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Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 09:40 AM EST

A reader sent me an article from August 2002, an interview with Darl McBride, one that I had read before but until today I didn't fully realize its significance. Now I do, so it seems important to make it part of the Groklaw record. I note that in the interview, McBride mentions that back then they had "a commitment to bring Microsoft into the picture", he was close to Noorda when they did the purchase from USL in '93, and his problem with Linux is that he wants it to be a paid item, like bottled water, that you "buy now, buy often".

He wants Linux to cost money, and all the indemnification stuff is all about that, I'm thinking. The lawsuits, the works. He is an elephant in a china store, breaking things right and left, just because he is what he is. An elephant. (I refuse to calll him a bull in a china store, because it sounds powerful.) And he no more has the ability to understand an information age than an elephant. He is what he is. OldThink. Old ways struggling to cope with a new world he doesn't understand.

He talks about intellectual property, and he thinks property means like a toaster. Property. He doesn't at all get the "intellectual" part. To him, you must put a product in a box, artificially inflate the price with marketing, and sell, sell, sell. That's all he knows. His tragedy is that the world has changed, old business models must change to fit the new circumstances, and Linux can't be put in a box like detergent, because it is a process, not a product, and it will never work. Even if he could win all the lawsuits and implement his dream to the max, he will then only have killed the golden goose. It's like watching a Greek tragedy play out before our eyes. It's doubly tragic that he chose Linux to involve in his death spiral. The death of the Industrial Age personified, desperately trying to graft old ideas on to the Information Age, which is whizzing right by him.

An interesting footnote from the interview is his view of Novell. The cherry on top is this description of Unix from a story about MyDoom:

SCO sells Unix, an older version of Linux.


Here are some excerpts from the lengthy interview:
Dressed in a leather jacket, black pants, and wraparound sunglasses, McBride showed how Harley came back from the edge of eternity by investing in its heritage. SCO, he promised, will do the same for its re-sellers and consultants, reviving one of the oldest and most successful UNIX brands. Never mind that the outside world has never heard of the millions of servers running SCO. Their time will come.

Taking on the 'Linux is free' myth, McBride offered to sell the audience a plastic cup of water. Then he held up a nicely labeled bottle of pure water, which easily sells for $12/gallon or more. This is how you'll make money, he said. You'll have the SCO brand once again, and our Linux will be powered by UnitedLinux, certified enterprise-ready by IBM and H-P.

DesktopLinux.com managed to interview McBride as the Forum was winding down . . .

DL: Do you remember how you first heard of Linux?

McBride: When I was at Novell, Ransom Love had a team working on it. So I eventually hooked them up with Ray Noorda (founder and former CEO of Novell, now Canopy Group). I was running our NetWare Embedded Technology Group. I heard about Linux and Mosaic at the same time. The thing that captured me more at the time was the browser, to be honest, because I'd never seen one before. What impressed me about Linux was Open Source.

DL: Did you understand Open Source at that time, or did the concept come later?

McBride: I did understand it because I was pretty close to Ray when we did the acquisition of USL (Unix Systems Lab) in 1993. It wasn't a new notion, but they way they were approaching it was unique. . . .

DL: So tomorrow you're going to have workshops on what's called defenestration, getting rid of Windows. So will we see Caldera tours in the future?

McBride: We've talked about a Caldera tour, and part of it relates to these products you're talking about, and part of our SCObiz line, which we rolled out yesterday. We think we have a really interesting way to get the SMB customer more connected, but still wrapped around a SCO OpenServer environment and applications. It doesn't matter if its OpenServer, UnixWare, Linux, even if it's Windows at the end of the day, these products will wrap around any OS.

DL: Sounds like you have cross-platform emphasis like Novell claims to have.

McBride: With our solutions business we expect to ride on top of a number of platforms. Volution Manager takes all the distributions of Linux and our UNIXes and provides full management of those environments. We have a commitment to bring Windows into the picture, as well. . . .

DL: You must have an excited team in Germany.

McBride: Our UnitedLinux development team? They're really fired up. Our member partners, even our SCO re-sellers are becoming enthusiastic. They're saying, "When you're ready, let me know. We can make some money with that." I have a hard time selling something without a price tag. It's back to the bottled water analogy. It's not free water. It's bottled water. $14 a gallon. Buy now. Buy often.

DL: You're exhausted. You've been on your feet for a couple of days, talking to people, but underneath it all, are you excited?

McBride: Sure. I've done a number of initiatives. I've worked in Novell. I've created some very nice companies. The upside to this company has been that it's more exciting than anything I've done up to this point. SCO has the potential to be a significant player in the entire tech industry landscape. It's not just about nursing the SCO crowd for a few more years. It's not just about our Linux play. It's taking the brand of SCO, bringing in new acquisitions, pumping in new energy, renewing our core business, and then getting the whole team fired up around this commitment. And with the energy we felt around this conference, I can't tell you how many re-sellers are happy. In the last year, we've gone to the playing field with only about 20 people in the bleachers.

I think we have a fighting chance not to just turn around, but to go to the next echelon, the top tier of branded companies.

DL: You're in a unique position, because most of the Linux community doesn't understand Novell and their products. You worked there, and now you lead a Linux company that incorporates Novell's products. Given what you know, do you see a future for NetWare?

