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| Did SCO Accuse IBM Publicly? Listen to this Interview and Decide |
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Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 01:43 PM EST
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Dan Farber did an interview with Darl McBride on Face to Face back on July 22, 2003, which you can see and listen to here if you use Real One Player or Windows Media Player. Just scroll down until you see the McBride mug shot. LHJ has kindly made a transcript for us, and I am providing some snips here. If you find any errors, please let us know. McBride made some comments about IBM that are pertinent with respects to SCO's claim in its Memorandum of Law in Opposition to IBM's Motion to Compel Discovery that it never publicly accused IBM of infringement.
Here is what SCO wrote in its Memorandum in Opposition : "Throughout its memorandum, IBM makes repeated reference to SCO's trade show and a particular presentation about SCO's contractual rights made at that trade show. IBM incorrectly asserts that during that presentation, SCO identified 'four categories of alleged "misappropriation" by IBM: (1) literal coping; (2) derivative works; (3) obfuscation; and (4) non-literal transfers.' (IBM Mem., p. 6)(parentheticals omitted). The slides from the SCO Forum trade show relied upon by IBM (IBM Mem., Exhibit F), corroborate that SCO has not publicly made any such allegation against IBM." Yet in the Face to Face interview, note what McBride said about IBM: "DM: Right, so when we started off this problem with IBM, it was very clear that IBM had donated things improperly into the open source community. That was the basis for our lawsuit against IBM, among other things, but that was the primary driver.
"And during the period of time shortly after filing the lawsuit until
recently when they came back and responded, we had a 60 day period there where we turned 3 different teams of code programmers loose on the codebases of AIX, Unix and Linux. And they came back with - independently - we had the three teams - one was a set of high-end
mathematicians, rocket scientist, modeling type guys. Another team was based on standard programmer types. A third team were really spiffy on agent technology and how all of this technology was built in the first
place. So the three teams came back independently and validated that there wasn't just a little bit of code showing up inside of Linux from our Unix intellectual property base. There was actually a mountain
of code showing up in there. Now if you look at the types of code, we really see them in three different buckets. . . .
"DF: Did the symmetrical multi-processing actually come from SCO or its licenses, or did it come from IBM or some other organization?
"DM: When you look at the types of code that are in Linux today that are violating, there's really three types. There's line by line code that came right out of our System V source tree. There's derivative works
code that came from vendors that we have license protections against them donating. And then there is basically non-literal implementations where they've munged code or obfuscated it to make it look like it's
not.
"The biggest concerning areas are the direct line by line and these derivative works code. The derivative works is the main area that IBM
has been in violation of. . . .
"We're basically saying in the late 2000's or pre-2000, you had two codebases that had the NUMA technology - non
uniform memory architecture - that allows high end scalability inside of them. It was Unixware and it was Dynix that Sequent held. OK, so IBM buys Sequent while we're doing Project Monterey. Within the last 18
months, two years, they have in fact donated the Sequent NUMA code, the Sequent RCU code into Linux. OK, so part of it is code that we had as part of our Unixware product. Other parts such as RCU were things that
were clearly derivatives. I mean if you look at the RCU code it could not be more clear that it's a derivative because in the copyright statements where IBM donated it into open source -- you can go out and look on
sourceforge yourself -- it lists out that in fact RCU is a derivative work of Dynix, and Dynix is in fact a derivative work of System V. . . .
"DF: Speaking about IBM, you were quoted as saying 'Those guys know what it's going to come out in discovery and you hear a lot of rumors on the street that they're going to buy us out. Well I bet that's exactly what
they want to do. The last thing they want to do is hear the testimony that's going to come out.' Is your strategy really to get acquired by IBM, to basically save your company from extinction?
"DM: No, our strategy is not that. Our strategy is to take this business that we have and get it back on track and moving again. It was rolling along very nicely at the end of the millennium. IBM approached us and said
'Hey let's do this thing called Project Monterey. Let's go to market together, file this thing with the Justice Department. Let's create 54% of the market share going into the new millennium.' It was all set up
and then after the project was all done from a technology standpoint, IBM backed off and didn't go to market with us.
