19 October 2009

[tech] SCO To Darl McBride: "You're Fired!"

2238.The Linux world has reason to celebrate today. Darl McBride, the master brain cell behind The SCO Group's "Sue 'em Into Oblivion" strategy has been deposed. Ars Technica:

McBride was the architect and public face of SCO's misguided campaign against Linux. He claimed that the open source operating system infringed on SCO's copyright and included a significant quantity of code stolen from UNIX System V. On the basis of this claim, SCO threatened to sue a multitude of corporate Linux users and demanded hefty licensing fees. During the ensuing litigation fiasco, an internal SCO memo was revealed which indicated that SCO's own internal code audits of Linux found no actual evidence of infringement. The courts eventually determined that SCO never even owned the relevant UNIX copyrights in the first place.

Even after SCO's deception was exposed and the company effectively lost its case, Darl McBride continued to insist that the company has evidence of System V code in Linux. No such evidence has been presented and McBride's argument directly contradicts testimony given by other SCO executives. McBride's stubborn detachment from reality has made him a subject of ridicule in the Linux community.

The SCO Group will, oddly, continue prosecuting its lawsuits (one envisions zombie lawyers), but while the mene mene tekel upharsin of the company hasn't yet been written on the wall, buzz I'm reading is that SCO is not long for this world.

This is  a bit off topic for my state-of-the-blog, but I've been following this for a while, and one of our machines has Ubuntu on it, and I like Linux, and I like my friends who run Linux. So, even though SCO hasn't given up on the litigation, this can't be any but good news … if only because teh Darl has gotten a well-deserved comeuppance.

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