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Who is Behind Psystar?

Ballmer on patents



Summary: A reader of ours wanted to know if Microsoft could indirectly be funding Psystar to sue Apple and challenge its business model

"Who is behind Psystar" is the question a reader asked us yesterday. He quoted Groklaw as saying: "I have come to suspect that someone, somewhere behind all this is trying to destroy Apple's business, for personal profit, nothing less, just as SCO has been trying to destroy IBM's and Red Hat's business and Linux, for personal profit. Two strange cases, each threatening damage to major players in the US technology sector -- the two major competitors of Microsoft, actually now that I think of it -- and it's all happening at once..."



This is actually a subject that we wrote about several times before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] when we produced possible evidence, mostly circumstantial. There is also this new report, which indicates that the "Mac cloner marches on" even after declaring bankruptcy. It's just like SCO.

The Florida-based outfit, which has been poking Apple's legal team with a sharpened stick for close to two years now, once predicted that it would sell 70,000 cut-price Mac clones - complete with the latest version of OSX pre-installed - in its first year of trading.


Has anyone tried searching Google for some smoking guns?

"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."

--Bruce Perens

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