"And at the same time they did that, they jumped in bed with Red Hat and
went off and started distributing Red Hat.
"Now just because they did that doesn't mean -- I mean at one level,yeah we can be upset and we can whine and moan about it -- but that doesn't create technically a legal violation. What creates the violations are
when they actually go out and take our code, contribute that into open source that in fact does boost Red Hat. It does boost the other distros. And at the same time our revenue comes down from 230 million down to
60 million. At the same time the Linux marketplace is just booming."
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| Authored by: Dave Lozier on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 02:03 PM EST |
It would be rather funny if IBM's best witness for their case against SCO was
Darl himself... LoL
Thanks for this great piece of information and legwork. You guys are the best.
:)
---
~Dave[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 02:11 PM EST |
Darl McBride has tendencies that can be best described as narcissistic. The
lawyers for SCO have the same tendencies. It's amazing how the lust for money
makes some people liars.
I just love how Microsoft has made SCO their
bitch. SCO is now facing a legal tidal wave from Armonk, NY. In the meanwhile,
Microsoft is attempting to "longhorn" Linux. Quite unsuccessfully I might add.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cfitch on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 02:11 PM EST |
hehe...
This is quite funny really.... all the backtracking and denials by SCO.
SCAMX in public: IBM did X, Y, and Z! That's why we are suing them!
SCAMX in court: IBM is lying! We never said that! We aren't suing them! oh
wait...
In all seriousness though, does anyone know if IBM DOES read Groklaw and pick up
this stuff? Or do we assume that their people are a good as PJ and have found
the same things? Or what?
I would hate to have little gems like this get missed by IBM .
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tazer on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 02:20 PM EST |
So, am I missing something? I didn't think SCO had access to the AIX source,
but clearly DM states that they did:
"...we had a 60 day period there where we turned 3 different teams of code
programmers loose on the codebases of AIX, Unix and Linux."
Wasn't SCO saying that they couldn't specifically list the violations they're
accusing IBM of, until they got the AIX source from IBM and did a comparison?
If they already have it, then why are they requesting it in court?
It may be that I am just a bit confused.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: stanmuffin on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 02:31 PM EST |
| "you had two codebases that had the NUMA technology - non uniform memory
architecture - that allows high end scalability inside of them. It was Unixware
and it was Dynix that Sequent held."
Overlooking for the moment that he
got the NUMA acronym wrong (it's non-uniform memory access, but I guess
"architecture" is close enough for non-tech types)...
Does UnixWare actually
support NUMA? I didn't think it did, but I could be wrong. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: DaveAtFraud on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 03:08 PM EST |
DM: OK, so IBM buys Sequent while we're doing Project
Monterey. Within the last 18 months, two years, they have in fact donated the
Sequent NUMA code, the Sequent RCU code into Linux. OK, so part of it is
code that we had as part of our Unixware product. Other parts such as RCU were
things that were clearly derivatives. I mean if you look at the RCU code it
could not be more clear that it's a derivative because in the copyright
statements where IBM donated it into open source -- you can go out and look on
sourceforge yourself -- it lists out that in fact RCU is a derivative work of
Dynix, and Dynix is in fact a derivative work of System V. . . .
Nah. Must have been someone else who just looked like and
sounded like Darl who snuck this answer into the middle of the inerview. Darl
would never accuse IBM of something like this. ---
Quietly implementing
RFC 1925 wherever I go. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: whoever57 on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 03:25 PM EST |
Is it me, do I have poor reading skills or does Darl have great difficulty
putting together a coherent sentence? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 04:04 PM EST |
Bear in mind this is a transcript of people talking. When people haven't
rehearsed what they are going to say then normal rules of speech, backtracking,
interrupting yourself, going off on a tangent are all normal. And in spoken
language they don't seem to cause a big problem. Once you have taken that into
account, you can then consider how devious DarlMcbride is being.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: freeio on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 04:04 PM EST |
I note that the Cnet Face-to-Face item in question is apparently overloaded.
Graklaw has reached a new level - now, instead of the /. effect, PJ presents the
Groklaw effect. That many people are following this mattter.
Best wishes, PJ!
