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SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing 321

Posted by Zonk from the comment-write-themselves dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is now claiming that competition from Linux was behind the company's filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 'In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix.""
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SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing More

SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing

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  • Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:23PM (#20656733) Homepage Journal
    Okay, I'll grant that competition from Linux distributors probably has taken business away from their Unix offerings. (Not that there's a problem with that, it's just the way markets work.) Of course, I'm sure their "we'll sue our customers!" antics didn't help, as the distributors behind such Unix varieties as Solaris, AIX, HP-UX etc. don't seem to be in quite such dire straits.

    But let's not forget that a few years back, this SCO was known as Caldera. They were a Linux distributor. They were a founding partner in UnitedLinux [unitedlinux.com]. Then they bought Unix -- well, they bought something -- and changed their name to sound like the old SCO (Santa Cruz Operation), and refocused their business on Unix and lawsuits.

    Anyone want to bet that if they'd stuck with Caldera Linux as their primary business, they'd be doing a lot better today?

    To pull out an old analogy, it's like they started out as an automobile company, and then decided to switch to the buggy-whip business -- and now they're blaming the automobile companies for their business failures.

    • Re:Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:31PM (#20656917)

      I don't know that if they'd stuck with the Caldera name and business model that they would have succeeded. After all, how much space is there really for commercial support in the Linux space. Maybe they'd have succeeded, maybe not - but their legal antics and operatic press releases made them look like maniacs. And that is entirely their own fault.

      • Re:Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Monchanger ( 637670 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:41PM (#20658221) Journal
        As has been mentioned over and over, the SCO business model of recent seems less about product development and more about legal + accounting maneuvering.

        The SCO strategy has been fairly consistent: call themselves as a victim and look for someone to pity them. Fortunately, few bought the act, and most have recognized the cheap trick for what it is. Hopefully, this new tantrum won't yield better results for them.

        McBride, there's no crying in business.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WindBourne ( 631190 )
        After all, how much space is there really for commercial support in the Linux space.

        Hmmmm. At the time that they pulled this shit, basically, it was Redhat, Suse, and Caldera as the big players. Now, it is redhat, Suse/Novell, Ubuntu's company, Oracle, IBM, HP, SGI, Mandriva, etc. It would appear that the market is really expanding with a large amount of support. OTH, the support for Unix is shrinking.

        But then again, I do not believe that they ever intended to expand the Unix market. I think taht they int

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:33PM (#20656945)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by moranar ( 632206 )
        Still, it's hard to be doing worse than SCO is doing these days, isn't it? Even with a turd of a distro, they might have done something better.

      • Re:Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:00PM (#20657493) Homepage Journal
        When Caldera first came out it was actually pretty interesting. It just died on the vine over time. Heck I really thought Red Hat was over rated and it has managed to do well. I think Caldera could have been a big hit if they had managed it correctly. They had DR-DOS so they could have bundled a Dos runtime environment. While by 96 DOS was pretty dead that would have been a nice feature for some users.They could have been a contender but failed to find any focus.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )

          While by 96 DOS was pretty dead that would have been a nice feature for some users.
          DOS was dead in 1996? A lot of businesses were still relying on DOS programs back then, and many of those that weren't were using Win16 apps. A DOS runtime environment that could have run Windows 3.11 would have been an interesting alternative to Windows 95.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MBGMorden ( 803437 )
        I don't know. Maybe I'm just looking at the past with nostalgia, but I used Caldera for a while and it certainly wasn't too bad. I remember the install being rather easy and it was very easy to get Wordperfect working on it.

        In contrast, the first distro I ever tried was Debian and 12 years later despite being extremely proficient at Linux now I still get a little skeerd at the thought of installing Debian (so instead I use Gentoo :S). Lets just say that for a kid who knew only MS-DOS (I had Windows 3.1 b

      • turds (Score:2)

        by Erris ( 531066 )

        The old line about polishing a turd comes to mind. Caldera was one of the poorest distributions around.

        Pioneers often look bad in hind sight, but OpenLinux [wikipedia.org] was a better place to be than Windows 95 or 98. Had they continued on they could have the markets now owned by Crossover Office and would be at least as polished as Xandros.

        If you want to see poor, look at SCO Unix itself.