McBride: That's an interesting question. I've thought a lot about this whole idea of Directory Services tied into Linux, for example. They're just across town from us, so at some point, once we get the basics taken care of, I think I'll take a drive and sit down with Chris Stone, and talk turkey. There are clearly some opportunities.

DL: I think Novell and Linux are the great unrecognized marriage in today's OS space.

McBride: Right. I think you're on to something.

  


Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS | 325 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: WhiteFang on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:11 AM EST
Classic case of a narcissistic person driven by greed.

'Nuff said.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: TerryL on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:19 AM EST
QUESTION: He says I've worked in Novell. I've created some very nice companies.

Can someone let me know the names of these "nice companies" please. I'd never heard of the guy before I started following the SCOG v IBM thing here on Groklaw.

Actually, this whole thing is starting to sound s bit incestuous to me USL, Novell, Caldera, SCOG, Canopy... the same group of names keep coming up again and again. They all seem to have worked together, or for each other, for years and here they all are again.

---
All comment and ideas expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any other idiot...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:22 AM EST
I really dislike the term "monetize."

Why?

Because it contains embedded within it a business philosophy based on
(Keynesian) "cash flow" economics. This is the school of economics
that confuses money with value (money is a representation of value, not value
itself) and therefore confuses economic activity with productivity (economic
activity is the movement of money, while productivity is the actual building or
creating of things).

I prefer the terms "sell" and "earn." I have entreprenurial
ambitions myself (in some rather far out technologies) and if I ever actually
run a company I think we will earn money through selling goods and services to
customers. I will not "monetize." :)

All the fuss over IP is based in the world where cash = value. These guys are
totally missing the point. IP is a minor part of running a technology business,
or any business for that matter. The purpose of IP is to prevent the outright
piracy of R&D expenditure by competitors. That's all. You can't build a
business by sitting on top of paper entitlements and demanding royalties.
That's silly. The wealth of a company is in it's assets and it's people; a
technology company is not ideas but ideas *in motion*.

You might say Darl and co. don't understand the information age. I personally
don't think the information age is any different fundamentally from any other
age. It's more complex and there are some novel new ways of doing business, but
it's still the same thing: make value, trade value. Darl's problem is that he
doesn't understand *business*. Suing over paper certificates instead of
actually making stuff would be about as successful in the 1800s as it is now.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: dkpatrick on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:25 AM EST
This helps to explain a lot of McBride's persistence in the face of disaster. I
can't fault him for narcissism since that's a common trait amongst CEOs,
politicians, and just about anyone who has assumed a position of power and
influence. The ability to say "I am right and we're going down THAT road
..." is how many things get done in this world.

Unfortunately McBride seems to be unwilling to understand "the enemy"
and rather than recognizing and embracing the inevitable ("Hold your
friends close and your enemies closer") he is fighting it. Like Ahab he
will follow his white whale into the depths.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:27 AM EST
This here guy is a doofus. A tool. A wall follower. A totally uncreative
business school lackey.

Awww... he has memorized a formula... that's so cute. I almost feel sorry for
him being in the big bad business world with big companies run by people who
actually *think*.

[ Reply to This | # ]

bringing Windows in
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:30 AM EST
"We have a commitment to bring Windows into the picture, as well. . .
."

shame he did not elaberate more on this at the time.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:32 AM EST
McDarl wants to make money selling water, and tries to outlaw rain.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:34 AM EST
I am taking a project management class, and it is amazing how Darl McBride fits
the "intuitive extrovert" model of behavior. He clearly does
understand the underlying technology; he just senses a way to
"monetize" the situation. He just will do whatever it takes, say
whatever needs to be said, to enthusiastically promote his position. In that
respect, he is a typical member of upper-level management.

What makes McBride interesting is the lengths at which he will go to in order to
promote his position. It is one thing to jockey in the press, but with the IBM
and the blatantly and willfully misleading statements he has made, at some point
Darl has crossed the line from zealous promotion of a weak position, to willful
slander or at least negligent ignorance.

He is obviously comfortable with living within the alternative reality of his
self-serving interpretation of contracts, clauses, and licensing, but at some
point he must be legally compelled to openly confess the legal falseness of his
position.

What I would like to see the most out of this 11-month ordeal with SCO/Caldera
is to see Darl have to read a press statement admitting he was just wrong. No
spin, no FUD, just an admission of error.

Sorry for the long post. I just find Darl fascinating in the way some people
find the criminally insane fascinating (no unintended comparison meant there
either).

gnutechguy

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:36 AM EST
There's not a huge difference between this interview and the way many managers
in the IT industry (sales, proprietary side) speak. It's distinctly long on
analogy (bleachers, playing field etc) and bzzz words (pump, upside etc). There
are normally two reasons for this kind of speaking;

1. The speaker is uncomfortable with the detail.
2. The speaker thinks the listener is uncomfortable with or uninterested in the
detail.

This, in the right context and to the right audience, is not a bad thing per se.
Lawyers lawyer-speak, geeks geek-speak and communication is facilitated when we
can use shorthand; when geeks talk with lawyers -- well, just look at the fun
we're having on Groklaw. It sometimes takes a good analogy (throwing away the
detail) to get the central points across. (The devil, though, is in the detail,
as we're all finding out.)

But every piece I've seen McBride quoted in, _regardless of his audience_, this
sales-speak comes across. "Wild west, digital frontier, monetize, millions
of lines...". Same to this interviewer, same to Harvard, same every time.

