Halloween X: Follow The Money

http://www.opensource.org/ ^ | 3 Mar 2004 | www.opensource.org

[amigatec]

Had to reformat a bit, but here you have it. MS is the money behind the SCO lawsuits.

[amigatec]

Ping Please.

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[Criminal Number 18F]

Had to reformat a bit, but here you have it. MS is the money behind the SCO lawsuits.

This ties in rather tidily with EV1 buying a SCO "licence" with what is widely believed in the industry to be Microsoft money.

EV1 is the porn-friendly/spam-friendly hosting company formerly known as Rackspace. (Oddly enough, its CEO or "head surfer" as he bills himself, also writes incoherent, ungrammatical English, like Chris here). The company changed names in an attempt to get its IP space de-blacklisted. It's still blacklisted with SPEWS, but then SPEWS is very hair-trigger.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Bikers4Bush]

This is gonna get good. Time to crack open a beer, sit back and enjoy the show.

[ShadowAce]

Tech Ping

[TechJunkYard]

The will help us a lot and if we execute we could exit and Unix componients we have build potentially back to Microsoft or MCS.

This part interests me. If SCO folds (voluntarily or otherwise) does Microsoft potentially end up owning SCO's Unix assets?

[Salo]

Nick Danger is going to have a field day with this. :-)

[Nick Danger]

Nick Danger is going to have a field day with this. :-)

The only trouble with this is that Eric Raymond has a demonstrated ability to get snookered. Remember that Howard Stern caller who claimed to be the DDOS attacker on SCO?

Maybe Eric is being more careful these days. Maybe he's being snookered again. What facts are verifiable do check out... Anderer is a long-time associate of Darl McBride; he runs a consulting company called S2 which does have a contract with SCO to advise on a "transaction," and he acquired SCO stock options as part of that contract. So he's real, he does for a living what this email would suggest he's doing here (brokering a deal for money), and he has in the past made noises about "taming the Internet" with lawyers.

I wonder if anyone will be able to acquire an evidence-grade copy of this. My hunch is that the shredders and hard-disk wipers have been humming since last night.

Usually when something like this happens that could represent a serious threat to Microsoft's interests, our resident Munchkins go silent, as if awaiting instructions on what to say. It will be interesting to see if that happens here.

[George W. Bush]

I hope IBM sues Microsoft for deliberate funding of defamatory lawsuits via proxy (SCO).

That would be an interesting case.

[hchutch]

The litigation monster has gone out of control on all sides. IBM's not exactly a wronged innocent - weren't they part of that POS anti-trust case that Janet Reno and Joel Klein pushed? You know, the one where Thomas Penfield Jackson not only talked to a reporter about a pending case, but made comments that exhibited clear bias AGAINST Microsoft?

Jackson's darn lucky he only got a smackdown from the appellate court.

[Nick Danger]

IBM's not exactly a wronged innocent - weren't they part of that POS anti-trust case that Janet Reno and Joel Klein pushed?

As I recall, the Microsoft case bagan in 1990 with a Federal Trade Commission investigation into whether Microsoft and IBM were colluding. That investigation ended in 1993 with no action taken by the FTC. The DOJ then picked it up and the rest is history.

IBM of course had their own turn in the barrel many years earlier. Unlike Microsoft, IBM was not convicted.

[hchutch]

Thomas Penfield Jackson's conduct as judge places a VERY big asterik by whatever conviction Microsoft has. Note that DOJ's settlement was quite favorable to Gates and company and that they seem to be quite flexible as to interpretation. I think that it was more about certain competitors (Oracle and Sun among them) whining after they got their butts kicked.

David Kopel's piece in National Review Online makes this point far more eloquently than I ever could.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel030201.shtml

[TechJunkYard]

Thomas Penfield Jackson's conduct as judge places a VERY big asterik by whatever conviction Microsoft has.

And that judge was severely reprimanded and his ruling overturned, and the case assigned to another judge.

But even with that....

The appeals court did say that Microsoft had a monopoly, "behaved anticompetitively," and should be held liable for its actions. While giving away Internet Explorer for free or even paying sites to take it did "not violate the Sherman Act," the judges said, Microsoft's Windows-only deals with computer makers did.

[Salo]

The email/memo is real as per Blake Stowell.

[Nick Danger]

The issue of whether this memo is authentic or not has been settled. SCO made a statement today that the memo is indeed real.

SCO says that the memo is being "misinterpreted" and that the consultant who wrote it was in error.

I guess it comes down to whether we choose to believe SCO, or our own lying eyes.

[Golden Eagle]

The email/memo is real as per Blake Stowell.

Let's assume that MS did invest in SCO. Well since the stock is up over 100%, I'd have to admit that was a pretty damn good investment, LOL!

[Salo]

Ok, so it's real. Now what?

[Salo]

It hasn't been SCO's day - teach them to use ms products incorrectly.

[Dinsdale]

No MS did'nt invest in SCO (doing so whould tip it's hand).

MS directed it's partners to buy licences from SCO (free money for SCO). Additionally one of MS's pet VCs invested in SCO. How good an investment that is will only be determined when they try to sell (SCO is very thinly traded, selling this much SCOX would drive it to delisting).