07.11.09
Groklaw Unearths Another SCO Scandal; SCO Heads Sued for Theft, Computer Fraud and Abuse
“On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO’s strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO’s financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital.”
Summary: SCO and unXis may be the same/overlapping entity; Darl McBride, Stephen Norris and Bryan Cave are all sued
THERE IS SOMETHING truly fascinating about SCO. Is it a technology company or is it a tool for legal abuse? Nobody knows for sure anymore, but Groklaw carries on digging deeper. What does it find? An abundance of monkey business. First of all, as many people know by now, SCO is to sell its assets to a supposedly “independent” entity — a buyer substantiating a company to be known as unXis. We’ll spare the explanation about Microsoft’s connection to SCO’s latest cash injection [1, 2, 3] because more hilarious is the following finding:
Guess who owns the domain unXis.de? If you check betterwhois, you find that Eric le Blan owns the domain unXis.com, but if you go to Germany’s equivalent, denic.de, a familiar SCO name appears.
Hans Bayer, the former CEO for The SCO Group GmbH.
Is SCO selling assets to itself? is this the buyer Berger Singerman was showing? Are they bamboozling the judge and the world by faking a sale, which in turn enables them to raise funds to litigate against Linux and harass competitors?
This comes just shortly after IBM’s subpoena of unXis
IBM may have run out of patience with all the mystery about SCO’s proposed sale of assets to unXis. . So it has subpoenaed unXis…
If that seems as bad as it gets, then how about this? (accessible only to Groklaw members)
Well, my dreams are coming true. This is better than eagles. A new lawsuit with Darl McBride, Stephen Norris and Bryan Cave all named as defendants by Pelican Equity. The accusation? Theft of trade secrets.
No. Wait. Wait. Wait. It gets better. They are also accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. There is a God! [passes out from joy]
What a bundle of joy. So SCO is again in the midst of criminal investigations. Groklaw rests its case.
Groklaw also has the SCO-unXis exhibits as plain text. It seems like another beginning of the end. More text from the March bankruptcy hearing is now available.
There is a monster SCO filing in the bankruptcy, 531 pages, I’m told, a Notice of Cure Amounts in Connection with the Assumption and Assignment of Unexpired Leases and Executory Contracts [PDF] and then a 7-part exhibit. SCO proposes to transfer everything on this list to unXis “free and clear of all liens, claims, encumbrances and interests upon satisfaction of the cure amounts… except for Assumed Liabilities and Permitted Encumbrances”.
More here:
More bills to go over with a fine-toothed comb, and SCO has filed an third amended Schedule F for SCO Operations. That’s the list of unsecured creditors. Here’s the previous version, if you’d like to compare, and I hope you do, and the original [PDF].
Here are the other two bills. Follow the money. Always follow the money, even in Novell’s case. █
“Microsoft hardly needs an SCO source license. Its license payment to SCO is simply a good-looking way to pass along a bribe…”
David Gerard said,
July 11, 2009 at 11:01 am
Hey, a minor amusing note from Wikipedia:
When Google Chrome OS was announced, the shills commented saying “uh this is just a copy of the Microsoft Gazelle browser OS ya rly.” Gazelle is of course vaporware – it exists only as a Microsoft Research paper, no product in sight. So I went to the Wikipedia article, which was a one-paragraph note with no third-party references. So I tagged it for “prospective deletion”, which means “this really needs either fixing or trashing soon thanks.” Within three hours, an IP editor came along and brought it up to just about minimum standard. So the article lives.
The IP is there in the history, it’s 192.102.82.253, which is owned by … The SCO Group, Lindon UT!
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, SCO and Microsoft are completely separate entities, and good contributions from anywhere are most welcome. Yep.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 11th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Groklaw reckons Microsoft expands a little in Utah in order to employ/reward SCO employees.
amd-linux said,
July 11, 2009 at 2:20 pm
The SCO case has the potential to break Micro-Soft’s neck.
If IBM should be able to proove that SCO is a MS puppet and MS stiffles deliberately IBM’s Linux business, the damages for which IBM might sue Micro-Soft will well exceed all cash reserves of Micro-Soft.
And somehow I feel that we are getting closer to the day when IBM finally decides to go after he puppet master.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
July 11th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I’d say with sarcasm that Microsoft will probably have him “suicided”* before IBM gets to The Puppet Master. There is one Microsoft employee who dived out his office window in WA some months ago, but it is not related.
__
* suicided is a term used to describe deaths like that of Doctor Kelly, where the secrets kept by the victim are too sensitive to make a suicide easily believable.