I'm beginning to suspect he's a (1)... No, I work in this filed; he's definitely
a (1). McBride doesn't have enough background or depth in technology beyond
sales & sales management. His understanding is based on the way he thinks
and consequently speaks; and it's black and white, top-line stuff only. He is
seriously bored by detail, and leaves that to others.

So who in SCOG is providing the (2)? Has anyone got anything of record from
anyone other than Sontag (who suffers a lesser form of Darl-speak) and McBride?
Any interviews with the CTO for instance?

--
An interested bystander

[ Reply to This | # ]

Elephant or Bull?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:36 AM EST

I think you meant the proverbial "bull in a china shop" rather than an
elephant. Elephants, for instance are pretty bright, much brighter than Darl,
and they have far better memories. Bulls, on the other hand, aren't much
brighter than walnuts.

Finally, the elephant metaphor may play into Darl's hammy P.R. hands. Darl
probably likes to think that the alleged problems with Linux are like the
"elephant in the corner of the living room" that no one talks about,
and has set himself up as a braying elephant trying to draw attention to it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

An armchair quarterback
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:45 AM EST
Just like you see in the beer commercials. He never has been, and never will be,
a player.

[ Reply to This | # ]

What's an SCO ?
Authored by: coolmos on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:46 AM EST
So what does SCO mean nowadays ?

Suicide Committing Organization ?

If that's the case, they might be in the dictionary some years ahead.

SCO: A Company committing suicide because of old ideas.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: belzecue on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:56 AM EST
SCO Receives Poisonous Reception at Ivy

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 10:57 AM EST
Very revealing indeed.

It's easy to see the grandiose claims of this one-bit huckster, and the literary
parallels almost write themselves: Anti-prometheus, stealing fire back from the
mortals; Darlth Vader, faithful servant of the Emporer Ballmertine; Saruman,
grabbing for the One Ring that would bind all to himself. But that all gives him
much too much importance. This is not the mouse that roared; it is the pip that
squeaked. All that bilgewater about "Pumping people up" (as opposed
to, say, having a clue about actually producing something worth buying) is
indicative of the basic con man mindset. The proper literary parallel is Willy
Loman -- a dying salesman, looking back on a life of decaying self-respect and
expanding circle of ex-friends, the inevitable result of offering too many
people dreams and delivering only nightmares.

Or, in a lighter tone, Monty Python: the black knight, the victim of the Piranha
Brothers (running around in circles in courtrooms because Novell nailed his foot
to the floor, just waiting for IBM to nail his head to the coffee table). Or
Anne Elk, whose scientific discovery consisted mostly of the fact that some
trivial, common snippet of general knowledge was hers alone.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The overlying problem
Authored by: mcorbett on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:05 AM EST
I am beginning to think about (I know, I'm kind of slow about these things) what
is REALLY causing what appears to us to be Darl's inability to see the obvious.
I think this is part of a problem corporate types in the US are generally
having, and was brought out in a post on a yahoo board here:
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=1601368100&a
mp;tid=teu&sid=1601368100&mid=539
(Sorry, but I don't know how to embed links, yet.)

"Business is not about your morality or mine. Business should do what
business does best - make money. It is incapable of doing good because that is
not its goal."

It looks like Darl is doing nothing more than persuing the same idea. He thinks
this is the best method SCOG has available to make money, so that is where he is
going. Any other considerations from people like us are not just irrelevant,
they don't even exist.

Yes, I do think that eventually SCOG will lose the lawsuits, but Darl will not
be able to change his way of thinking to understand the real reasons why. What
we see as the fact of an overriding concern of how the laws concening these
various issues (IP, copyright, etc.) are not aligned with Darl's purpose of
extracting money for SCOG can not be part of the equation in Darl's mind.

This is why he is still singing the same tune he sang 6 months ago, even after
every piece of evidence they have show has been completely torn apart. To be
wrong would mean there is no money to be extracted. He "knows" must
be there, so he must go after it.

Does this all make sense?

---
Mike

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: red_guy on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:09 AM EST
I don't really see it. Apart from speaking like your average CEO, filtering the
entire world through the "increasing shareholder value, especially since
I've got a nice stock options package myself" paradigm, there isn't that
much there.

Every Linux distributing company is in it to create money.
He doesn't want Linux to cost money, his 'bottled water' analogy tells me he
wants to wrap up something that's free, and wrap it so beautifully that people
will pay. Sounds like the Lindows.com business plan.

Starting from that interview, SCO could still have chosen to be the go-between
for Novell Netware and [United] Linux.

Only later did he ditch the $12-a-gallon bottled water plan, instead opting for
the $699-a-gallon water tax (bottle not included!), because he thinks he holds
IP rights, though he's not sure which ones, over some heavy metal alloy that's
probably contaminated the water.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: inode_buddha on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:15 AM EST
Funny thing, somebody just expressed what I suspected. I was afraid to appear
*too* paranoid/tinfoil-hat. Great analysis! On somewhat related notes, most of
my problem with MS is not so much their technologies, but the notion that
19th-century business models are driving their tech. Which is causing all sorts
of *ugly* bugs in the finished product. The sort of bugs that make MyDoom
possible. Also, there's a write-up on slashdot ATM about the virus author
adressing "Andy". It seems they have it all backwards (again),
thinking that "Andy" is the author. The only "Andy" that
comes to my mind is Andrew Josey at the Open Group. Thanks for listening whilst
I vent my paranoia for the week...

