Wired News Talks To The Most Hated Man In Software
In case you haven’t seen it, Wired News ran a story this morning in which David Kravets sits down with the most hated man in technology — CEO and president of SCO Group, Darl McBride — to talk about the recent court decision against SCO.
On the outside chance you’ve been on an interstellar journey for the last ten years here’s the background: SCO has been fighting it out with Novell over the rights to Unix (and consequently large portions of Linux, according to SCO) for some time now. The majority of the dispute revolves around the wording of the purchase, which according to McBride, says at one point that SCO is purchasing “all right, title and interest in the Unix operating system,” but then later says “excluding copyrights and patents.”
McBride and SCO tout the most liberal interpretation of the former passage and are suing over the later, but a Utah judge recently ruled that SCO did not own Unix copyrights outright. However, McBride tells Wired News that the ruling also says “copyrights of Unix up to 1995 are owned by Novell. (But) any of the copyrights developed by SCO after 1995 are owned by SCO.”
It’s an interesting read if you’ve been following the case and it gives a look a face behind the name that Linux users everywhere love to drag through the mud.
