The man who, as president and CEO of SCO, attempted to sue Linux out of existence died a month and a half ago with little notice by the Linux and open source communities.
Darl McBride died a month and a half ago and nobody in the Linux world seems to have noticed. I’m flabbergasted. I would never have thought it possible that a guy who dominated Linux news coverage from 2003 until 2007 — and whose actions at first scared the bejesus out of us whether we’d admit it or not — could be dead and buried for something like forever (in news cycle terms, at least) without coverage from the FOSS press.
McBride, who back in the early aughts was CEO of Utah-based SCO, is famous for trying to bring an end to Linux as we know it by taking on IBM, Daimler Chrysler, Novell, and many other corporations, in legal battles with the claim that Linux was filled with code that had been purloined from SCO’s proprietary versions of Unix.
Today I found out, from a short blurb that Techrights published on October 31, that McBride’s been dead since September 16. Techrights updated its notice this morning to include a copy-and-paste of a post, also made today, from the people-powered news aggregator site SoylentNews by a user with the handle Frosty Piss:
“It’s been a month and a half since Darl McBride kicked the bucket (who?), and nary a mention in the press. But then, perhaps most Linux followers today were not alive or old enough to have experienced Mr. McBride’s assault on Linux that could have very well ended its life as open source. Of course I’m talking about way back in the stone age when SCO sued IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and others for ownership of the Linux kernel. Those of us who were around followed the now defunct Groklaw for the latest dirt on this legal entanglement that is now for the most part forgotten.”
McBride Takes on Linux
The poster must’ve gotten the news from Wikipedia, because the post includes three paragraphs from McBride’s Wikipedia bio that includes a quote from former Novell EVP and McBride co-worker, Ty Mattingly, telling McBride, “Congratulations. In a few short months you’ve dethroned Bill Gates as the most hated man in the industry.”
What Mattingly said was close to true. For a short time he was perhaps the most hated person on the planet… at least, in Linux and open source circles. He claimed at the time that he’d received death threats, which was undoubtedly factual.
It appears that he returned the favor however, when he announced that SCO was investigating the writer who was most closely covering the legal brouhaha between Linux and SCO, which was PJ, the pen name used to protect the identity of the writer publishing the blog Groklaw.
Two weeks after the announcement, FOSS writer Maureen O’Gara, evidently working in cahoots with SCO, published an article in Linux Business News that identified PJ as Pamela Jones, and which contained unverified personal information about her, including a photo that was said to be of her home. Also published were the addresses and telephone numbers that purportedly belonged to Jones and her mother.
The Case That Wasn’t There
SCO’s threats against Linux quickly turned out to be without teeth. When McBride and his team at SCO revealed some snippets of code from Linux that it claimed were copies of its proprietary Unix code, some Linux researchers went to work and quickly discovered that the code in question was actually BSD code covered under the permissive BSD license, meaning that SCO was free to use it as part of its proprietary platform, and Linux was free to use it under its open source GPL platform.
That wasn’t enough to close the matter however, and SCO continued to push its case for several more years, until Novell, which had originally owned the SCO code, was able to get a court to rule that when it’d sold the code to SCO it had retained the copyright, which meant that SCO no longer had any standing in the case.
Even then the case wasn’t completely finished. As recently as 2017, long after McBride left the company, and even after SCO had all but ceased to exist as a functioning entity, the case was briefly revived, only to be slapped down again.
After leaving SCO, McBride took some software that he bought from SCO in a bankruptcy sale and started a company called Shout, which marketed an engagement platform. Then in 2021 he took a job as chief operating officer at Japan-based VirnetX, which markets a secure digital communications platform. According to his obituary, McBride passed away on September 16, 2024 after a battle with ALS. He was 64.
In case you’re worried, McBride was far from friendless at the end. In researching this article I found a nice “goodbye” piece on the website Utah Money Watch by writer David Politis who was a close personal friend of McBride.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Of course I remember this case quite well.
While working at DEC I saw both of the contracts between Novell and SCO since DEC was a licensee of Unix from the days of AT&T. My boss showed me the contracts and asked me to comment on them. I remember telling him “SCO did not get the copyright…they really got nothing” and my boss answered back “That is what I read too…I just wanted a second opinion.”
In 1997 Linus received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Uniforum Association (I was on their Board at the time). The Board member that nominated Linus for the award and who insisted on giving it to him personally was none other than Doug Michaels, who (along with his father, Larry) co-founded Santa Cruz Operations (SCO). I have a picture of Doug presenting the award to Linus.
Later Doug was quoted in the press with some bad words about Linux. I wrote to him and asked him about it. Doug said that he was misquoted and that SCO shares ideas with Linux and Linux shares ideas with SCO (I do not remember the exact words, but that was the meaning.
Later, during the trial I sent this information and the picture to the IBM lawyers. I do not know if it made any difference in the case.
One last thing. While McBride was not my favorite person in any way, shape or form I refuse to find any joy in his death, particularly from ALS. I think that just dying in such a fashion with such little fanfare or acknowledgement is enough penalty for what he tried to do. No bell tolled for Darl McBride.
“I’m flabbergasted. I would never have thought it possible that a guy who dominated Linux news coverage from 2003 until 2007 — and whose actions at first scared the bejesus out of us whether we’d admit it or not — could be dead and buried for something like forever (in news cycle terms, at least) without coverage from the FOSS press.”
I’m flabbergasted that you think we even care about someone that wrote an anti-Linux article – 20 YEARS AGO!!!
He was a scumbag in life and he’s going to have a lot to answer for.
We’re a little confused Lactose. What anti-Linux article written 20 years ago are you talking about, and what does that have to do with this article? Just wondering.
I don’t know how he was in person, but his deed was perfectly evil, indeed more so than Microsoft trying to kill the Linux movement. Microsoft famously killed a lot of new ideas by all means, fair and unfair, but was unable to squash Linux, as it was not a company but a movement, the biggest triumph of world wide collaboration in recent history, and with Android on a layer of Linux, and as a base of so many small non-PC devices and IOT, undoubtedly is the number one in numbers today, including the money spinner Azure by Microsoft running on Linux!
I can’t wait for Linux to reach 3% desktop share. It’s been 20 years now, so in another 10 or so?
Do not forget that Microsoft was funding SCO/McBride through a Canadian bank. I’m surprised that didn’t come up since both Microsoft and Bill Gates came up in the article about SCO and they were only able to continue attacking because of moneys from them. McBride and Gates were probably friends since they are both cons and will do anything to protect their assets.