"[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop,' or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment.... Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO."

--Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO

Summary: Timely remarks about exchange of money and a quick look at who is funding who (and why)

AN HOUR ago we wrote about Groklaw's take on Apple. Pamela Jones still seems to believe that Microsoft is behind Psystar in some way. That's reasonable to believe and we supported this possibility before. Microsoft could, for example, provide financial support to Psystar through a "satellite" like BayStar. That's what Microsoft did to support SCO, which according to Groklaw still refuses to pay Novell.

In the latest news from SCO's slow boat to absolutely nowhere, Novell has filed its opposition to SCO's motion to stay taxation of costs. SCO filed this exact motion [PDF] in 2008, after it lost the first trial, Novell points out, and Novell opposed that motion too, and the motion was denied [PDF] by this very same court, and here they are with the same type of motion and even using the same stupid case that didn't work for them the last time.

Given that SCO received money from Microsoft (both directly and indirectly), this ought to teach us a lesson about "money laundering" in one sense of the term. As the mainstream press carries on attacking IBM (we wrote about this episode of the IBM case yesterday), not much is being said about the fact that Microsoft provides financial support for some of those companies (“satellite proxies,” to use IBM's words) that attack IBM through EU regulators. One confirmed example is T3 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

We also found it worthy to point out that Black Duck, which helps spread fear of the GPL, is now being paid by SAP, which is Microsoft's European ally that Microsoft almost bought some years ago. ⬆