---
"Truly, if Te is strong in one, all one needs to do is sit on one's ass, and the
corpse of one's enemy shall be carried past shortly." (seen on USENET)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:18 AM EST
Personally, I dont think there is anything wrong with the anology. After all,
what is RedHat doing? Selling bottled water so to speak. It seems to me, this is
what Darl wanted to do.

I presume he also wanted to market some sort of a unified platform for
applications - something that incorporates ABIs, LKP and somehow find something
to link MS world too. SCO's position in his analysis was very favourable - good
standing and position in Linux community, their own Unix products, access to SVR
licensing etc....

Only thing is, this bottled water of his didnt really get to marketing level.

His analogy is still right i reckon.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: TerryL on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:19 AM EST
The problem with the bottle water thing is that there IS a free alternative to
to expensive (and I've never quite worked out what the advantage of it was)
bottled water - that's good old tap water (well, for those with a urban water
supply).

What Darl seems to be trying to do is take over the city water supply, and then
make people pay bottle water prices for plain old tap water (that they already
pay for out of whatever city taxes or water rates etc.) that people are already
paying. He's not even putting the water in nice plastic bottles with colourful
labels for folks.

Bottled water companies sell water because of a (perceived at least) quality
advantage of their product over the freely available alternative, they do NOT
take over and cut off the alternative.




---
All comment and ideas expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those
of any other idiot...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Going Down?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:23 AM EST
Hmmm, looks like something is not playing well, SCOX is suffering more than the
usual morning dip - down 3.8% at 11:04am EST.

Bob

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Going Down? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:40 AM EST
  • reality? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:29 PM EST
  • Going Down? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 02:44 PM EST
    • Going Down? - Authored by: smesplay on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:21 PM EST
      • Going Down? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:45 PM EST
The chicken flew alone.
Authored by: cr on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:42 AM EST
(Bias-disclosure: this motorcyclist prefers Hondas)

Darl's use of Harley as an example is illuminating because it is wrong.

Harley-Davidson clung to its roots until it was almost too late. It came back
from the "edge of eternity" by putting some real update work into its
designs -- remember when all the bikes in Harley showrooms had to have drip pans
under them because all of their crankcases leaked oil? -- and by lobbying
Congress into passing special legislation just for them, to put a tariff on all
motorcycle imports over 700cc.
The eagle couldn't fly alone. That's when the title of this message was bandied
about SoCal as an epithet by riders-by-choice of innovatively better-engineered
bikes from Japan.

Harley even went so far as to look into copyrighting or otherwise locking up the
"Harley sound", which is a natural function of the exhaust of an
engine having two overwide-bore cylinders in a close V arrangement.

I don't have any online references to any of this (nor any back-issues), but at
the time I was an avid reader of motorcycling magazines like Rider (from whom I
learned to ride while riding, back before the MSF course was really available)
back in the Eighties; any archive of those publications in that period will have
the news and commentary on the issue.

In pointing to Harley, Darl is exemplifying an outfit that tried to claim
special privilege because its product was ancient, to the point of getting laws
passed to insure that people gave it money.
Which is no news, really, considering what we've seen him try with SCOldera.

crb3

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: belzecue on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:54 AM EST
"At this point in time, I look at the options: (build a) startup from
scratch in this environment . . . I had raised $50 million for each of those
companies. Now in 2002, if you get any kind of cash, you're Superman..."

Hmm, what's with Darl and his 50-million-dollar financing deals? Does he order
them by the dozen?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Caldera's big mistake
Authored by: pscottdv on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:14 PM EST

I'm sorry, but I don't see what's so bad about what Daryl says in this interview. This seems to be from before he went over to the Dark Side of the Force.

Here he is saying that it is possible to make lots of money on a ubiquitous commodity like water by providing it in a way that people want to pay for it. It would have been great if he would have stuck to that business model! Unfortunately, Caldera made some mistakes in how they executed that plan, IMHO. Caldera thought the way to build a brand was to bundle Linux with a bunch of proprietary software. They totally failed to see that the most attractive feature of Linux is freedom. (Actually, they still fail to see it. They think people will continue to use it even if they are successful in requiring licenses.)

RedHat, on the other hand, sure understands that Linux is about freedom. They GPL all of their own code and they remove packages that fail the freedom test. I firmly believe that this is the reason RedHat won a much, much larger chunk of the US enterprise market even though Caldera started out with many advantages.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl DOES understand the information age
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:28 PM EST
I have to dissagree with your observation of Darl McBride, PJ. I think he
understands the information age and the difference between intellectual and
physical property all too well. There are some fine lines with intellectual
property and when taken in context with the current laws and statutes (with
precident) they are all but wipped out. This is VERY important. Darl comes into
a company which does not have a traditionally sellable product. At first he
makes a go of it, but between the floundering IT market and the growing broad
acceptance of linux and OSS in general, proffits are non-existant.

One would really like to take back some of the market, or better yet, earn money
from these products already out in the market. Traditionally this is done
through mergers and aquisitions. But you cant do that with FOSS.

But you can! It doesnt matter what is true about intellectual property, all that
matters is what the public, corporate buisness, and the judge think of as
Property within the guidlines of the law.

