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| You Asked For It: Novell's Exhibit 46 - SCOsource Targets |
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Tuesday, June 05 2007 @ 11:20 PM EDT
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You asked for it and so here it is, thanks once again to Chris Brown, Exhibit 46 [PDF] complete, the list of SCOsource potential victims, with SCO's notes on who was following up and what happened. Here's what mostly seems to have happened, by the way: nothing. Either the company had gone out of business, and left no trace, or it had stopped using SCO software. Or at least that's what they told SCO when it came calling. Evidently, SCO had fewer licensees than it thought when this all began. Sometimes no one answered the phone after they got the letter. A few sent letters back saying they were in compliance. Some SCO executives had some difficulty recalling precisely who worked in the SCOsource division, so I found it of interest that Gregory Blepp apparently helped out. If you look at the last entries, you find a notation that he is reviewing certain companies on the list. It's a large document, 3.1 MB, so fair warning to those on dialup. Enjoy!
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| Authored by: dmarker on Tuesday, June 05 2007 @ 11:30 PM EDT |
| usual caveats - DSM [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Tuesday, June 05 2007 @ 11:31 PM EDT |
Please place a relevant bit in the title. Thanks.
---
"While world domination is a nice fantasy, a Free computer is essential."
--artp, Groklaw, 2007-06[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Tuesday, June 05 2007 @ 11:42 PM EDT |
| The address is over a decade out of date.
Novell is line 30.
LOL. ---
"While world domination is a nice fantasy, a Free computer is
essential."
--artp, Groklaw, 2007-06 [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: devil's advocate on Tuesday, June 05 2007 @ 11:45 PM EDT |
Skimming through this document reminds me of a reply from Glen Runciter of
Runciter Associates in Philip K. Dick's Ubik: "I will consult my deceased
wife."[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 12:00 AM EDT |
No wonder they sent the Daimler-Chrysler letter to the wrong address. These guys
don't do any research. What a bunch of amateurs.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: uw_dwarf on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 12:10 AM EDT |
Amusing to see that SCO didn't know that IBM had acquired Informix
Software
in 2001 ...
But now I know that my employer got a letter, and after
hearing from
someone who manages software licenses, I understand why the
company's
still a
little skittish about what could still go wrong for the free
world in this case. Until
the rulings come down and all appeals are resolved,
that won't change. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: bbaston on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 12:25 AM EDT |
| Downloading the "unusually long" pdf was a snap - thanks to the new ibiblio
server machines no doubt! ---
IMBW, IANAL2, IMHO, IAVO
imaybewrong, iamnotalawyertoo, inmyhumbleopinion, iamveryold [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 12:54 AM EDT |
Perfect documentation of the pathetic scheme didn't seem to be working. Too bad
there wasn't nearly as many entities as they had thought.
Kind of looks like the SCO execs resemble this list. Calls go unanswered, no one
is home or the lights went out a long time ago.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:05 AM EDT |
Yes, PJ. It's reasonable to infer that Blepp was assigned to follow up on a
number of European companies. But not all. Was that on purpose or a sign of
disorganization? In any case, it's hard to imagine that Blepp's role could have
been forgotten. Or maybe he never even fulfilled his apparent obligations.
I have to say that this spreadsheet is a mess. These folks are the Keystone
Cops of the software business. Wrong addresses, even the wrong state in at
least one case. I don't think there's any evidence of experience in tracking
down current addresses of companies, nor is there evidence that there were more
than incidental attempts to address correspondence to individuals by name. This
is in line with so many other aspects of their behavior.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:12 AM EDT |
Looking through the list of Australians contacted, many of them companies
already had UNIX System V source code licenses. Often from AT&T in the days
before Novell and SCO.
Not sure why SCO would want to ask them to take
out another license. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: belzecue on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:26 AM EDT |
To: Apogee Software
Response: probably threw letter away...
Ah. So that's why 3D Realms is taking forever to make Duke Nukem forever. They
have to port it over from UNIX.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:33 AM EDT |
We got the letter.
Name: Concurrent Computer Corporation
Old name: Harris Computers (or something like that)
Where are we?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 02:23 AM EDT |
I went through the entire sad listing of former Unix licensees they had listed,
and the only company in my field on the list is Pixar.
One of the early supposed targets of the SCO shakedown was going to be Hollywood
visual effects companies. Apparently this idea didn't even get to the
letter-xeroxing stage.
Pixar had done quite a bit of UNIX customization, especially in their early
years. Bruce Perens was one of their first sysadmins. So, it's not too
surprising that they're on the list. Still, I was surprised not to see
Lucasfilm, Digitial Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Dreamworks, and other
juicy targets.
Thad[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: GriffMG on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 02:28 AM EDT |
with this as they have with everything else!
I love the reply on page 60 from ATC New York
Call them in 2009!
Did they really expect everyone just to send then great big cheques?