      • Re:Caldera to SCO: Backing the wrong source (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sjames ( 1099 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @05:49PM (#20660589) Homepage Journal

        The old line about polishing a turd comes to mind. Caldera was one of the poorest distributions around.

        I was at an enthusiasts meeting once and a rep from Caldera was there. That was the first and only time I've ever seen anyone unable to GIVE copies of any Linux distro away.

        Their big idea at the time seemed to be recreating the "great" idea of the Windows registry as a combined config file in /etc. IIRC, the distro itself looked very much like the previous version of RedHat with the logos changed (perfectly legal) and nothing added but extra support for mounting a Novell server.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Simon Brooke ( 45012 )

        The old line about polishing a turd comes to mind. Caldera was one of the poorest distributions around.

        As one of Caldera's first paying customers, I disagree. It was not a lot different from RedHat at the time, but had a good (Motif based, as I remember it) commercial desktop (this was before KDE or Gnome, remember), Word Perfect (this was before Open Office, remember), and a number of other good, useful, stable commercial UN*X packages bundled as well. Applixware was available at reasonable price (I kn

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by foobsr ( 693224 ) *
      Anyone want to bet that if they'd stuck with Caldera Linux as their primary business, they'd be doing a lot better today?

      Yes.

      "Ransom Love, the immediate successor to Sparks, engaged in a famous spat with Richard Stallman, after Love had announced that Caldera would drop the GNU GPL (General Public License), the most common free software license, for future products because it was holding back its business. Love claimed: "We add value to Linux, so it can become successful. We integrate Linux in back of

    • Another point they missed (Score:4, Informative)

      by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @04:38PM (#20659433)

      SCO (originally, anyways) was in the business of selling UNIX systems - which is a niche market. And that niche is pretty well defined. People like us /.ers fill that niche. Ideally, we're the people The Suits ask whenever they say "we need a solution to this problem."

      By attacking Linux, they offended pretty much their entire target market. Nobody here would recommend SCO for anything, and last I checked our user ID numbers were over a million.

      That is some seriously monstrous bad PR to try to get over.

      Of course, all this assumes that Darl actually wanted to run a software company in the first place. Maybe he doesn't care about SCO at all, and just makes these noises in the press because that's his job. It's equally likely that he's a paid assassin out to tarnish the reputation of open source, or even better yet put an end to open source in the business sector. See the Halloween X document for clarification. Link 1. [wikipedia.org] Link 2. [catb.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GooberToo ( 74388 )
      They were a Linux distributor.

      But before that happened, IIRC, SCO's entire VAR channel gave them the finger because SCO refused to do anything to help them remain loyal. As a result, almost everyone one of them went to IBM or Linux; mostly to Linux. Long story short, SCO decided they would not support their sales, support, and consulting channel...and are now surprised they have no business as a result. SCO has no one to blame but SCO.

      Hell, SCO's Nonstop Clustering (NSC) product sucks...it doesn't work

  • Tough noogies (Score:5, Funny)

    by RollingThunder ( 88952 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:23PM (#20656741)
    I fail to see the part of law where he's guaranteed to have a business model that works no matter what may compete with him.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      I fail to see the part of law where he's guaranteed to have a business model that works no matter what may compete with him.

      I fail to see where he's claiming that he's guaranteed one. All he's describing in the bankruptcy filing is why SCO failed.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gowen ( 141411 )
      Nobody's said otherwise. A bankruptcy filing is a statement of "here's why this company went under." And "we got outcompeted by X, Y and Z" is a pretty damn common reason.

      • Re:Tough noogies (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mhall119 ( 1035984 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:45PM (#20657211) Homepage Journal

        And "we got outcompeted by X, Y and Z" is a pretty damn common reason.
        Sure sounds better than "We abandoned product X to sell product Y. Then other companies proved that selling product X was more profitable than selling product Y. We then spent a whole bunch of money suing those companies for selling product X and our own customers for using product X without paying us for our product Y, only to be told we didn't actually own product Y, and owed ass-loads of money to Company Z."

        • Re:Tough noogies (Score:5, Insightful)

          by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:54PM (#20657369) Homepage Journal
          Oh, I agree. Bankruptcy filings get written by the soon-to-be-outgoing board. Unsuprisingly, they rarely say "This company folded because the outgoing board is almost completely incompetent and abandoned its core business in order to give all the company's assets to its lawyers."

          Funny, that.

