"Q: What was it that pushed you to the point of filing suit?
"A: The tipping point for us was at Linux World this year, when an IBM executive stood up in front of a large crowd and essentially said, 'We're moving our AIX expertise into Linux, and we're going to destroy the value of Unix.'
"Those comments alone would have been a direct violation of our AIX contract with IBM, under which they license our Unix intellectual property. That's what caused us to start digging [to] find out what was going on. And the deeper we dug, the more we found. When we tried to resolve things with them, we reached an impasse. This lawsuit is the final extension of the negotiating process..."
"VARBusiness: How many enemies do you need, my friend?
"McBride: Well, I've been saying we didn't go into this trying to win Miss Congeniality, and we're not in first place in that right now, that's for sure.
"VB: So what's the thinking, then, behind the legal activity?
"McBride: I understand why people are upset. And I understand why people are asking, 'Those SCO guys, what are they doing now?' But I would turn the question around to them and ask the question: 'What would you do if you were in our shoes?' What would you do if you had turned three independent programming teams loose on the question of 'Is our UnixWare inside of Linux?' and all three of those groups came back independently and said yes..."
