Re: Pay no attention to that email behind the curtain

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Fri, 2004-03-05 at 19:00, Stephen D. Reindl wrote:
> Yo boy. Are we having fun yet?
> http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5170181.html?tag=nefd_top
> Microsoft to SCO, take this $86 million, we don't need it!

Again, I've been the _most_skeptical_ of those conspiracy theories
saying Microsoft has taken advantage of the SCO situation, but by last
fall, I finally "woke up" to the obviousness of the truth.

SCO's legal moves as of July have _destroyed_ any chance of them
surviving.  Only Microsoft can benefit at this point.  And that's why
they had these "arrangements," to keep SCO alive as long as they can.

SCO had a legitimate gripe against IBM last March.  IBM had been playing
"big bully," previously taking SCO's money and mindshare, then saying,
"Oh yeah, that code we worked on together?  It's ours now, and you can't
have any."  That was SCO's future, even if bleak, it was something.  So
SCO sued, hoping IBM would settle.

When they didn't, SCO changed the game.  Instead of merely stating that
1) IBM withheld their code and 2) supported a competitor (Linux),
clearly both contract violations, SCO went after Linux in general
starting last May.  That was stupid.  But by last July, it was clear,
SCO was in the business of staying in business as long as it could to
hurt Linux.  Their own statements did them in.

So Halloween X was _no_surprise_ to me.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. -- Engineer, Technologist, School Teacher
b.j.smith@ieee.org



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