        • only to be told we didn't actually own product Y, and owed ass-loads of money to Company Z."

          Actually they knew they owed ass-loads of money to Company Z, but they were hoping if they closed their eyes and imagined really hard that they didn't, that it would just sort of go away.

          Baring that I'm sure they had some sort if twisted idea that after they won two metric fuck-tons of money from suing company A, and B, that they could then turn around and figure out some way to sue company Z, or at least annoy them enough that they forgot about all that money.

    • No Kidding... SCO sold Linux for quite a while. They couldn't make it work so it's the rest of the industry's fault?

      Perhaps they should have been working on their business model rather than sueing everyone... who do they think they are, Microsoft?

    • I fail to see the part of law where he's guaranteed to have a business model that works no matter what may compete with him.

      The folks in the music and movie industries have done a pretty good job of making the law work that way [wikipedia.org].

    • Damn users, running away when we sue them! (Score:5, Funny)

      by KWTm ( 808824 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:20PM (#20657881) Journal

      The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix."

      Furthermore, McBride also noted, "These alternate distributors neglect to sue their customers, a service which we provide for our own customers, and thus they are able to undercut our price of $699 per customer. Despite making a concerted effort to protect our intellectual property through the legal system, IBM has failed to buy us out, so the expected funds did not materialize which had been earmarked for expansion plans for my summer cottage --I mean, er, corporate conference facilities.

      "We expect our recovery to be delayed somewhat while we initiate the appeals procedure. At that point, we anticipate a healthy rebound, as our business partner tells one of those investment firms to give us more money.

      "Even though shares of our stock cost less than an order of French fries at McDonald's, we want to allay any concerns about being delisted for having a low price. Our accountants have said ... er, I mean ... our accountant has said that we can simply do a stock merge, to have fewer shares, each of which cost more. As the price drops further and we merge more shares, we anticipate that it will be at least one week before all the shares are merged into a single share that costs $1.30. By that time, we should have identified another customer whom we can sue. It should not take too long to identify since we don't have a very long list to look through."

  • He will blame... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AltGrendel ( 175092 ) <(su.0tixe) (ta) (todhsals-ga)> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:24PM (#20656759) Homepage
    ...everyone but himself. What an ego.

    • Re:He will blame... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cheesey ( 70139 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:53PM (#20657359)
      I'm impressed to hear him speaking the truth for a change. Paraphrasing: "we're out of business because Linux does what we did, but for less money, and more flexibly."

      But I still think he's a dick for trying to solve that problem by suing. Adapting to Linux would surely have been cheaper than all this legal action. They might even have made a profit...

  • Microsoft distributing Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by querist ( 97166 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:24PM (#20656765) Homepage
    Since when have Microsoft been distributing Linux? I suspect that Mr. McBride is mistaken or perhaps this is simply a despirate grab at anyone who has money. (Note he did not go after Ubuntu, etc. - only "deep pockets")

    • Re:Microsoft distributing Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:27PM (#20656837) Homepage Journal
      I did a double-take too, but if you look at it more closely, he doesn't say Microsoft distributes Linux. What he says is that other OSes including Linux took away their marketshare. Then he lists a bunch of companies that provide OSes, including Microsoft. So he's talking about Windows in that case.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gosand ( 234100 )
      (Note he did not go after Ubuntu, etc. - only "deep pockets")


      Not to mention that Ubuntu wasn't really any kind of force at that time.

    • I suspect that Mr. McBride is mistaken

      Oh, he's not mistaken; the f*cker's delusional.

      He made a poor business decision and it backfired in his face. All this blame slinging is just a lame attempt to preserve some amount of executive "elan" so that he get a job elsewhere - preferably one that doesn't involve french fries.

      By sounding CEO-ish, he's trying to polish his own image. Only thing is, he ain't got no soap.

  • "Staying the course" eh ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:24PM (#20656769) Homepage Journal
    STILL stiff neck and scheming up until the end.

    lawyers of this company should be hanged in order to prevent more exploits in u.s. legal system.

  • oh yeah? (Score:4, Funny)

    by zsouthboy ( 1136757 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:24PM (#20656777)
    I, horse-and-buggy manufacturer, am being put out of business by those damn dirty car manufacturers!

  • Competition killed SCO. (Score:5, Funny)

    by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:25PM (#20656779)

    McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix."

