Questionable business practices
The SCO Group is suing IBM over code theft issues regarding UNIX and Linux. They don’t really have a case, but it doesn’t matter in the current justice system, does it? These lawsuits aren’t meant to win back wrongfully-taken earnings. They’re meant to harass the company being sued into paying them off to go away. Need proof of that? Take the latest from Forbes Magazine, on the history behind SCO:
In 1996, SCO’s predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft, eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant. In 1997, Darl McBride, now SCO’s chief executive, sued his then employer, IKON Office Solutions, and won a settlement that he says was worth multiple millions. (IKON acknowledges the settlement but disputes the amount.)
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As with the 1996 DOS lawsuit against Microsoft, in the current lawsuit over Unix and Linux this company aims to take a nearly dead chunk of old code, bought for a song, and parlay it into a windfall. Not only is the strategy the same–so are some of the players.
That’s this company’s mode of operation. They can’t successfully sell software, so instead they buy up something else in order to create a lawsuit out of it. Wonderful. Just the kind of people I’d want to be doing business with. Welcome to the Gotcha School of Business.
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