Double whammy for SCO (Salt Lake Tribune) [LWN.net]

The Salt Lake Tribune has a lengthy article for people who haven't been keeping up with SCO; judging from the picture, Darl McBride hasn't been sleeping well recently. "'I'm not sure I see the sense in what they are doing. They have yet to prove their claims, and yet have moved forward' with lawsuits and a largely ignored global campaign to sell Linux licenses, said Dan Kusnetzky of IDC. 'The assessment I have seems fairly bleak. And as they continue this particular avenue, the prospects are more and more bleak,' he said."

(Log in to post comments)

Double whammy for SCO (Salt Lake Tribune)

Posted Apr 26, 2004 21:23 UTC (Mon) by blayne (guest, #19468) [Link]

Darl McBride said: "Our company has never been in a better position and we've never been more committed to our Unix business. We are preparing major updates of our products. . . . We are confident of our litigation efforts and we are well-funded to achieve many of the goals that we have as a company."

I know that CEOs will put a happy spin on any news about their company, but I'm still compelled to ask. What's Darl smoking?

"...never been more committed to our Unix business." This completely ignores the fact that people tend not to do business with companies who sue them, and SCO is widely regarded as The Most Hated Company In IT. Their Unix business is dead.

"We are confident of our litigation efforts...." Huh? Apparently Darl is stuck in his happy place, where reality holds no lease. Their claims are widely regarded as baseless and without any merit. That's the kind assessment. Many IT professionals are convinced that SCO is the puppet and Microsoft is the puppetmaster, and this is all simply a matter of FUD by proxy, in an effort to keep Microsoft's hands clean. SCO is a disposable company.

"...we are well-funded..." Now that their investors see what SCO is trying to pull, they are publicly demanding their money back and letting everyone know that SCO is totally mismanaged. At the rate they're burning through money without any significant revenue, even if they don't refund the investments, they won't last long. And NOBODY is going to invest after what BayStar said.

And finally, where did the Salt Lake Tribune get that picture of McBride? It looks like a mug shot, not the typical blow dried CEO photo.

I admit to being a bit surprised it lasted this long, but this definitely looks like the begining of the end for SCO.

Double whammy for SCO (Salt Lake Tribune)

Posted Apr 27, 2004 7:01 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> We are preparing major updates of our products.

I really like this part. What makes Darl think that anyone would want to buy those updates when:

1. They are behind anything Linux can offer.
2. SCO customers are targets of a frivolous lawsuits.

I can swallaw the "confidence in litigation" (after all, that's their core business now, they better be confident), but I just cannot grasp the concept of people actually buying anything from SCO. Who on earth would be that crazy (apart from EV1)?