's not a date set currently. The next action is really discovery, where we get a chance to go in and take a look at what has been going on at IBM.

It has said publicly that it moved, and is moving, key parts of AIX, and in fact is willing to move all of AIX over into Linux.

The problem with that statement and those actions is that SCO has a very strong contract in place with our software source code licensing agreement that has not allowed IBM to do that. So we are protecting those licence and contract rights.

We went to the 100 days of trying to resolve the issues. So in effect we pulled its contract and it doesn't have any authorisation to now use the software.

Q: But in order to enforce that you have to go through the courts.
A: We have taken every step possible. Now it's for the courts to step up and enforce the contract rights that we have.

The people that have looked at this - both our legal teams as well as independent people coming from the outside - say: 'These contracts are bullet-proof. This is a very strong contract right you have.'

The way IBM is responding is very interesting. They haven't filed for an injunction; they haven't filed for the summary judgement enforcement to be dismissed.

When you have what people would call nuisance cases then you usually go in and try and knock those out with a summary judgement motion, or something to cause them to be dismissed. IBM has actually done none of that.

In fact, it took the opposite approach of not talking about it at all. So we're perfectly fine to go through whatever time it takes to get resolution on the legal path on this.Now, as of 16 June, we also increased our claims amount to include all AIX-derived hardware, software and services, given that they are now - in deriving that revenue - on an unauthorised route for use of the software.

Q: So what are you going to do in the meantime? Are you just going to wait?
A: Well, not necessarily. We have been pretty assertive and pretty aggressive and we are going to continue that.

So as we move into discovery this will be very nice for us, because now we get to go in and talk to all their people, their customers. We get to really shake things up and find out what really is going on over there.

Now, by going into pre-discovery, we have strong enough claims. We'd be fine to go to court just on what we have before discovery.

Q: Is IBM agreeable to this process? Does it have to be?
A: In a legal setting it doesn't have a choice. In discovery you get to go in and investigate the things that relate to the case, and there are a broad range of things that relate to Linux and AIX. We will be going in with a fine-toothed comb and coming up with every detail.

Q: Wouldn't you like to get this resolved quickly?
A: I would love to have this behind us and move on. IBM has put the brakes on to try and sl

Google Cached copies

[Anonymous Coward]

vnunet site has been down for a little while... here are the appropriate google cache links:

Part 1 [216.239.39.100]
Part 2 [216.239.39.100]
Part 3 [216.239.39.100]

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karma whoring for linux 'n stuff: Dartmouth Open Source Community [dartmouth.edu]

As someone who used SCO in 1993...

[MosesJones]

I can tell you that this is totally and utterly...

True.

It was a pile of rubbish, we had it running our net connection, all it had to do was act as a mail server and dial-up modem. It fell over on a regular basis and was generally a pain to work with. I also had to develop some Curses applications on it and ended up developing them in Eiffel with a thin layer onto Curses which meant I could do the work on Solaris.

Re:Novell

[Simon Kongshoj]

I'm afraid that's ancient history by now, though.

SCO found some mysterious amendment to their contract that said they do in fact have those ownership rights, and while Novell couldn't find a copy of the file in its own archive, it had a valid Novell signature.

Quoth McBribe: "Novell took its ball and went home."

Re:what????????

[demon]

System V was/is a particular version of the UNIX codebase. System V-style init scripts were just a small part of that - and I don't think that SCO would have grounds to sue over anyone using a particular style of init scripts. I still doubt the veracity of SCO's claims, but of course, without their evidence (whatever that may be) it's hard to judge.

Re:How hard is this?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

There are two different kinds of code here.

One is code which SCO claims has been directly copied from Unix into Linux. This is the basis for the letter sent to Linux users.

The other is code which SCO claims that IBM has contributed to Linux in violation of its contract. This is the basis for the lawsuit against IBM.

The former code is what could be discovered using source code comparisons.

The latter code is known: it is JFS, NUMA, etc., which IBM developed and then contributed to Linux. SCO claims that these projects are derived works of Unix, and, per the IBM contract, SCO claims ownership over that code.

You have no idea

[leonbrooks]

sco pays coders to do code

No, The SCO Group (TSG) pays lawyers to do barratry.

The Santa Cruz Operation is probably the company you had in mind, and they don't exist. They sold their UNIX rights to Caldera and renamed themselves Tarantella. And apparently are still producing code. Hopefully, they're now producing good code, because I've seen SCO UNIX and it ain't a pretty sight.

AFAICT TSG (a glove-puppet for The Canopy Group) have never lifted their finger to any creative or constructive work in their entire collective lives. Their only visible occupation is "suer". They make money from suing.

if ibm really stole sco's code, the are guilty and have to pay sco for it.

I agree. But this is not what TSG are claiming.

TSG do claim to own derivative works (including hardware) that IBM wrote and the agreement says IBM have the rights to. They are also claiming ownership by derivation of every operating system in the world. I'll read that again. TSG claim to own every OS there is. Even Windows. I haven't seen them explicitly claim to own DOS yet, but hey, they sued (and I think rightfully for a change) over what Microsoft did to DR-DOS.

So... you're for who?

Re:So if SCO's case is so thin....

[Znork]

I consider shorting stock a very dangerous practice. While I do believe that this will end with SCO ceasing to exist as a corporate entity, the problem is it's quite hard to tell exactly when they'll be dead and buried, and wether or not the stock will go up or down until a certain point in the future due to gullible investors and their incompetent stock analysts. Can you say how long the lawsuit will take? Can you predict the near term actions and statements of IBM's lawyers and the courts decisions? As long as there are people actually listening to, and believing, SCO's press releases it gets very hard to guess where the stock is going over the next few months, or even year, even while one may be certain they're going to lose.

Just because a stock is massively inflated due to hot air, groundless claims and unfounded accusations it doesnt mean it cant get even more inflated before collapsing. And in this case, how long it is going to stay inflated depends mostly on timing in the legal system and the psychology of investors, rather than any hard facts.

Re:Bottom Line

[shadowbearer]

SCO's legal costs are being paid under a contingency arrangement [com.com] (about halfway down)

SB

Re:Bottom Line

[PolR]

This could mean Boies is not that involved in the case after all. He may have been hired for his notoriety and ability to publicly plea in court while other lawyers are doing the bulk of the work from the shadows.

Note the deliciously ambiguous statement:

the company revealed Wednesday that it doesn't have to bear the brunt of much of its legal costs.To pursue its case against IBM, SCO hired high-profile attorney David Boies, famous for his antitrust victory over Microsoft as well as his loss in the vote-counting controversy representing Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.

SCO's legal costs are being paid under a contingency arrangement, McBride said. In such cases, lawyers typically are paid not by the hour, but with a percentage of whatever money they can win for their clients in the case.

This only means that SCO's won't have to bear the brunt of Boies's contract without talking about the other legal fees.

If this theory is confirmed, IBM can still bleed their cash to death by dragging the case.