SCO Says IBM Hurt Profits 174
AlanS2002 sends in a link from a local Utah newspaper covering the SCO-IBM trial. The Deseret News chose to emphasize SCO's claim that IBM hurt SCO's relationship with several high-tech powerhouses, causing SCO's market share and revenues to plummet. "[A]n attorney for Lindon-based SCO said IBM 'pressured' companies to cut off their relationships with SCO. And 'the effect on SCO was devastating and it was immediate'..." As usual Groklaw has chapter and verse on all the arguments in the motions for summary judgement.
Hurt Profits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Infinite variations on a theme? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost 5 Years... (Score:4, Insightful)
Source of the Hurt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:finally (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hurt Profits? (Score:1, Insightful)
Read it again. It's saying that businesses which were already in relationships with both IBM AND SCO were pressured to cut off contact with SCO.
The truth of this statement is, of course, an entirely separate discussion.
IBM did hurt SCO's relationship. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. (Score:1, Insightful)
The SCO story (Score:2, Insightful)
Despite the daily press conferences, SCO never came up with any evidence to support their claims. They did briefly claim copyright infringement on a specific piece of code only to have the claim shot down within hours when the original author was tracked down.
While all of that was going on, blogs all over the tech world spouted off about how lousy SCO's products were, how there are better alternatives, and how SCO appeared to be running a pump-and-dump scheme to swindle investors just before the company finally died.
Their quarter filings looked rather dim as well. They didn't even have enough funds to pay for their own lawsuit. That is until Microsoft came along and gave them a huge infusion of cash in return for something Microsoft had no use for. This reinforced the idea that the daily press conferences truly were nothing more than FUD.
SCO encountered even more troubles with an SEC investigation and the deaths of two key board members who both shot themselves in the head.
If you were a SCO customer watching all of this, would you stick with their product?
Re:Hurt Profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with that unless IBM is considered to have a monopoly position in competition with SCO.
Re:finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Well (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO Xenix cough Openserver has the been the worst unix out on the market for almost 20 years and Caldera's Openlinux lite sucked goatballs. Old sco has the opportunity to make Openserver more like Solaris, AIX, and Linux for over 2 decades but decided to make it stagnant for decades.
Worse SCO intentionally crippled its product by not having standard components like a TCP/IP stack unless of course you pay $1200 or something outrageous. No gnu tools, no debuggers, no well just about anything to troubleshoot a dying sco.
But it seems IBM hurt SCO not by endoring Linux but SCO's crappy linux distro and lottery ticket. Darl McBride won over $26 million personally from the disk compression lawsuit from MS that was included with DOS 6. I think he wanted the same thing to happen with Linux and they were hoping old sco would provide. Bad move.
SCO has itself to blame and they could have been the next redhat or maybe sun if old sco actually improved their os 20 years ago. Its time it died like other companies who made poor business decisions.
Just how it goes (Score:2, Insightful)
First you fight them, then you laugh at them, then you ignore them, then you win.
(With apologies to Gandhi).
Re:Not their fault (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, this started out as gripping, then became fun to watch the train wreck. But it's over. Someone please let SCO know that they've lost.
What was that again? (Score:3, Insightful)
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG! Sign me up for SCO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Infinite variations on a theme? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, a car isn't unsympatethic enough. At this point it's like a skunk that ran past the train station spraying all the passengers, then set off down the tracks. Right now the train is still steaming up but everyone knows it'll just be a small bloody smear left when it's over.
Re:Hurt Profits? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe companies should improve, innovate and respect their customers.
Microsoft rarely does that.
And SCO was the one that sued IBM, and its own customers, not the other way around
So please stop bitching and moaning about how companies are supposed to make money.
Companies should respect its customers, and because Microsoft is a convicted monopoly it has the liberty to screw its customers, and guess what, it does screw us
Re:Hurt Profits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that is the underlying concept behind a company: making money. That's why there's outsourcing and patent fights and the recall equation.
The trick is making money while still respecting its customers.
SCO is trying to make money suing IBM, ignoring their own target market (it is assumed for the purpose of this argument that SCO actually HAS a market). It should be no mystery why they're losing business, and it's not...to everyone outside SCO.