This is where a strong command of both intellectual and physical property (law
and buisness) are needed. Darl is quite skillfully arguing for the application
of the traditional treatment of property to be applied to FOSS. Argued via lies
and FUD which on the surface seems accurate to the vast majority of people who
see property as the toaster. It helps that it is easy for people who are not
fimilliar with intellectual property to see something like linux as a physical
entity. We call them binary 'objects' and Darl loves to use this word when
talking about the ABI.

No, Darl knows exactly what he is doing. It is up to the rest of us who
understand what he is doing to explain it to everyone else.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Novell has passed SCOX today
Authored by: pingdave on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:29 PM EST
Novell just took out 14 a share. SCOX has sunk to 13.36 a share.

Clearly the market is speaking loud and clear about who has the viable business
model.

Thanks again PJ for the wonderful resource that is groklaw.

what a great day.
Dave

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
Authored by: RealProgrammer on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:42 PM EST
What Darl is missing is customer orientation. PJ is right: he wants to sell
stuff, and believes that when people buy a brand they aren't buying the stuff,
they're buying the marketing. He thinks he's selling nothing, and he thinks
that it's ok. Both of those thoughts are incorrect, and are his undoing.

The bottled water (or athletic shoes, or soft drink, or even snake oil)
transaction is not just about extracting money from suckers. The customer
receives a number of benefits, not just the use of the item, and these benefits
are interrelated and vary in importance for each customer and even for each
transaction.

I enjoy bottled water on a hot summer day. I drink it, but don't enjoy it as
much, during the winter. I can taste the difference between brands of water. I
can certainly taste the difference between good bottled water and my filtered
kitchen tap. We have our local Culligan franchise deliver it, and put the
5-gallon bottles in a nice little dispenser we got as a wedding gift.

Drinking bottled water is a thing my wife and I enjoy together. It's one of a
hundred tiny bits of something in common that make up a marriage. We go to the
fridge or dispenser and get it for each other. It's not quite the same if we
get it out of the tap.

Bottled water for us is a better product than some other beverage would be, and
we think it's worth every penny. We sometimes drink other beverages, believe it
or not. We usually don't buy bottled water in individual bottles (unless the
convenience of portability is more important for some reason). We don't care
about the Culligan brand as a brand; we just like their product and service so
far.

How does that relate to Darl and Linux? He doesn't get that the Linux
transaction is about service and community, not brand recognition per se. I
don't care about Redhat or Debian as brands; I just use those distributions
because circumstances have put them in front of me. I do care about Unix,
because of the sense of community that surrounds it.

The sense of community is inherent in the Unix design. Unix is designed to let
small processes cooperate to perform a given task. Each tool does one thing,
and can be replaced by a better tool if someone contributes one. The system is
multiuser by design. User-written scripts have the same status and method of
execution as standard programs. It's traditional for Unix to come with source
code. These traits encourage people to a) ask for improvements and b) offer
improvements to others. That is community.

Linux is free, as tap water is (sort of). Most of us have "city
water" so we can bathe, wash the dishes, etc. Drinking water comes along
with that, so for all practical purposes it's free.

If Darl wanted to charge extra for brand-name Linux, he'd have to develop a
culture around his brand that made people feel a sense of community when using
it. He could also provide a service and charge money for it, either included in
the cost of a shiny package or by some subscription such as renting hardware
that ran the software. IBM did it that way in the old days, and probably still
does.

By using the courts and the media to tout his false claims, Darl is generating
massive ill will with prospective customers. Ironically, the strategy is
strengthening the community around Linux and the distributions he's chosen to
battle. His repeated and obvious disregard for the truth has doomed him to be a
footnote in the history of the industry he's trying to conquer.

---
(I'm not a lawyer, but I know right from wrong)

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Not an elephant either
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:45 PM EST
Darl is not an elephant either. That implies logevity and strength.

Darl is kangaroo, hopping around in the china shop. He's cause a lot of
commotion, and a little bit of damage. But before long the owners of the shop
(which are the FOSS community), will use brooms to shoo him out.

At which time, he'll get torn apart by the feral cats in the alley (the
investors of SCOX).

Tick-tock Darl. Tick-tock. Feb 6 is coming up soon. You've already shown us
most of your cards, and we're not impressed. The time where you could hide
behind your lies and evasions is ending. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

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Off Thread - SEC involvement
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 12:47 PM EST
The following seems it "may be of interest"

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Netware Embedded Technology
Authored by: RedBarchetta on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 01:07 PM EST
I have read before that McBride headed up the "Netware Embedded Technology" division within Novell, and I see it is mentioned here.

Has anyone ever used this technology? I honestly can't ever remember anyone mentioning to me that they are using this particular embedded technology.

For that matter, when I search the web... and I mean really search, for hours, I cannot come up with anything that McBride has done that stands out as a true, remarkable management achievement. You can't find anything on Pointserve that references him other than these bogus bio-pages on SCO/Caldera. Nothing on the venture where he outsourced programmers (can't recall the name), and absolutely nothing on his true successes at Novell.

I don't believe he ever "grew" any business for Novell. He's just another executive who was in the right place at the right time. It's always easy to garner the appearance of success when you tout "growing sales" figures. However, sales will grow when you have a captive market, and back then Novell had a captive market. It was the only truly reliable networking platform at a reasonable cost until Windows 95 surfaced.

