Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED! (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 11, 2010 19:52 UTC (Fri) by error27 (subscriber, #8346)
In reply to: Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED! (Groklaw) by shmerl
Parent article: Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED! (Groklaw)

It's unusual to find people as dumb as SCO. People say that Darl hurt the lawsuit with his constant buffoonery but the fact is a smarter person wouldn't have started the lawsuit to begin with. I don't believe you can find more than a handful of people in the world who would have attempted it.

Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED! (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 14, 2010 4:28 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (1 responses)

Not so sure it was dumb; it kept a failing company going (and paying lots of money to its CEO) much longer than it otherwise would have. Let's suppose that SCO had instead said that no one wanted to buy their Unix, and nobody wanted to buy their Linux flavor, so they'd settle for a slowly declining business supporting legacy customers and gradually fade away.

But SCO sold dreams, the idea that all Linux users would have to pay them money, the idea that IBM and other large companies would owe many millions in damages. Money poured into SCO on those hopes, and Darl got a cut of that money.

Bad timing

Posted Jun 15, 2010 2:42 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Yes, but SCO backed away from Linux and dropped their legal bomb just in time for Novell to acquire SuSE instead. If they'd stayed the course as Caldera and kept waving the UnitedLinux flag long enough for Novell to pick them, it would have been a bigger payday for everyone involved.