BusinessWeek: The Most Hated Company In Tech

” He can’t say he wasn’t warned. In June, 2002, when Darl
McBride was getting ready to take over as chief executive at
struggling Caldera International Inc. in Lindon, Utah–later
renamed SCO Group Inc.–he mused that claiming ownership of some of
the underlying code in the popular Linux computer operating system
could keep the company afloat. Even though Caldera’s revenues were
declining, it was losing $5 million per quarter, and its stock had
slid below the $1 NASDAQ delisting price, the reaction of outgoing
CEO Ransom Love was instantaneous. ‘Don’t do it,’ Love says he told
McBride. ‘You don’t want to take on the entire Linux
community.’

“McBride did it anyway. Last March, he shook up the computer
world by filing a $3 billion suit against tech giant IBM, claiming
Big Blue had illegally inserted more than 800,000 lines of
SCO-owned software code into Linux. Since then, McBride has turned
up the heat. In December, SCO sent letters to more than 1,000 Linux
customers accusing them of illegally using SCO’s property. Now, the
company warns that it will sue a Linux user within days. One
potential target, SCO says, is Internet search phenom Google Inc.
The company, which says it has not talked to SCO about its claims,
uses Linux computers and is on the verge of its initial public
offering…”

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