It's like saying you were a terrific stock broker during the dotcom boom. You just had to be a stockbroker, any stockbroker, and you would have made money back then. Yes, I believe his achievements are quite exaggerated. Look as his current actions to really understand how much of a lazy, ineffectual executive he is. If anyone hires him they probably were dazzled and confused his great ability to distract. That's a common trait in pathological liars.

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    Unix is an older version of Linux
    Authored by: seeks2know on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 01:25 PM EST

    I love the line from the MediaPost article:

    "SCO sells Unix, an older version of Linux..."

    I've never viewed it this way before; but it's right on the money.

    ---
    "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 01:36 PM EST
    Darl McBride is truly amazing. I think it would be an interesting experience for
    him to live just one week without things that are based on open source
    development.

    To put it in a drastic light: Without open sourcing knowledge - and giving it
    away for practically free - some of his children - and likely Darl himself -
    would be dead. Medicine as it is now would be 18th century quackery without
    open-source.

    It is amazing he does not understand that.

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    SCOX
    Authored by: dcs on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 01:50 PM EST
    Doing very badly today. Also, quite a lot of medium-low volume (around 10k
    shares) transactions. I wonder what's going on. Also, I see a couple of
    medium-high volume (up to 100k shares) transactions yesterday. Mmmmmm.

    ---
    Daniel C. Sobral

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    weak stock "nearing 200 day technical limit"?
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 02:04 PM EST
    This appeared on the yahoo SCOX page news list: http://finance.yahoo.com/mp#scox

    11:43AM SCO Group flirts with 200-day moving averages (SCOX) 13.35 -1.05: Issue under pressure today, down 7% on relatively light volume. Decline leaves SCOX in vicinity of key technical levels -- it's 200-day simple and 200-day exponential moving averages at $13.07 and $13.10, respectively (today's session low is $13.18).

    No idea what this means, but I hope it is something that will push SCOX stock towards being in line with its worth (like a giant Monty Python foot squishing it down to $0.01)

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    Bottled Water
    Authored by: ajrs on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 02:04 PM EST
    The bottled water analogy is pretty good, but what SCOG didn't get is that they are not selling bottled water.

    They are selling water refills for water bottles. Most botles come with one kind of water for 'free'. This water is pretty bad, but familiar. There are other kinds of water you can get to put in the bottle, but it an acquired taste.

    SCOG bought some old water they want to sell, but its gotten stale. They had some new water that tasted OK, but now it has gone stale too.

    The've fired all the guys who used to keep the water fresh. They've insulted all of the guys who used to sell their water for them. All they have left is a lawsuit that says: "Some of the water that some of your friends are giving away we think tastes just like some of the water we bought from those other guys after they lent it to you."

    The ugly secret is that most people can't tell the difference between tap water and good spring water, and not all of the ones who can care.

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    SCO brings "sharpshooter" to a Darlnote...
    Authored by: kuwan on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 02:50 PM EST

    I got this off of the SCOX yahoo board:

    'Electronic terror' in Linux's shadow

    You'll find this about 2/3 of the way through the article:

    When SCO Group chief executive officer Darl McBride appeared at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas in November to deliver a keynote speech at CD Expo, the company brought a sharpshooter along for protection.

    And they call the Linux community fanatical! :)

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: codermotor on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 02:52 PM EST

    PJ, I think you are mis-characterizing what McBride said in the interview you quoted in your opening paragraph. McBride didn't say TSG had "a commitment to bring Microsoft into the picture". The full context of what he said was

    With our solutions business we expect to ride on top of a number of platforms. Volution Manager takes all the distributions of Linux and our UNIXes and provides full management of those environments. We have a commitment to bring Windows into the picture, as well.[emphasis added]

    Obviously, he was talking about how their Volution Manager product would eventually relate to Windows as well as Unix.

    As for his water metaphor, I don't see any overt hints that what Darl wanted at that point was to make all Linux a brand of bottled water, only TSG's Linux. Now he may indeed have been thinking even back then about proprietizing all of Linux, but reading that interview in the perspecive of when it was given, he does not hint at that goal. It seems clear that his vision was to Make TSG's brand of Linux follow the same path as Caldera Linux: that is to market a "value added" offering so as to present the appearance that his (TSG's) branded Linux was somehow superior to the unfiltered tap water versions extant.

    I don't doubt that the seeds of deviousness were present in that 2002 Darl, but one must be careful not to use too much hindsight when trying to read between the lines of something said in the past. I can't say when McBride turned completely to the dark side, but I don't see much, if any, evidence in the quoted interview that he had done so at that point.

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    The worst thing..
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:11 PM EST
    ... from my point of view is not that Darl doen't get what Open source is about,
    but that he clearly does. We don't have the option of forgiving SCO because they
    know not what they do. I always find it unsettling when I can't find any excuse
    for someone.

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    $ and Linux
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:26 PM EST
    Some peole complain about the nature of GPL and Linux. For example that you
    cant just grab GPL code and put it in your propetary software. The point is that
    I find it a funny thing that Linux is much more comercialized than for example
    the *bsd family, wich has a much liberal license. Or am i wrong?

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    Hippo in a china store?
    Authored by: MickO on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:38 PM EST
    Instead of an elephant, how about a hippo. Hopelessly slow and immobile on land,
    flinging [bleep] all around with a stubby little tail, and haiving a big mouth.

    ---
    "To a very significant extent, the complexities of coral taxonomy are man-made."
    /J.E.N. Veron

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    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: photocrimes on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:42 PM EST
    Please correct:

    "SCO sells Unix, an older version of Linux."

    to read:

    "SCO sells a older version of Unix, which is losing market space to Linux."

