a story of love, MS & SCO

[bob at sinister.com (Bob Keyes)]

On Thu, 4 Mar 2004, D.E. Chadbourne wrote:

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> hi.  i wonder if this is true.
> http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween10.html

OK. So Microsoft has been propping up SCO. Is this surprising news? No. I
am surprised that it would be leaked. Even if it is true, a forgery is
likely, considering its power. Accusations of forgery are good defence
against leaks. As long as the accusations of forgery don't take a legal
form (i.e. a contract or testimony in court), such lies to the public
would appear to be legal. So, it would be beneficial for people with the
ambition, talent, and resources to try to verify facts in the document.
That's not me. Once verified, it may be used to try Microsoft and SCO in
the courts of public opinion, or the courts. I am not sure what you could
use against them in courts, possibly anti-competitive actions (but we all
know how they seem to have got off last time), or if SCO is found to have
committed fraud, the RICO statute (which is quite powerful). Perhaps
Microsoft can be called to task by non-Ascroft jurisdictions; the
individual states, Europe, etc.

It is unfortunate that a company such as IBM, RedHat, etc couldn't
have bought the remains of Unix (old SCO), made it open source, and
avoided this issue. (it was cheap, Caldera bought SCO for 28% stock, $7m
cash and $18m in loan guarantees from Canopy group. This in august 2000.
Pocket change for IBM, RedHat, or any medium sized dotcom of the era)
To their credit, if they had committed any of the misdeeds they (IBM) is
accused of, then this would have been the most reasonable course. That
they did not even try to buy Unix (if they had, even if they lost, the
price would have been higher), indicates that there was no uncertainty at
IBM that they stood on solid legal ground.

One thing that makes it seems like Microsoft isn't behind this, is the
offers to sell SCO that McBride sometimes makes. This would solve the
issue, and that's something that Microsoft doesn't want. But maybe it is
so unlikely to happen, or if it were to happen the price would be so high,
as to make the effort worthwhile for Microsoft.