Don't do business with a Canopy company [LWN.net]

Don't do business with a Canopy company

Posted Aug 13, 2003 20:01 UTC (Wed) by erat (guest, #21)
In reply to: Don't do business with a Canopy company by walterbyrd
Parent article: SCO vs. the Linux world…what's a Linux user to do? (ZDNet)

How many Canopy company CEOs are not Mormon? I have no earthly idea, nor do I care.

Why did Canopy buy DR-DOS? Perhaps because it was for sale and they saw a market for it? And what did they do with it after the MS lawsuit was settled? Let's see... Caldera Thin Clients had made quite a bit of money licensing DR-DOS to third parties, and that trend continued when CTC was spun off into Lineo. One could argue that had Lineo not gone on a rampant acquisition spree (nobody can acquire and successfully integrate all those companies in such a short period of time) they'd still be around licensing DR-DOS today.

I believe DeviceLogics (yes, another company that started with the help of some Canopy funding) now owns DR-DOS. They don't appear to be suing anybody over it, either.

Why would SCO buy Vultus? Why not ask SCO: info@sco.com.

Are you familiar with the term "witch hunt", by chance? It's used to describe a situation where someone looks into a situation with the sole intent of finding something bad. "Witch hunts" typically result in something bad being found, but quite often that bad thing is actually a skewed fact or flat out fabrication. I could look into just about anything and twist some part of it into something sinister. I don't bother, though, because I have more important things to worry about.

Keep an eye on SCO, protest when it's time to protest, whatever. Stop dragging everyone and their grandmother into this, though.

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Don't do business with a Canopy company

Posted Aug 13, 2003 21:55 UTC (Wed) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

>>How many Canopy company CEOs are not Mormon? I have no earthly idea, nor do I care. <<

How about all of them? It's not as if they just happen to be Mormon. Canopy group is very closely tied to the LDS. Angel Investors, remember?

Also, isn't there a point when these guy have a little bit too much in common? All Mormon, all went to BYU, all own stock in each other's companies, all live in the same area, all have long business histories together, etc? Can you say with confidence that these companies are acting on their own accord, or are these companies just pieces on a chess board?

>>Why did Canopy buy DR-DOS? Perhaps because it was for sale and they saw a market for it?<<

They used it to sue msft, then they got rid of it. And it wasn't just dr-dos either, this is a pattern for Canopy. They didn't do much with UNIX either, did they? Just use UNIX to extort from Linux users, and to sue IBM, maybe get some fud money from sunw and msft.

>>Why would SCO buy Vultus? Why not ask SCO: info@sco.com<<

Because canopy arranged it? Both companies are controlled by canopy and all the money went to canopy.

>>Are you familiar with the term "witch hunt", by chance?<<

Are you familiar with the term "apologist" how about "arm's length transaction."

Don't do business with a Canopy company

Posted Aug 14, 2003 5:01 UTC (Thu) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

Again, the religion and the collective alma mater of the CEOs means bupkus to me. I don't
care if they're all Mormon, Jewish, atheist, whatever, or if they went to the very Mormon BYU,
or the barely Mormon University of Utah, or the almost completely agnostic Salt Lake
Community College, Utah Valley State College, or Westminster College, or the College of
Massage Therapy, etc. Folks who live in the same area have things in common. This is not
unusual.

And once again I feel that you are narrowing "Canopy companies" into a small container that
includes only SCO and one or two other companies. There are many companies that have
received Canopy funding, are in Utah, and are not SCO, such as Linux Networx, SnapGear,
MaxSpeed, Fat Pipe, and DeviceLogics, and I have yet to hear you explain how they're part of
the conspiracy. By your own words, all that Canopy companies seem to do is produce
nothing, gather technologies, and sue people. Let's hear how the rest of the companies play
into this theory of yours.

Can I say with confidence that all of the companies you're throwing darts at are acting on
their own accord? No, at least no more than you can say with confidence that they're up to
something. We're in the same boat in that regard, although I may know more about Canopy
funded companies in Utah considering that I've worked for them since 1996 (and will
continue to work for them until the day before I go back to college full time next week). Are
you here in Utah? Or are you assessing this situation from a couple thousand miles away?

As for DR-DOS... Novell sued Microsoft. When Caldera purchased DR-DOS, the lawsuit that
Novell started came with it. Caldera merely finished it.

As for UNIX... Caldera did plenty with it, not the least of which was open up some of the
source code and add a Linux emulation layer to help Unixware customers start their
transition to Linux. What SCO's plan is now with Unixware is anyone's guess. If you think
they've only purchased Unixware so they could sue Linux users, I can only guess you haven't
paid attention to any of Caldera's press over the past few years up until the IBM lawsuit.

As for the Vultus deal... I give up. I can't see a single possible benefit to Canopy resulting
from the Vultus purchase. If you see one, bully for you. I'm tired of thrashing over it.

And if you think I'm an apologist, consider that my entire development team was let go from
SCO last November, and I'm leaving another Canopy funded company (my decision this time)
next week, thus releasing me from any and all ties with anything Canopy has touched. I
have no investments in Canopy companies so stock is not motivating me to speak. I am not
related to any Canopy employees, I am not Mormon, and at this point I have no vested
interest in any Canopy funded company succeeding or failing.

So tell me, what does your conspiracy manual tell you is motivating my responses other
than to refute the FUD you seem to be spreading?

Don't do business with a Canopy company

Posted Aug 14, 2003 5:02 UTC (Thu) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

Talk about screwing up the formatting of a post... What happened there?

Don't do business with a Canopy company

Posted Aug 14, 2003 14:05 UTC (Thu) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

>>As for the Vultus deal... I give up. I can't see a single possible benefit to Canopy resulting from the Vultus purchase.<<

You must not be looking very hard. Canopy was giving 200,000 newly issued shares of scox, which Canopy prompty sold at top dollar.

I think it worked like this. Vultus was in a canopy building, and was way behind on rent. As part of the "purchase" scox had to give canopy a load of shares to compensate canopy for the back rent. At least, that is the best I could make of the story.