    So ..... McBride is blaming competition?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Pvt_Ryan ( 1102363 )

      My God.. STOP PRESS.. There are companies out there competing for market share..

      If SCO couldn't see this is it any wonder that they are filing for bankruptcy???

      Really indeed imagine that competors trying to put each other out of business. What is the world coming to??

    • So ..... McBride is blaming competition?
      Yes, apparently nobody ever told Darl that competing was a viable business model, he thought litigating was the only way.

    • Stop complaining! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mce ( 509 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:49PM (#20657283) Homepage Journal

      Indeed. And what's wrong with that? They filed for chapter 11, so now they naturally have to explain why. Competition that they cannot beat is the reason. The real one. What's wrong with little Darl saying that, other than that it probably is the first accurate business related statement coming out of his mouth in years and that he should have said it a long time ago?

      I truely don't understand why you guys are screaming so much about this one. What McBride said is true amd he has to say it: Linux is the thing that ruined their business. It was doing that back in 2003 already. The fact that SCO used the dirty method they did to try to escape from the inevitable, does not change the basic facts. Get over it. You should all be happy, for $YOUR_DEITY_HERE's sake! So stop wasting time on such blahblah and get back to work, making Linux even better. SCO is history.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thegnu ( 557446 )
      So ..... McBride is blaming competition?
      I think so, and my official response is (take note):

      Is widdle McBwide gots a boo boo? Oh, noes! Wed me come ovew a kiss it and make it aww beddew.

  • Damn Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:25PM (#20656781)
    Damn Microsoft and their support of Linux!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by joe 155 ( 937621 )
      lets not forget that for the purposes of the GPL v. 3, Microsoft is distributing linux through their voucher scheme - no need to let them get away with their responsibilities...

  • Excuse me... (Score:3, Funny)

    by curmudgeous ( 710771 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:25PM (#20656787)
    ...while I laugh maniacally.
  • ..the motive behind the baseless lawsuit: to hurt the competition?

  • Oh that Darl McBride! (Score:3, Informative)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:25PM (#20656791) Homepage Journal

    McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years."

    I suppose that's why they pay the Darl McBride the big bucks -- nothing gets by him.

    The incredible Darl in action! [vi411.org] Does anyone worry his next job will be working for their company?

    The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix.""

    Seems the logical approach would be for them to develop Unix and market it aggressively in return, rather than count on hitting the jackpot through the Lawsuit Lottery.

    Seems they should have learned something from this example [wikipedia.org], but it does seem to strike everyone that there really never was an interest in growing the Unix market. It was all about suing IBM and other Linux distro makers.

    In Other News: Br'er Rabbit informs us he's certain he can defeat the Tar-Baby if he could just get one foot free long enough to take another kick at it.

  • Translation for those who don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:25PM (#20656795)
    corporate cop-out speak:

    McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix."


    We would like to blame other entities for our inability to make a quality product that can compete in a competative marketplace. Simple put they are responsible for our incompetance.

  • ..the bankruptcy had something to do with the de-emphasis on the marketing, development, support, and other attributes of OpenServer and UnixWare, and the emphasis on filing lawsuits. Surprisingly enough, they didn't start doing this till Darl McBride became CEO.

    Cause -> Effect.

    ~Sticky
    /Just a thought, just a thought.

  • got to change with the times... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mytrip ( 940886 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:28PM (#20656841) Homepage Journal
    This is as stupid as horse drawn buggy makers blaming automobile makers for going out of business. SGI didnt adjust. They went poof. IBM adjusted well to linux and is reaping benefits are oracle and other companies. SCO could have done well with linux by shifting an existing customer base and applications over a long time ago.

  • SCO's reason for lawsuits? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mhollis ( 727905 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:28PM (#20656849) Journal

    Wasn't the reason why SCO started suing everyone who was using Linux due to their assertion that the code in Linux was "stolen" from SCO Unix? So now they're claiming that competition from Linux (now that the courts see that the code was not, after all, stolen from them) is forcing them into Chapter Eleven?

    And their assertions of this poverty are not due to the enormous amounts they have paid lawyers to prosecute ostensibly innocent companies?!

    From now on, when I think of the term "pinhead" I'll think of the people at the soon-to-become-defunct SCO.

