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Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO
Monday, November 17 2003 @ 10:19 PM EST

They will be telecasting Darl McBride's speech at CdXpo -- 'There's no free lunch ... or free Linux' -- so no need to travel, unless you want to participate in the later discussions or have other reasons for wanting to attend. To watch the "There's no free lunch ... or free Linux" speech, just go here on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time/5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

They really want you to see this, apparently, so there will be "a replay of the teleconference, made available 60 minutes following the live Webcast. This replay will be available for 30 days following the live event." [Update: You can get it here]

This is how they describe themselves this time in this press release:

The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner and licensor of the core UNIX operating system source code, helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of more than 11,000 resellers and 4,000 developers.
And Blake Stowell isn't the only PR rep at SCO now. He isn't even mentioned first. Now it's Marc Modersitzki, then Stowell. Plus they have the PR firm, Schwartz Communications. Spin, spin, spin.

Update: Here is the speech, as MP3.

Update 2: On November 5th, SCO put out a press release, describing the talk:

****************************

Darl McBride, SCO Group CEO, to Deliver CDXPO Keynote Titled 'There's No Free Lunch - Or Free Linux'
Executive Offers Company's Position On Free Economic Models, A Perspective on SCO's Lawsuit Against IBM and Defending Intellectual Property Rights in a Digital Age

LINDON, Utah, Nov 05, 2003 -- The SCO® Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today announced that Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride, will deliver a keynote address at the Enterprise IT Week/Computer Digital Expo (CDXPO) conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, November 18 at 5:00 p.m. The conference and keynote will take place at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

In his address titled "There's No Free Lunch -- Or Free Linux," McBride will present his perspectives on the prospects of free industries, SCO's suit against IBM, and why intellectual property must be protected in a digital age.

"The Internet created -- and creatively destroyed -- great wealth. It also created a culture legitimizing intellectual property theft," said McBride. "When you defend intellectual property, you speak an unpleasant truth. People don't like to hear unpleasant truths. The alternative to this fight, however, is the death of an industry and thousands of jobs lost."

McBride will also explore how the information technology industry - software, hardware, networking and services -- depends on money passing from one hand to another, asserting that the livelihood of engineers and developers rests on paid models, even as those developers donate time to free projects such as Linux. McBride will lay out his assertion that without paid software, there would be little or no free software. At the conclusion of his keynote, McBride will be available for media questions.

McBride's keynote will be followed by a Town Hall discussion moderated by Jack Powers, conference chairman of Enterprise IT Week and director of the International Informatics Institute.

About SCO

The SCO Group, Inc.(Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of more than 11,000 resellers and 4,000 developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services, visit http://www.sco.com .

SCO and the associated SCO logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX and UnixWare are registered trademarks of The Open Group. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.


  


Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO | 39 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 17 2003 @ 10:49 PM EST
Just beware of the usual tricks if you're there. If they have a Q&A
session, but ask people to write down their questions and pass
them up (so they can select the favorable ones, it's happened
before at computer trade shows...) or try to actively select
particular questions or members of the crowd, or say "how about
I contact you later to discuss the issue", then shout them down
pronto and ask for an independent chair to host the questions.

DON'T let them or their PR firm control the Q&A.







[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 17 2003 @ 10:49 PM EST
I really hope nobody disrupts the speech.

Let him talk. Make sure it is recorded.

His words will probably help in his own downfall.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 17 2003 @ 10:51 PM EST
It seems Stowell is being set up to take the fall. SCO will have to defend
itself in cout for a lot of irresponsible press releases. They are going to fire
Stowell pretty soon and tell the judge "it was all him". I wouldn't
be surprised if they additionally sue him for $20bn in damages for his acts
(just to convince the public it was really this single person who screwed up,
not them).

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO
Authored by: mdchaney on Monday, November 17 2003 @ 10:52 PM EST
Darn the luck, I'm scheduled to have paint drying at about that time...

