- Latest news
- Comment & opinion
- Industry metrics
- Jason Stamper's blog
- UK tech finance blog
- Open source blog
- CIO agenda blog
- Newsletter sign-up
- Jason Stamper's blog
- Open sources by Dave Rosenberg & Matt Asay
- Dana Blankenhorn's open source blog
- Stephe Walli's Once More Unto the Breach
- IBM's Bob Sutor
- Sun's Simon Phipps
- Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk
- Andy Updegrove's Standards Blog
- Zack Urlocker's The Open Force
- Linux-Watch
- Glyn Moody's open...
- Mark Hinkle's EncoreOpus
- Raven Zachery’s CAOS Theory
- Kaj Arno’s blog
- Open Source Unleashed
- Steve Ballmer’s 20 best quotes
- Sacrilege? Apple’s Wozniak says iPod has had its day
- How much open source runs on Windows in the enterprise? More than you might think
- Students sought for Java competition
- Open source content management built on .NET?
- Progress could get more into open source after Iona buy
- Charity slashes costs with open source
- Open source now mainstream, especially in Europe: survey
- Open Source Census lands next week
- Could open source help bail out the banks?
- Laters
- 10 reasons to try Google Chrome
- Google Chrome vs Firefox
- 10 best technologies to beat the downturn?
- Linux can’t scale? Time to change the record
- Open source integration on demand, anyone?
- Is iPhone 3G ready for the enterprise?
- IBM readies Requirements Composer for Jazz
- Open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint, anyone?
- The 10 Best Open Source Rules Engines
- Open source Amazon mashup integration, with a bit of cloud computing for good measure
- Is Windows for cheapskates, and do Macs rule the US?
- Barracuda suit 'not about open source': Trend Micro
- VMware makes Linux fan new CEO
- Reasons to choose Linux # 113
- Iona bought by Progress Software
- Stoking the open source rumour mill
- Open source solution to ‘dirty data’ problem?
- Open source solves UK cancer charity challenges
- Iona slaps Apache on the back
Open Source Blog
If this is true SCO’s execs are in BIG trouble
August 17, 2007
Via Matt Asay comes the new blog of retiring red Hat general counsel Mark Webbink who has some interesting thoughts on IBM, Canonical, and Novell/SCO so far.
The other post includes this piece of information:
“If you go back to the press conferences that SCO repeatedly called back in 2003 and 2004, they never began those press conferences by making the standard disclaimers cautioning investors to take what they were saying with a grain of salt. As a consequence, investors had every right to take what Darl McBride and Chris Sontag were saying in public back then as the gospel truth.”
This would be easy to verify if the audio files were still on http://ir.sco.com/ but a quick look didn’t show up anything
SCO made a lot of claims during those press conferences, some of which never made it to court and were quickly glossed over. At times it seemed like the company was saying whatever it could while it had the chance. It’s no coincidence that the public claims stopped once the legal nitty-gritty got started.
In that regard they already ranked as some of the most unprofessional press calls I have been involved with but if it’s true that the company failed to make the necessary legal disclaimers then they only have themselves to blame.
UPDATE - Here's the Groklaw link referred to in the comments. - UPDATE
Comments
Are they also not on record about millions of lines of code copied out of SCO Unix into Linux? Same argument, I should think.
Paul.
I listened in on many of those '03-'04 SCO quarterly earnings webconferences, and at the start of every one of them, the narrator/operator who directs the webcast *did* go through the usual rigamarole statements about forward-looking yadda yadda. I don't like defending SCO a bit, but to be fair, they did execute the proper CYA maneuvers.
Read Groklaw's News Picks for location of audio files. ;-)
To be fair, only one of the audio links on Groklaw is working, and it *does* have the necessary disclaimer
heh heh heh,
I'm reminded of a UserFriendly cartoon from last week...
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070818
The article referred to the early press conferences, not the later earnings presentations. The press conferences do lack a disclaimer. Groklaw has them on their site now, both as audio and transcripts.
Have another look at Groklaw.. since your story they have updated the audio links.
Groklaw have also confirmed that the 30 May, 21 July, 5 Aug and the October teleconference 2003 there were no disclaimers.
The November 18, 2003 does however have a disclaimer.
Link to Groklaw article: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070821015020947
"I listened in on many of those '03-'04 SCO quarterly earnings webconferences, and at the start of every one of them, the narrator/operator who directs the webcast *did* go through the usual rigamarole statements about forward-looking yadda yadda. I don't like defending SCO a bit, but to be fair, they did execute the proper CYA maneuvers."
You'll notice on Groklaw that a distinction is made between the earnings webconferences (which did have disclaimers) and their "Press Conferences" which did not...
According to Groklaw, they have all the audio files available and neither the transcript or the audio files have the disclaimers. PH has this as her top story today.
Groklaw has the audio files, and transcripts.
The article is talking about the press releases sco gave, not the earnings webcasts
Checked the links on Groklaw and they are all working now, and no, sco didn't give notice before all the "conference" calls.
Post a comment
back to top