Darl McBride Leaving SCO? 126
JoGiles writes "Linux-watch is reporting that while The SCO Group may go on to pursue its plans with a $100 million buyout, it will do so without its longtime CEO Darl McBride. Buried in the proposed MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) between Unix vendor and Linux litigator SCO and SNCP (Stephen Norris & Co. Capital Partners) is the note that "upon the effective date of the Proposed Plan of Reorganization, the existing CEO of the Company, Darl McBride, will resign immediately.""
Not the real bad guy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pending approval... (Score:5, Interesting)
And are there any possibility to let the court know what the public opinion on this is? The Chapter 7 [wikipedia.org] should be more appropriate.
At least SCO weren't eligible to file for Chapter 12 [wikipedia.org]. Wonder what would have happened if they also were owning a huge farm in the midwest too...
Smoking Bacon (Score:1, Interesting)
SCO receives money from Stephen Norris, who is connected with Prince Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud [google.com], who can be seen here [blogger.com] with Bill Gates?
Re:Not the real bad guy (Score:2, Interesting)
Bruce, now that Vista has bombed at the Corporate offices, you think Microsoft will still have an incentive to pursue Linux in court?
IBM and Novell Will Object (Score:4, Interesting)
This plan has a better chance than the York debacle, but IBM and Novell will certainly want to see the money. If Norris Capital Partners has to front the 100 million in escrow this could get interesting.
For Microsoft this has to be like being caught in an endless corporate version of Fatal Attraction. Backing the SCO litigation probably looked good when the Vista release was delayed but now SCO has them by the short curlies. MS has to keep coming up with cash for their demanding paramour. And it's getting harder to design deniable sources for that cash. Hard to say what SCO has on them, maybe they keep threating to go state's evidence on the anti-trust behavior. Maybe MS thinks it's worth a couple hundred million to keep the litigation cloud intact. I'm leaning toward the former. This can't be worth it from a business strategy perspective. It's expensive and it's not working. If anything it's backfiring. It's the kind of advertising that Linux can't normally afford.
It's really hard to tell if this is calculated malfeasance or serial incompetence. With Microsoft it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.
Most definitely this doesn't have anything to do with McBride, other than I'm sure they'll want to keep him quiet. Which means making sure he's happy, which will likely involve a large sum of cash when he leaves.
This whole thing is such a loser. If MS would put that time and money into developing an operating system and other software that provides value to the user, they could forget all this stupidity with SCO. It's tacky, pathetic and...should be...beneath the dignity of a world class company.
Re:so long... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not something that companies would normally do, but in this case there are exceptional circumstances.
Re:Pending approval... (Score:5, Interesting)
Good point. The quick headlines that were generated for stories are highly inaccurate, i.e. its not a $100 million buy out and it looks to be only $5 million at first glance.
It could turn out after a full review of the facts that this is just another attempt to perpetrate additional theft of Novell's cash through the bankruptcy court as was the last attempt to sell Novell's assets [groklaw.net].
We'll have to wait and see how Novell and IBM respond in the bankruptcy court.
Re:NOT $100 Million, THAT WAS HYPE. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hello conspiracy theorists! This "deal" is nothing more than a cover to take the company private in an attempt to protect it from investigation into the PIPE fairies who funded its litigation from the word go. And you can bet (based upon the failed York deal they tried to shove down the BK court's throat in November) it was cooked up by people more powerful and "financially creative" than the existing SCO management.
Don't be surprised if an attempt to limit his liability is Darl's Golden Parachute.
Re:Luck for SCO. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope, not close.
Good will appears on the balance sheet as an asset when a company buys another and pays more than the value of the fixed assets. So if company A buys company B for $100 million and company B has $10 mill worth of equipment (machines, desks, etc) the $10 mil is added to capital and the $90 is credited as goodwill.
It is a real asset as the goodwill can be used to offset profits for tax purposes.
In SCO's case I would have a really hard time believing that the goodwill should still be counted as an asset. SCO has no real ongoing business except litigation. Bankruptcy pretty much destroys any claim they could make for business continuity. So they should probably report the goodwill as a loss.
Re:Pending approval... (Score:4, Interesting)
The objection to the first sale was because there was no clause covering losses of the cases. Also, they were trying to sell property in dispute. That isn't the case with this offer. This is a hostile takeover plain and simple.
I predict the judge will allow it *IF* there is some up front money involved such as a trust or some such to cover a fall through. I don't think the agreement on its face will carry the day. In short, money talks.
Re:Smoking Bacon (Score:3, Interesting)
This is nothing but speculation, spy vs. spy, but...
doesn't IBM have a strong interest in SCOg's existence right until the day of the judgement? They invested a lot of time, reputation and money into this defence and may want to harvest a judgement that settles a number of questions once and for all.
They could have saved themselves a lot if they had bought SCO earlier but this would have encouraged other litigators to try forced buyouts on them, and IBM apparently didn't want the allegations to stop but wanted a ruling declaring them false and void.
MS got plenty FUD out of the story but since SCOg lost almost all of its case (if they ever had any) there is no good reason for MS to continue covered funding.
SCO bleeds money just to make sure Novell won't get what they owe them, and approaches death. At the same time threatens to spoil the trial by going bankcrupt.
IBM might want to secretly tunnel some money into the corpse to make sure a zombie SCOg has just enough strength left to take all the beating IBM has prepared for them.
Re:settle in for a long ride (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is probably the most important point you make with regard to future lawsuits.
The courts in the SCO cases have given SCO every opportunity to produce evidence to back their case. SCO has spent millions trying to find that evidence and by the time they realized it did not exist they had already dug themselves in way too deep and could not back out.
Also, as a result of the SCO cases, the BSD lawsuit agreement [groklaw.net] was brought out in to the public. What is interesting here is the amount of Unix code that is now licensed under a BSD license. It is my understanding that BSD licensed code can be included in the Linux kernel and released under the GPLv2 along with the rest of the Linux kernel.
Being that there is no Unix code illegally included in Linux, it would seem this avenue of attack is no longer open (or at minimum, not feasible). What worries me more is the next logical vector of attack, patents. I agree with a statement you made earlier, "I think Darl was just a front, as Ransom Love was for Caldera. Ralph Yarro was the real boss of both. I guess he's out too (not sure), but IMO the new investor is pursuing the same program, and Microsoft is still behind it.".
Microsoft themselves could never sue a Linux company directly for a couple of reasons. First of all MS does not need the bad publicity it would bring. They currently have the perfect scapegoat, why not continue using it? Secondly, Microsoft has anti-trust issues to concern themselves with that their scapegoat does not have.
The only solace that I find in the fact that the next war will be based around patents is that the courts have become better educated in technology and that Linux has been virtually exonerated of any copyright issues. Quite frankly, patents scare me.
Re:Pending approval... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pending approval... (Score:3, Interesting)
MSsco exit strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pending approval... (Score:1, Interesting)
For he is a man who truly knows too much, and has nothing more to lose. That makes powerful men scared of him. It is dangerous to be a feared little fish among such great evil as microsoft these days.