Investment firm confirms Microsoft link to SCO

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Investment company BayStar Capital has confirmed ties between two Linux foes, saying Thursday that a Microsoft referral led to $50 million in BayStar funding for the SCO Group.

[blockquote]Word of the Microsoft matchmaking surfaced last week when open-source advocate Eric Raymond published a leaked memo about Microsoft's help in the BayStar investment. SCO Group confirmed the authenticity of the memo but said its author, S2 Strategic Consulting's Mike Anderer, misunderstood the situation. Open-source fans leaped on the memo as evidence that Microsoft is aiding SCO's attack on Linux.
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[link=http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5172426.html?tag=nefd_top]The full report[/link]

Straight_Man

Here's a hypothesis:

Let's say that Microsoft's legal department balked at sticking a lot of open source stuff into Windows if the patent and ownership provinance was in doubt, as Microsoft does not need another major legal battle. SCO convinced them they had a case, and with the core patents in one basket then one company gets royalities, not IBM for some, Novell for some, and SCO for others, or a four-way legal fight(actually five way, Sun wants a part of the action also) to see who gets what that in itself would be hyper-expensive. Novell is moving to Linux compatible software and knowsn how to make itse servers work with Windows. They want a piece of the intercompatibility services and major enterprise app pie.

Microsoft also does, but needs the legal field cleared also before they can own rights to use Linux stuff. They have already had to roll back Yukon and the next Visual Suite and Longhorn because of muddy legal grounds facing them if they use things they apparently want to use. Unix\Linux\BSD\Solaris\Sun Linux plus Java TOGETHER have a lock on web services that is growing, and to compensate Microsoft needs intercompatibility. Not only that, but the distros that have this growing major presence use W3C web code as default. that htreatens IE, frontpage, .net, office, outlook, and lots of the integration work Microsoft wanted a first-come and patented exclusive on with thier own coding. W3C has XML specs that vary from .net XML by a LOT.... Microsoft wants to own or license the base for translation and bridging software between the standards. They can't if the base code processes are up for legal fighint of major kinds. They want it settled. They picked a side. SCO did not have the warchest on its own for this big a fight, so Microsoft is using SCO as a straw-man to try and get rights issues majorly settled.

John D.

Jengo

i say SCO can go **** themselves.

qparadox

Eerrr Ageek, SCO is only contending the Linux Kernel code, the majority of the things you've listed are 3rd party code that SCO clearly has no right over and whose development process has been clearly documented and should prove this rather easily. There may be a conspiracy here but I bet its more along the lines of FUD than anything else.