    • Re:SCO's reason for lawsuits? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:45PM (#20657205) Journal
      To be fair to them, SCO Unix was heading towards extinction, largely because of the competition from Linux, all the BSDs and Microsoft. Heck, IBM knew this and that's why they started putting so much effort into Linux and moving away from their own *nix operating system (AIX). That being said, guys like Sun seem to be doing alright, so it really comes down to business model, period. Caldera/SCO got taken over by a rather litigous bastard who altered the business model from "produce, maintain and sell support of operating system" to "try to extort licensing fees from IBM, or even better, simply get bought out so we can all get out of this mess".

      I'll wager SCO was finished with or without the lawsuit. Without the lawsuit they may have a few more years, but SCO Unix died the death that some operating systems do; better and/or cheaper alternatives.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mhollis ( 727905 )

        This is slightly OT, but I don't see suing people or purchasing other companies as "doing innovation." Any Board of Directors and stockholders who support a CEO who thinks buying other companies and/or suing other companies as a good idea deserve to see their stocks plummet.

        SCO is now considered a "junk stock." I remember back when they used to innovate by hiring some of the best programmers in the business. I think the old way is the best.

  • It was the public debacle, wild accusations, circular logic, legal threats, loss of face, change of business model from products and services to litigation based, etc. that caused this. Not to mention an outrageously overpriced and stale product line. Call me a dreamer...

  • Sun sells Unix (Score:3, Insightful)

    by khb ( 266593 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:30PM (#20656879)
    As best I can tell, and it's certified http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/802-1953/6i5uv2sif [sun.com]. I'll bet HP-UX and AIX are too. So is Daryl's claim t that his Unix isn't as marketable as other people's Unixes??
    • Sun also distributes (or did once, at least) Linux on some machines they sell (sold), plus they also went and Open Sourced their copy of UNIX.
  • Darl McBride is a loser, and a bad one...

  • Other choice quotes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:32PM (#20656935) Homepage Journal

    My favorites:

    As a result of both the Court's August 10, 2007 ruling and our entry into Chapter 11, there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.

    and:

    Revenue from the UNIX business decreased by $2,704,000, or 37%, for the three months ended July 31, 2007 compared to the three months ended July 31, 2006 and revenue from the UNIX business decreased by $5,103,000, or 23%, for the nine months ended July 31, 2007 compared to the nine months ended July 31, 2006.

    and:

    Revenue from our SCOsource business decreased from $31,000 for the three months ended July 31, 2006 to $0 for the three months ended July 31, 2007. Revenue also decreased from $95,000 for the nine months ended July 31, 2006 to $23,000 for the nine months ended July 31, 2007.

    Ouch. To their credit (heh, I are teh funny), they managed to only lose $4.6M during that 9-month period, down from $12.9M a year earlier. Unfortunately, it looks like they're also out of things to cut.

  • Blame everyone and everything else for your failures. Couldn't possibly be your own decisions that are at fault for a now failing business model.

  • Magnificently flawed business model (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flying pig ( 925874 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:38PM (#20657039)
    Assuming for the moment that the whole thing wasn't simply a Microsoft sock puppet, Darl McBride would seem to have failed very basic economics. SCO's competition was not Sun, HP, Red Hat etc. It was Microsoft. If he had actually wanted to grow the business, he would have known that when a type of product has relatively low market share, increasing the number of suppliers tends to increase that market share. If it's perceived that "everybody is doing Linux these days", cio and ceo are more likely to buy Linux.

    So, reverting to the original argument, I suspect that McBride is not stupid, and that the whole thing is indeed a sock puppet. However, as a scam it is probably too arcane to be explained in a fraud trial. Expect McBride to turn up in a Microsoft advert before too long, explaining that it is the fate of all Linux companies to go bankrupt, so best stick with Windows.

  • "and it would have gone perfectly if it wasn't for these meddling kids!"
  • Darl's decision to try and extort money from customers based on FUD and false claims that they owned Unix, Darl's decision to bet the company on a lawsuit against IBM despite having no evidence, Darl's decision to give up on Caldera's profitable Linux business, or indeed any other decisions that Darl may have made.

    Oh, that's all right then Darl, we'll let you off then.

  • So, let me get this straight.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:41PM (#20657125) Homepage
    You dropped your Linux support, now you're complaining that Linux is beating you? Would that not be akin to trading your ticket from a steam transport for a luxury suite on the Titanic?
  • that suing that pants off people is not a winning business model. (**AA, take a hint)
  • ...are they going to can McBride and get a CEO that will turn around the company, get them out of the mess they are in, and get them back to products? McBride has been bad for Caldera/SCOG since day one.