    ;-)

    ---
    //A picture is worth a thousand words//

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    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: Tsu Dho Nimh on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:49 PM EST
    "McBride showed how Harley came back from the edge of eternity by investing in its heritage."

    The BIG difference: Harley actually MAKES a product, and invested in research, product development, and marketing of that product. They have not sued the Cleveland Indians because they confused them with the makers of the "Indian" motorcycle, nor have they sued Schwinn because Schwinn's products also have two wheels. They have not ignored their resellers, nor have they abruptly terminated long-time relationships and handed territories to strangers. They actually HAD heritage to look to, not the hand-me-down remnants of what had been good code in its time.

    SCOG has not "invested in its heritage" at all - their lawsuits show that they either have no clue about it, or are willfully ignoring their corporate heritage as the bastard child of Caldera (a Linux developer) and Berkeley/AT&T/USL/Novell/SCO ... they are trying to assume heritage that is not theirs to assume. Pretenders to the UNIX throne is all they are.

    Unlike Harley-Davidson, SCO has not improved their products for years (except for making it work better with SAMBA and other freely available software, letting othres do the R&D for them). They have alienated their resellers, developers, and most of the rest of the IT community with their threats and their lies. Their CEO has not made his intellect visible since SCO started this campaign of innuendo and vague threats mixed with blatant lies.

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    Problems with dates...
    Authored by: roxyb on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 03:52 PM EST
    McBride: I did understand it because I was pretty close to Ray when we did the acquisition of USL (Unix Systems Lab) in 1993. It wasn't a new notion, but they way they were approaching it was unique. . .

    According to my information, Darl was head of Novell Japan in the beginning of 1993 (and present in Japan), and surfaced as head of Novell Embedded Systems Technology in 1993, while taking his Masters exams and graduating in 1994. How come he became so close to Ray Noorda at that time (and how didi he find the time)? Or is it another fib? Inquiring minds wants to know!

    Roland Buresund

    ---
    --
    I'm Still Standing...

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    Dinosaurs and technology
    Authored by: zjimward on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 04:22 PM EST

    This reminds me how Basic Four a computer company like Data General and other
    old dinosaur companies thought they could sell PCs at mainframe prices. They
    maintained a market for about a year then lost the ability to slap their name on
    PCs and sell them at very imflated prices. In the end they were reduced to
    selling some of their own proprietary software packages to run on other unix
    platforms and Windows systems. This just proves that business that try to use
    age old practices die out like dinosaurs. Some like SCO try to go out by
    dragging down the rest of the market. While others slowly walk to the burial
    grounds.

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    tomorrow's press release
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 04:28 PM EST
    Stock seems to be tanking big time. Any guesses on when the next press release
    is and its subject?

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    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 05:49 PM EST
    in <a
    href="http://www.computing.co.uk/News/1152258">Computing.co.uk</
    a> christ sontag says:<br>
    <pre>
    SCOsource vice president Chris Sontag told vnunet.com that the GNU General
    Public Licence (GPL) made it unlikely that the company would sell Linux again.

    "[This is] for a number of reasons, primarily the GPL licensing model for
    which Linux is provided," he said. "As we've really gotten into it, it
    appears very problematic for commercial software development."
    </pre><br>

    At the Harvard lecture they stated more or less that GPL wasn't the problem with
    Sambe (only IP), and sudenly with Linux it is a problem... hmm

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    Linux Detergent
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 05:54 PM EST
    Linux can't be put in a box like detergent[...]

    I'm surprised that nobody has already pointed out that You can put linux in a box exactly like detergent!

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    OT - Intellectual Property
    Authored by: radix2 on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 06:34 PM EST
    It has been said by many posters before that the whole IP mantra of SCO is a
    red-herring and I tend to agree. Not however to the point of claiming that IP
    does not exist though.

    My company uses the phrase "IP" to refer to the processes, corporate
    knowledge and culture that distinguishes our product (service) from those of our
    competitors. It is worth trying to keep "secret" but there is
    ultimately no way to do so. People in positions of knowledge leave, and go to
    these same competitors. They take their knowledge of "our" IP with
    them and implement and improve on them.

    To keep our competitive advantage, we therefore must continually add to our IP
    wealth, hoping that this will in-fact allow us to survive. Contractors are often
    compelled to sign NDA's, but to my view this is a bit like King Canute trying to
    command the tide to reverse, but we can only try.

    So just what is it that SCO is trying to protect under the IP umbrella? The
    horse seems to have already bolted (at least using my definition of IP). They
    *may* have a case with their previous partner (IBM) for disclosing things they
    shouldn't have (I doubt it given IBM's pedanticism regarding chinese walls), but
    how can they come after us (linux and opensource users)? We have never signed an
    NDA, nor are we directly involved in the distribution of their "IP".

    Sorry for the rambling post.

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    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 08:47 PM EST
    I must say I disagree with the elephant analogy, while elephants might have
    short attention spans they do have VERY long memories. Even Mastodon or Mammoth
    wouldn't fit the bill because being related they are probably similar.

    Rather I'd suggest Brontosaurus, as they are:

    1. Of a bygone era.
    2. They have 2 small brains, either of which didn't know what the other was
    doing.
    3. They are infact extinct, and SCO soon will be.