Darl, you're a plonker
---
Keep B-) ing[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jmc on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 03:03 AM EDT |
I notice most of the European ones have got "Gregory Blepp reviewing"
against them.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 04:06 AM EDT |
Page 81, #10 (Micro Station Technology, IN)
"Number out of Service. 2nd number belongs to James Bond."
Oh James -[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 04:47 AM EDT |
Megalomania.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: muswell100 on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 05:09 AM EDT |
One of my earliest jobs after leaving college was with a market research
company, cold-calling companies to ask for interviews with the Chief Exec, CIO,
Finance Director, etc. Not to put down anyone in that industry, but working in
market research was in some ways akin to being a door-stopping Jehovah's
Witness, given the way some of our calls were treated. In every case, we had to
keep records of our calls and contacts, with responses and outcomes. However
...
1. Unlike SCO, we used lists of contacts and companies that we sourced directly
from up-to-date industry references.
2. Unlike SCO, our call sheets were properly laid out and in some cases,
computerised, negating the need to dump everything onto scraggy, badly formatted
spreadsheets.
3. Unlike SCO's cold-calling grunt, we could spell 'Google' (see page 10).
Market research is acknowledged to be a 'fishing expedition' by anyone involved
in it. It's nothing more than a means by which companies gauge the market in
their particular industry. It doesn't generate revenue in itself, simply because
no-one with any sanity would consider it a viable way to make money. Telephone
sales is another matter; it generates revenue through selling something to
potential customers. What SCO sought to sell was a dubious form of 'protection'
and from what this document tells us, the response was unsurprisingly negative
in the main - at least from those companies on their scrappy list that still
existed.
So SCO didn't even know which of their so-called 'customers' were even still
around? Where did they think their money was coming from all that time? I'm just
incredulous that these idiots have lasted as long as they have. They obviously
have had no customer relations department to speak of for a good many years, nor
the least amount of business sense. No more time should be wasted on this sorry
sack of nonsense and the judge should throw this case out immediately. Why it
hasn't been dismissed already is the other part of this drama that I can't
understand.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: dredd on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 07:14 AM EDT |
Page 72, Line 6
Follow to page 74, Line 6, states "2/6/04 letter stating compliance"
Is this code for "Go away, we no longer run your rubbish"?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 07:53 AM EDT |
| but opens using Acrobat 5.0 [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: sk43 on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 07:55 AM EDT |
| This exhibit appears to a list of all UNIX source code licensees to which SCO
sent the "request for certification" letters.
In his Deposition
[Novell-260-9], Ty
Mattingly explains Novell's intent for providing this list to Santa Cruz in the
first place:
The only things that did not go with [the Unix
business] was a kind of an agent relationship whereby SCO was collecting the
SVRX royalties from existing OEMs at the time we sold that business and then
giving the bulk of those moneys back to Novell. So that piece of the business,
if you will, Novell maintained the royalty stream base of that going forward,
and SCO acted as Novell's agent there for a very good reason.
And that is
that SCO wanted to create the relationships with those OEMs and move them from
those existing licenses to their new UnixWare platform on X-86. That was
basically the strategy that we wanted, and that was a rational approach for them
to actually begin to create the relationships, associations, ties with those
OEMs that they aspired to move. And we wanted them to move those OEM
relationships over to UnixWare.
Yes Ty, SCO is doing a bang-up
job creating relationships, assocations, and ties with OEMs to move them to
UnixWare.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 09:01 AM EDT |
Maybe I should RTFD, but I've got to wonder if this whole process caused anyone
to discover they were paying for UnixWare licenses that they no longer needed?
That would have been the thought in my head if I'd been contacted.
Another thought, given the cold-calling:
"These are the Glengarry leads."
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 09:47 AM EDT |
As some have realized from reading SCO's calling list, 'So SCO didn't even know
which of their so-called 'customers' were even still around? Where did they
think their money was coming from all that time?
What we're seeing, though, is more than mere incompetence. SCO inherited the
good-faith obligation to collect royalty payments from the original Novell-ATT
customer base, and then remit 95% of the funds to Novell. It seems that SCO's
keeping 5% wasn't sufficient financial incentive for SCO to "give a
damn", and so they put zero effort into maintaining that relationship
stream. Which means, among other things, that SCO was arguably breaching a
good-faith obligation to collect the license fees.
That's why Novell kept a right-to-audit provision. I wonder if Novell erercised
that right?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 09:49 AM EDT |
| What is begging with a lawyer called? [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Barratry - Authored by: tangomike on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 10:21 AM EDT
- Not quite - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 02:40 PM EDT
- "barratry" - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 10:31 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 09:59 AM EDT |
I can make some of my own personal judgments from this information now that we
finally get to see it.
I hereby judge the leadership to be complete idiots and the company owners and
investors, in this misguided form of extortion, to be far worse than idiots.