    Question: Could Caldera/SCOG sue McBride for his inept leadership? And causing them to lose market due to his governance, deceptions, etc? He is liable for the company as an executive officer, especially as CEO.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thatskinnyguy ( 1129515 )

      Question: Could Caldera/SCOG sue McBride for his inept leadership? And causing them to lose market due to his governance, deceptions, etc? He is liable for the company as an executive officer, especially as CEO.
      If by "Caldera/SCOG" you mean "shareholders in Caldera/SCOG", then yes. See Enron for more details.

  • Note to Darl... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ang31us ( 1132361 )
    Darl, YOU who chose to get rid of the Caldera Linux distribution after you were hired in late June 2002 [wikipedia.org]. Then, you spit in the face of the community that made your company rich and took on the Nazgul. [slashdot.org]

    You, not your competitors, are the reason why SCO is the joke of the IT industry.
  • What your witnessing is simply the market choosing the superior aggregation of technology, support, and price, and it looks like SCO lost. Daryl, go find another job.

  • Ice storms in Texas (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dan667 ( 564390 )
    When there are ice storms in South Texas (a very rare event), me and a couple of buddies like to get some lawn chairs and a cooler and go sit at the end of an off-ramp of a freeway and watch people freakout while going >5mph and skidding uncontrollably. Everyone knows they are not suppose to be out, but there they are wrecking their cars anyway. To bad there is nothing like that for the SCO board room.
  • I would like to see Mr. McBrides head notice stuck on a spike and left out in Wall Street as a warning to the next ten generations of CEO's that some lawsuit gambles come with too high a price.
  • is complaining about that it's windy instead of starting up the mill and grind some...
  • McBride -- "And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those damned meddling competitors."

    Somehow I suspect he will be commenting on the embarrassing failure of Caldera/SCO for years to come.

  • Ayup (Score:2)

    by mark-t ( 151149 )
    It quite conceivable that Linux is really to blame for SCO's imminent demise... but then NASA's Apollo program is to blame for being the first to put a man on the moon.

  • Gambling as a Business Model (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HexaByte ( 817350 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:10PM (#20657699)
    Too bad nobody ever told Darl that Gambling isn't a good business model.

    He gambled that, by suing for their "stolen code" that was in Linux, he would either get someone to buck up or get IBM, Novel, etc. to buy them up. Maybe he was even hoping Bill Gates would make an offer, so that he could kill Linux.

    The only problem was, no one rolled over and played dead, depriving Darl of a buyout and golden parachute, or a "Linux Lottery Lawsuit Goldmine". (TM)

    Maybe, Darl, you'd have better luck taking your paycheck out to the local riverboat.....

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Trespass ( 225077 )
      Gambling is a fantastic business model, provided you're not the one doing the gambling.
  • I guess "SCO Blames Sucking for Bankruptcy" would have been too easy.
  • Typical SCO FUD. It wasn't Linux itself that led to SCO's downfall, but all those damn Linux pirates who didn't pay their $699 licensing fees and were illegally using Linux for free.

  • SCO is solvent (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkonc ( 47285 ) <stephen_samuel@b ... m ['n.c' in gap]> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:19PM (#20657853) Homepage Journal
    SCO is solvent -- unless you include the money that they {claim that they don't,} owe to Novell. . . but even if they end up owing half of the $24M that Novell claims they owe, that would be more than enough to put them into the red.

    Thus, . . . even if you accept that competition from Linux has hurt them, what really cooked their goose was suing Novell and, thus, forcing Novell to counter-sue. (Once SCO sued Novell, if Novell hadn't countered with the demand for payment of owed royalties, they might have been permanently barred from suing SCO for that $20M at a later date).

    Of course, in their bankruptcy filings, SCO doesn't acknowledge that they owe Novell anything ... presumably under the premise that nothing is owing until the judge declares so in the trial (that is now being held in limbo by the Chapter 11 request). The problem that SCO may have, however, is that -- until, and unless Novell's royalties are declared (or acknowledged) owing, SCO is actually solvent, which means that the bankruptcy court may actually deny their request to go into chapter 11.