[ Reply to This | # ]

New Spokesperson
Authored by: rand on Monday, November 17 2003 @ 10:57 PM EST
Repost and extension (thanks to brendabanks for the tip!):
*********************************************
Mark and Blake were apparently sharing a body back in August:

From: Avi Dines <amendoza@schwartz-pr.com>
Subject: SCO Issues Six Press Releases at SCO Forum
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 14:07:33 GMT
...
For more information, contact:
Blake Stowell/Mark Modersitzki
The SCO Group
(801) 932-5703
bstowell@sco.com

but he's moved into own place now:

Subject: THE SCO GROUP CLOSES $50 MILLION EQUITY FINANCING/TELECON. ON 10/17,
12PM EDT
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:49:40 -0400
From: "The SCO Group" <adines@schwartz-pr.com>
...
Blake Stowell or Mark Modersitzki
The SCO Group, Inc.
bstowell@sco.com or mmodersi@sco.com
Tel: (801) 932-5703/(801) 932-5635
www.sco.com

Don't know if they're still dating...
**********************************************

Well, I guess the separation's final.

Contact: Marc Modersitzki, +1-801-932-5635, marcm@sco.com , or Blake Stowell,
+1-801-932-5703, bstowell@sco.com , both of The SCOGroup, Inc.

---
Dim gstrIANAL As String
(Oh, Lord, get me off this project...)

[ Reply to This | # ]

4000 developers???
Authored by: JMonroy on Monday, November 17 2003 @ 11:08 PM EST
Ok, which is it... 4000 or 8000 developers???

According to SCO's web site they have 8000 developers. The referenced press
release states 4000 developers. What happened to the other 4000???

Would you say this is misleading? After all, they only have 3 engineers on the
payroll. Are they referring to the Linux developers worldwide? The ones they
accuse of stealing their code?

I can't wait to see when executives at SCO finally get indicted for securities
violations. It will be a day to remember.

---
SCOvsIBM
Res ipsa loquitur

[ Reply to This | # ]

Did Stowell work at MS?
Authored by: LHJ on Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 12:18 AM EST

Since we're talking about Stowell and SCO's PR here, I thought I'd bring up some old news. An 2001 article by Shankland says Stowell went to Microsoft after leaving Lineo.

The cut, about 13 percent of Lineo's staff, affected all divisions of the company, said spokesman Lyle Ball. Ball, a Lineo co-founder, is exchanging his job at the company for an equivalent position at a newly established public relations company that will contract with Lineo. Also leaving the communications staff is Blake Stowell, who has taken a job at rival Microsoft coordinating Windows XP public relations, Ball said.

Sorry if it's been discussed before. This may very well be nothing unusual for PR staff at tech companies, but I was wondering if anyone has confirmed this with Stowell or learned how he was brought into SCO.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Also, Teleconference at 11:30 AM Tuesday
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 12:21 AM EST
Looks like it's a busy day for SCO tommorow (okay, today as of 10 minutes ago).
A teleconference AND a, well, whatever that thing at 8:00 is.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031117/lam154a_1.html

Is anyone else getting the impression that the feces are approaching the fan?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl Invites You to a Webcast of His Keynote Speech at CDXPO
Authored by: mdchaney on Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 12:40 AM EST
When did the latest planned stock sale/dump occur? Their stock has been
dropping before today, and it continue the downward trend for most of the day,
ending at about 8.5% off. This is interesting since every other month they've
been getting it pumped right before the middle of the month, check out the
history at Yahoo:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=6m

Looks like this month the coincidental announcement from Deutsche Bank was
supposed to provide the pump last week, and it fell surprisingly flat. Worse
yet, the opening drop today made it look like investors were thinking about this
stock over the weekend.

Anyway, looks like the PR campaign might be losing steam, finally...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why not report Darl to the RIAA?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 19 2003 @ 01:07 PM EST

In his keynote, Darl claims he's got a friend with "thousands" of illegal MP3s. Since the RIAA regards music piracy as theft, presumably that makes Darl an accessory (at least in their minds)?

So... let's all report Darl to the RIAA. We can even tell them that he's so enthusiastic about licensing and dislikes free things so much right now that he'll probably even give them the name and address of his friend so they can sue ;-).

[ Reply to This | # ]

We need to transcribe the keynote!
Authored by: anwaya on Thursday, November 20 2003 @ 11:00 AM EST
I think the SCO case is spread all over the table in this speech. McBride is
very nervous with the words, as anyone might be when making a play for a large
chunk of the world's software market: but I also don't think there's much
that's his. He's only really on home turf when he talks about his cowboy
roots. The rest is crafted argument, getting him comfortable with the basis for
suing the world and its mother.

He's been in trouble with his words before, and quiet for a while. This was
pre-announced, and again, they want us to see it. This was a lot of work: what
did he say?

We have until November 30 to capture this from the website.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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