07.29.09
SCO Lies About Hans Bayer
Summary: SCO plays “Where’s Waldo” with its own members of staff
IT has been a few days since we last caught up with SCO [1, 2] and fascinating things are happening now that the court proceeds. The most significant revelation was probably this new one from Groklaw. Watch the way SCO distances itself from its own major folks, the seniors. SCO pretends Hans Bayer is some sort of estranged person.
Groklaw’s reporters who attended the SCO bankruptcy hearing on the 27th reported that SCO portrayed Hans Bayer as not an officer of the company and not authorized to speak for SCO about the unXis deal. As a result, some emails by Bayer about the proposed sale to unXis were stricken from the record. I’ll show you in a minute why SCO was so eager to have the emails stricken. They are very damaging. CEO Darl McBride said he’d even reprimanded Bayer for some emails he was not authorized to send. At one point, Cravath attorney David Marriott, representing IBM, pulled out his Blackberry and showed McBride the SCO website, listing Bayer as VP. But SCO’s portrayal was that the web site was mistaken. When Steve Norris later testified, however, when he was asked who was the lead negotiator for SCO in the unXis deal, he said it was Hans Bayer. Norris had not been in the courtroom during McBride’s testimony.
Heise has just summarised this whole Hans Bayer weirdness as follows.
The court proceedings concerning the bankruptcy of the SCO Group were finalised on Monday with a 12-hour marathon hearing. The judge’s ruling is expected in about a week. A surprising aspect of the hearing was a controversy that developed around the role of SCO’s Vice President Hans Bayer, the former CEO of SCO Germany. This was sparked off by the question of which of SCO’s business divisions possess any economic value that could be salvaged via ordered bankruptcy proceedings.
Groklaw has found another contradiction in Darl McBride’s words and on Monday it assembled some assorted notes (Groklaw members were attending the hearing). Here is one detailed analysis and also the first report from this bankruptcy hearing.
Update 2: I got a quick email that Darl McBride has taken the stand and is painting a rosy picture of SCO’s business hopes:
Darl McBride sworn in. Mr. Spector on direct. Extoling SCO’s bright prospects. Objection over scope of testemony–overruled. More objections–sustained. Mr. McBride may not speculate about the impacts of the results of the appeal. Mr. Mcbride goes over the history of the attempts to reach a deal–York, SNCP, Merchants Bridge, others.
Possible connections between some of these deals and Microsoft were shown before. █
Related posts:
- Groklaw Unearths Another SCO Scandal; SCO Heads Sued for Theft, Computer Fraud and Abuse
- More on the Amazing Story Behind SCO (and Possibly Microsoft)
- SCO Scandals Get Worse: unXis Seems to be All About SCO
- IBM’s Latest Filing Regarding SCO Bankruptcy Mentions “Fraud”
- SCO Scandals Finally in the News
“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.”