    On the other hand, admitting that they owe all of this money to SCO would defeat the probable purpose of the filing -- which appears to be keeping Novell off of the list of top creditors. (I'm not going to link to groklaw, here, because their servers are SOOO snowed under by all this sudden attention -- and that just after they upgraded!).

    The reason why SCO probably fears Novell being on their list of top creditors is that Novell would then lead a board of creditors which would have an incredibly wide-ranging ability to look into the recent actions of SCO from the inside -- and given how much SCO has been dancing to prevent certain disclosures in court, I expect that they'll be very unhappy to see Novell lawyers walking into the office to pull that very same information out of SCO's files in person.
    And then there's the question of how much 'encouragement' Microsoft provided for the lawsuit against Linux in the first place.

    Yeppers. I expect that there's gonna be a whole lot of hand-wringing in Utah over the next week or so... possibly even for over the next couple of years.

  • Fine then (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nuzak ( 959558 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:30PM (#20658049) Journal
    Maybe you're dead because you sued your own partners and customers. Who cares? In your fantasy world, you're dead because you couldn't compete. Fine.

    Just stay dead. The world doesn't even owe you a eulogy.

  • Sniff... Darl only sued IBM and Novel and afew others. You guys are just jealous of him and his superior UNIX business! Sniff... Leave him alone! A few years ago he had a flourishing little software company and then you guys ruined him! Waah! Sniff... Leave him alone, or you'll have to deal with ME!!!

    With apologies to the weird Yootoob Guy...

  • It's not going to work for SCO (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @03:46PM (#20658333) Homepage

    Novell already sent five heavy-hitters from Morrison and Foerster, the leading bankruptcy law firm, to Delaware to present their side of the SCO bankruptcy. SCO originally wanted to keep paying their lawyers for their various pre-existing lawsuits during bankruptcy. But they didn't even try to convince the bankruptcy judge of that in court today. So that legal money drain stops. Novell indicated they're going to file a motion to restart their lawsuit (it's just stayed temporarily after the bankruptcy filing), and on October 5, Novell gets to argue that their financial claim preempts most of the other creditors. SCO was just supposed to pass royalties through to Novell, not keep them. Judge Kimball agreed, and put that in his summary judgment order last month, so Novell will probably win that one.

    Meanwhile, SCO stock is now at $0.18, down 99% from the peak after SCO sued IBM.

  • almost every post here is playing in his hand (Score:4, Insightful)

    by superwiz ( 655733 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @04:03PM (#20658737) Journal

    He did, in fact, claim that SCO's downfall was due to the natural market forces and the company's inability to compete with other Unix vendors. His claim, actually, doesn't seem to make too much of a boogy man of the competition... he didn't say they sold child porn... he just said they were provding alternative which the market place prefered.

    The reason he is being this (almost) honest is that he now needs to downplay the fact that SCO completely lost their ability to gain new business because of the lawsuits. Without even mentioning whether the lawsuit has merit, the rule of the market place is if you can compete you compete, if you can't compete you go away or sue (see Sun Tzu's "...if the enemy is weaker than you fight him; if he is equally matched, irritate him; if he is stronger evade him..."). Suing, of course, is meant to be the irritating distraction.

    So the market place came to see the company as admitting defeat because of the lawsuits. This is what he trying to divert attention from. And everyone here seems to be playing his hand.

  • Failure to adapt. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @04:25PM (#20659207)
    Linux was a competitor But SCO failed to Adapt in time to face the competition they just tried to kill it. This is often the effect when someone first sees a threat they try to get rid of it. Linux by its very nature is much harder to get rid of then other competitors because it wasn't centralized. Attacking Linux is also attacking potential future customers. If SCO did nothing they may still be alive today like Sun and HP. They could have made tons of money from Linux Fallout. Those companies that tried Linux and realized it didn't fit their company (Yes they do exist Linux is not the perfect do all for everything OS). They could have competed more with Sun and HP for business. A Fully Commercially Supported Unix that Runs on your platform. And is not treated like the ugly step child like Solaris X86. There wireless technology they just started getting involved into. They had potential but it wasn't Linux that killed SCO. Is was SCO that killed SCO they abused future customers, they sued potential allies, welcomed other competitors, Lied to the public, wasted Taxpayer money, picked on the biggest strongest company it could find. In short they did everything wrong, a perfect example on what not to do.

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