[Am-info] A hundred million funnelled from Microsoft to SCO...

[Mitch Stone]

Like I said, circumstantial evidence but nothing to take to the bank. 
Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with trusting Microsoft's 
motives, but no matter what Microsoft says or doesn't say, if BayStar 
is going to insist that Microsoft wasn't involved with this funding, 
then the story pretty much ends there.

On Mar 5, 2004, at 10:34 AM, Roy Bixler wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:33:15AM -0800, Mitch Stone wrote:
>> And BayStar continues to deny that any Microsoft funding went to SCO.
>> Short of a factual refutation of that statement, we're left with 
>> little
>> more than circumstantial evidence and contradictions.
>
> Sure, and Microsoft continues to deny it too as does SCO Group.
> However, I note that when a reporter asked the Microsoft spokesperson
> whether anyone from Microsoft has anything to do with the Baystar
> funding, they declined comment.  I was skeptical of the Microsoft
> connection myself, but now I am more convinced.  Why does SCO Group's
> rhetoric fall so closely in line with what Microsoft has to say about
> open source and the GPL?  Why does SCO Group wage such a public FUD
> campaign and file so many lawsuits that they don't really have much
> hope of winning?  By the way, their publicity campaign has hurt them
> in court with the IBM case.  Why did the BayStar funding start just a
> few days after the date of the leaked memo, which explictly said that
> the BayStar funding was a Microsoft referral?
>
> Of course, it's still possible that Microsoft's involvement may be
> strictly limited to buying a Unix licence that they really don't need
> so they could help SCO Group's FUD campaign by crowing about their
> "respect for intellectual property rights."  I'll continue to watch
> this with great interest and I hope the IBM, Red Hat, Novell and
> Department of Justice attorneys will do some digging to get the facts
> of the matter.
>
   -----------
   Mitch Stone
   mitch@accidentalexpert.com

   You can fool too many of the people
   too much of the time.
   -- James Thurber