I'm just a person. I can think and express this judgment of mine. I have read
each and every document from this case and I am ashamed that millions of years
of evolution appear to have been completely waisted, when all it leads to is
this. Are these the higher aspirations of man? Surely not. But it only take one
rotten apple to spoil the bunch. And when I used the word rotten on Groklaw I,
of course, mean Darl.
For some it seems public flogging is far far far too good a punishment, but it
would be a nice start. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 10:47 AM EDT |
I wonder why they didn't have to put MS on the list. I would like to see what
notes they had for MS.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Totosplatz on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:30 PM EDT |
I find it to be wonderfully amusing that they did not pursue contacts with
the Department of Defense (items 71 through 75) because: "Too much red tape
to find out who is contact person. We should research who the contact was that
we sold licenses to in the past in (sic) start from
there"
The best defense is a thick tangle of Red
Tape!
.
---
All the best to one and all. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Govt red tape... - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 04:14 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:39 PM EDT |
My personal favorite was for U.S. Department of Defense, Fort George Meade.
"Too much red tape to find out who is contact person. We should research
who the contact was that we sold licenses to in the past in start from
there."
No...? Really..???
Most people know that Ft. Meade is the headquarters of a certain intellegence
agency that doesn't "officially" exist. Unless you have the correct
name of the person you want to speak with, you will never get anywhere.
"Contracting Officer" sure won't cut it, neither will calling and
asking for a certain extension or office.
OK, I have known a couple people that worked in the Puzzle Palace, so I probably
found it more amusing than most would. LOL
Thanks Ms. PJ for the posting, and Chris Brown for doing the legwork![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tiger99 on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 01:40 PM EDT |
| I have to laugh! Whitechapel Workstations, if they were who I think they were,
made a National 32032 based Unix box way back in about 1986, but they are long
gone. And INMOS, who made the Transputer, likewise. But my present employer,
who does fit all the criteria, is not listed...... Oh, and did I see the Cabinet
Office there, somewhere? They would dare to threaten B. Liar and his
government? But I do wish that they had actually tried to extort money from an
active UK company, as there is good reason to suppose that they would have
fallen foul of criminal law. Darl could have been in dock in the Old Bailey, on
a number of serious charges. I was even hoping they would have sued my company,
currently dormant, which also fits the criteria, because I would simply have
passed the letter to the relevant authorities, the police (Serious Fraud Office)
and/or the Department of Trade and industry, and let them get on with their
business of enforcing the criminal law. SCO's behaviour was clearly attempted
fraud, in UK terminology. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 04:30 PM EDT |
As a real attempt to run, or even kickstart, a licensing scam - sorry, scheme -
the spreadsheet's laughable.
But it is the kind of thing you might throw together in a couple of days if you
wanted to pretend that you just picked IBM to sue almost at random.
Instead of setting out right from the start to extort some "go away"
money from what you foolishly thought would be an easy target.
Just a thought.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 06 2007 @ 04:56 PM EDT |
A comment above regarding Darl's past history reminded me to check out his
homepage again - haven't been there for some time.
I highly recommend it as a rich source of entertainment. Be careful not to drink
anything while reading though - you may find your chosen beverage exiting out of
your nose!
My favorite quote: “SCO OpenServer 6 is a Winner”
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2007 @ 12:45 AM EDT |
| The most amusing entry that I found was on pages 128-130 of the pdf where we
discover that SCO sent a letter to the Chief Executive Officer of:
"Human
Computing Resources Corporation, 10 St Mary Street, Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1PN,
Canada"
... and that the letter was returned as undeliverable.
I suppose
one can hardly blame the Canadian Post Office for being unable to deliver a
letter to an address that is almost 20 years out of date ...
... but if they
had been able to deliver it I wonder where it would have gone to
...
Well, first it would probably have been forwarded to HCR's more recent
(early 1990's that is) address on Bloor Street in Toronto, which is where they
were located when they were
bought by The Santa Cruz Operation in 1990 and became SCO Canada.
The
Toronto development group was eventually closed down as a cost cutting measure
shortly after Santa Cruz over stretched itself with the acquisition of the
UnixWare business from Novell.
... so, from 1996 onwards, that letter would
probably have been forwarded to SCO headquarters in Santa Cruz,
California.
But wait!! The Santa Cruz Operation is no more! The offices in
Santa Cruz are closed! Where should we send this pesky letter?
Where,
indeed, but to their alleged "successors in interest", The SCO Group, in Lindon,
Utah - marked for the attention of the CEO, one Mr Darl McBride.
Really, the
incompetence of these people is just pathetic :-(
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2007 @ 02:02 AM EDT |
Funny, I found the company I work for on the list. The address they used for the
CEO was probably for one of our accounts. They sent it to the wrong part of the
company, not the company headquarters.
DOH!![ Reply to This | # ]
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