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TRVTH[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Groklaw'ed - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 05:01 PM EST
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 04:06 PM EST |
SCO's revenue history seems a bit off. According to this article:
July 8, 1997
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-201238.html
"SCO is in the midst of a reorganization. Last month, the vendor of
operating systems said it would lay off around 120 employees, about 10 percent
of its workforce, and organize all of its product development into a single
division. The company at the time said it would record an $8 million charge as a
result.
Despite increasing unit sales, overall company performance has recently
disappointed investors. Last quarter it had lower than expected earnings of
$974,000 on revenues of $54 million. The year before, SCO pulled in 2.9 million
in earnings for the same quarter."
According to this article for the past five years SCO had a nonexistent bottom
line:
June 1, 2003
http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article/0,3668,a=43255,00.asp
True when SCO was SCO from Santa Cruz it was making $55 a quarter, but before
IBM went to Linux SCO was already losing.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cfitch on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 04:08 PM EST |
Anyone know why? I did some quick searching and found no annoucements or
analysis on their jump.
Maybe some stock analysts read Groklaw.
;)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Queenslander on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 04:17 PM EST |
quote:
"IBM approached us and said 'Hey let's do this thing called Project
Monterey. Let's go to market together, file this thing with the Justice
Department. Let's create 54% of the market share going into the new
millennium.' It was all set up and then after the project was all done from a
technology standpoint, IBM backed off and didn't go to market with us."
Wasn't Monterey something that IBM & Tarantella were doing together?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: arch_dude on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 05:16 PM EST |
Parse that quote from SCO's memorandum in opposition carefully: it says
"[SCO] did not say that about IBM in the slide presentation."
This particular quote cannot be refuted by finding that SCO accused IBM in other
public places, such as an interview.
I think the careful analysis of the slide show done in a comment to an earlier
article is a better refutation: SCO really did accuse IBM during the slide
show.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 06:21 PM EST |
My jobs allows me to have lots of daily dealings with major corporate 1000
senior executives on the phone so I am accustom to listing to, intercepting, and
fighting with senior executives in a verbal only environment which is good
because for some strange reason I have not been able to get the video side.
From listing to this I get the following:
1. The reporters ask the right questions.
What is the infringing code?
Why is the code infringing?
Will you sue Linux providers?
License fees?
Et.
2. McBride never answers a question with a straight answer.
The most likely reason for this is that Dail McBride simply does not know the
answers.
Not only does McBay NOT give straight answers but most probable he is not
acquainted with the basic questions or the implications of his answers.
Another thing that comes through clearly is that McBride is not accustom to
making presentations, very unpolished individual for the CEO level.
Conclusion:
Dail McBride is [excluding the IBM suit and Linux issues] completely out of his
depths as a CEO.
If I had to guess his position without hearing that he was a CEO I would guess
he would be at the competence level of manager [not owner or CEO but manager] of
a local sand and gravel supply company with about 20 or so truck driver type
employees.
Simply put:
He does not have a firm grasp of the issues.
He does not understand Unix's historical.
He aware of the code writing process used in Linux.
His whole world is small time small town legal dealings.
And most likely he does not have a firm grips of financial, marketing, sales, or
people motivation issues either but that is hard to tell from what little was
said.
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| Authored by: Grim Reaper on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 06:56 PM EST |
Also, there is mention of the SCO controller, Michael Olson, who has registered
to sell another 30,000 shares on 11/11. Ouch! Not even the SCO execs have any
confidence in their chances.
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald
&sid=1600684464&mid=56650
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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10); R.I.P. -
SCO Group, 2005/08/29[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: PM on Wednesday, October 29 2003 @ 08:14 PM EST |
PJ suggested that David Boies jump ship before his ignorance of the GPL affected
his reputation. I consider that he has even more reason him and his to jump
ship now.
SCO are quite obviously saying one thing in public and a different thing to
their lawyers. Darl and co are obviously telling the listener what they want
them to hear (Linux users and developers are just pawns in their game and do not
count) and this may be different for different classes of audience.
This means that SCO is just using BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER to meet its
short term goals rather than a proper client - lawyer relationship. This is
just not worth 30 pieces of silver.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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