Darl McBride Leaving SCO?

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.""

settle in for a long ride

[davejenkins]

I fear that we're in for a long ride on this one. Back in the Day, we all figured that the SCO lawsuit would be quashed within 6 months. I remember a talk at a LinuxWorld several YEARS ago where Eric Raymond or someone openly challenged them to show us all where the 'infringing code' was. Several years ago...

Lawsuits around the GPL and Linux codebase will become a permanent fixture. Our dreams of a single case to finalize up everything nice and tidy are never going to come true. I have every confidence that Open Source will survive, and the GPL will remain intact, but the lawsuit will always be there-- there's just too much potential money sloshing around, and law schools keep pumping out the evil.

He will not leave a poor man

[bogaboga]

Darl McBride will leave a rich man. At least richer than he is now. From my own estimates, he will leave at least US$ 10 - 14 million richer. At 4% interest in a fixed deposit account, Mr McBride can live a pretty decent life even in America's most affluent neighborhoods for virtually no work to be done.

Re:settle in for a long ride

[mangu]

Lawsuits around the GPL and Linux codebase will become a permanent fixture

Except for that quotation that often gets mentioned here: "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win", or something like that.

They can't remain locked in step 3 forever.

SCO is a strawman

[Anonymous Coward]

If SCO dies, the community will go after Novel and other MS puppets. So it costs less to give $100M to resurrect SCO and keep it alive as a troll to take the role of the bad guy. What is $100M for a company with annual profits near $40B?

Re:Luck for SCO.

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

it's not because their products suck. is because their product is a unix for x86 platform, so it have to compete with "good enough" products that are pretty much free (as both in freedom and beer) like linux, xBSD, solaris x86.

and in the higher end, even on open patforms like sparc, it's tough to beat HP/IBM/Sun.

since the days of old SCO (now tarantella), they always operated on a niche. now this niche disapeared, or was taken by the newcomers. old SCO realized that, got rid of the unix business and wen't on selling applications until they were bought by Sun.

if the new SCO (former caldera) had did the same, using their unix business to finance the development of other kinds of software, phase out the unix business, maybe they wouldn't be in this situation.

Re:settle in for a long ride

[Epiphenomenon]

It's bizarre and sad that first Turing and von Neumann invented programmed machines, then the Unix folks invited everyone to write good things that other people could use, and now, the fact that someone owns software means that if you want to write a program and give it away, you have to prove that no-one owns it. It's not that code wants to be free. A lot of it doesn't. But why should the code that does want to be free have to go to court first?

Re:Pending approval...

[Tony Hoyle]

I don't think this buyout will be allowed. The assets of SCO are in dispute - probably mostly owned by Novell at this point.. and the market cap of SCO is only 2.5M anyway. If they're found to owe more than that there's no company left to be bought.

Re:settle in for a long ride

[burnin1965]

Back in the Day, we all figured that the SCO lawsuit would be quashed within 6 months. I remember a talk at a LinuxWorld several YEARS ago where Eric Raymond or someone openly challenged them to show us all where the 'infringing code' was.

In a way it was quashed in about 6 months. Based on their stock price [yahoo.com] the fairy tale was over quickly as it became apparent to any rational being that it was all BS. And requesting the code was the most obvious blow to their case as any argument against pointing to the publicly viewable code was simple nonsense.

Other than a few "journalists" with questionable credibility no sane person believed a word coming out of tSCOg's mouth pieces once they refused to show the code. And the ultimate blow was when the judge explained how close they came to losing the entire case on a summary judgment because they failed to produce even the most minute amount of evidence [silicon.com] to support their reasoning for being in court in the first place. That statement from the judge was based in part on all the outrageous claims the tSCOg mouth pieces had been spewing in the media and their failure to simply show the code.

Yes it has dragged on for years, and yes it cold drag on for more years, but the game was up long ago and most people know that. Now all we can hope for is that IBM and Novell will be willing to continue spending cash on the lawsuits long enough to ensure the perps and backers of this scam lose significant face.

And you are right, no matter how this ends it will never be the end, there are several people making massive profits who feel threatened by open source and they will continue to fund idiotic attacks like this as long as its a financially viable option for them. There are also the rabid anti-FOSS individuals who will rant until the end of time because they are so enamored by the likes of Microsoft that they'll believe and rabidly support every piece of FUD they are spoon fed.

Yeah, its not over, and we'll never hear the end of it. But life goes on.

Re:thank goodness

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Actually, I would -- making small rocks from large rocks while wearing a nice bright orange jumpsuit.

Re:Not the real bad guy

[Bruce Perens]

There are some people in the world who are entirely confident in their moral rightness, no matter how wrong they are. Such a person will seem forthright, etc., in a chance encounter. But I think you do see that he was clearly wrong about IBM: that company did not turn public opinion against SCO. I had a role in turning public opinion against SCO, and you did, and some zillion other Free Software / Open Source fans did. Mr. Yarro was still unable to accept, when you spoke with him, that there was a large community who fought him because they were morally offended. His own feeling of his moral correctness doesn't fit that, so to him it must not be true.

Bruce

Re:Pending approval...

[someone1234]

I think the desire of the Groklaw audience is to put McBride and his criminal band into jail.
His early leave is not so much wanted. This way he will probably get out of view with his ill-gotten money.

Of course, i might be wrong, i'm just one of the above mentioned audience.