    I could go on, but I'm sure many would agree.

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    OT Weird Insider Owners change
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 08:52 PM EST
    I hope this is not some technicality I'm too stupid to know about,
    but I have been checking the list of Top Insdier and Rule 144
    Holders of SCOX on the yahoo financial pages, and suddenly two
    entries have appeared (both dated to 6-June-2003) for Canopy
    Group Inc and Ralph J Yarro.

    How did this sudden change happen, and if it relates to June 2003,
    how come it took so long to show up ? Or is this some CYA exercise ?

    You can see what I mean on this page

    JAN

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    IP
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 08:58 PM EST

    He talks about intellectual property, and he thinks property means like a toaster. Property. He doesn't at all get the "intellectual" part. To him, you must put a product in a box, artificially inflate the price with marketing, and sell, sell, sell. That's all he knows.

    Unfortunately for Darl, he's actually quite bad at selling things (think SCO Unix flavours, Linux licences).

    On another note, Darl is quick to point out how RMS is against copyrights on software or some such. Well, RMS correctly identified the problems related to copyright when applied to software. But, and this is part is something Darl simply cannot (or is not willing to admit that he can) grasp, he also acted rather pragmatically when faced the problem. He acknowledged that copyright in fact does exist and the only way to truly make free software is to use the power copyright gives to the authors. In the legal sense of ownership, free software is actually rather proprietary - it has disctinct owners. However, in the sense of use, distribution and modification it is completely free. I assume this bothers Darl very much - simply because it is brilliant.

    Now one would have to ask what is Darl's basis of distributing Samba, bash, gcc and other GPL licensed free software (some even copyright FSF) unless the GPL is in fact valid? None. SCO is either biggest copyright infringer in the history of the world or GPL is in fact quite valid. It cannot be both, unless Darl wants to claim that Samba etc. is in fact public domain software. I'm sure authors would really love to talk to him in court over that one.

    In the end, poor Darl is faced with an insurmountable obstacle - the phenomenon of free software. If this is going to leave any permanent damage on his mental health remains to be seen.

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    SCO? In August 2002?
    Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 11:52 PM EST
    I don't understand how McBride could give an interview in August 2002 which
    talks about what SCO will do in the future. IIRC, at that time there was no
    SCO. oldSCO had changed its name to Tarantella, and SCOG was still named
    Caldera.

    What is going on?

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    Hey! I Like Elephants.
    Authored by: PhilG on Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 01:33 AM EST
    "He is an elephant in a china store, breaking things right and left, just because he is what he is.
    An elephant. (I refuse to calll him a bull in a china store, because it sounds powerful.)
    And he no more has the ability to understand an information age than an elephant."

    I don't know any elephants personally, but from viewing documentaries I gather they are intelligent, surprisingly nimble and graceful, highly social, unagressive unless provoked, and probably make fantastic house guests.

    I doubt the same could be said for Darl.

    Actually, it's hard to think of an animal that wouldn't be greatly offended on being compared to Darl.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: lordmhoram on Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 08:56 AM EST
    Not elephant, pur-leeze! Elephants are more intelligent than bulls, and they are
    also reputed never to forget, so both those qualities would appear to rule Mr.
    McBride completely out of contention.

    How about "Dalek (Darlek?) in a china shop"?

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    • In a china shop - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 12:43 PM EST
    Darl isn't stupid
    Authored by: El_Heffe on Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 05:56 PM EST
    "And he no more has the ability to understand an information age than an elephant. He is what he is. OldThink. Old ways struggling to cope with a new world he doesn't understand."
    It's tempting to portray Darl as ignorant, that he "just doesn't get it". But that would be a mistake. Darl McBride is neither stupid, nor an old-fashioned businessman who's out of touch with the modern world. No, he's a crook. And it's important to understand the difference.

    He might not know anything about programming and wouldn't know error.h if it bit him on the ass, but he knows exactly what he's doing in his attacks against Linux. He's using all the standard tactics of the best con-men.

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    Leadership Power...
    Authored by: francis_x on Wednesday, February 04 2004 @ 11:28 PM EST
    Recently in work I had the oppurtunity to attend a course on the Foundations of Leadership. One particular piece shows relevance to this case.

    In the business world, where Linux is taking a major foothold, SCO has thrown their CEO into the fray as the person they want to make their case, as it were. There was one part of the course which talked about Leadership Power, and the types of power specifically. Leaders rely on their power to influence people, because people listen when they talk.

    People are listening to Darl McBride because he is in a position of power. But power can be abused. I believe Darl is abusing his position to get his way. People usually see, when the facts shine through, when a position is being abused, and then their judgements are pretty much set in stone.

    People are going to see how he is abusing his power, yet as a community, we need people to know this before he has his way, because if SCO wins their case, people will not adopt Linux because of their opinion of Darl and SCO, yet if we show him to be the fraud that he is now, they will refuse to pay SCO money when they adopt Linux, and so, SCO's claims become just a flash in the pan... Just something to think about...

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Bottled Water, Noorda, and a Commitment to MS
    Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 05 2004 @ 02:30 PM EST
    In lieu of all the animal references---

    and in the interest of not insulting any animals---

    How about a 'C.H.U.D.' in a China shop.

    For the less enlightened, C.H.U.D. stands for cannabalistic humanoid underground
    dweller, from the classic film of the same name, C.H.U.D.

    [ Reply to This | # ]
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