Q&A: McBride says SCO isn't dead yet, despite legal loss

Computerworld - For most of his career in the IT industry, Darl McBride was a largely unknown executive working at Novell Inc. and several other companies. But nine months after he joined The SCO Group Inc. as its president and CEO in June 2002, McBride's name became a household word in the IT world. That's when Lindon, Utah-based SCO filed a $5 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging that it improperly contributed some of SCO's Unix intellectual property for use in Linux.

SCO also sued Novell, charging that McBride's former employer had falsely claimed to own the legal rights to Unix. It then went on to file additional lawsuits against some large Linux users. Last month, SCO was handed a big defeat when a U.S. District Court judge in Utah ruled that Novell is in fact the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights. The judge also ruled that as a result, Novell could direct SCO to revoke its copyright infringement claims against IBM.

McBride, who is 47, spoke recently with Computerworld about the judge's decision and where SCO will go from here. Among other things, he said that the Novell case isn't over and that this is "one of the more exciting times" for SCO. He even invoked Apple Inc.'s comeback from business problems and said that his company has an opportunity for a similar turnaround. Excerpts from the interview follow:

As the legal cases have slogged through the courts, you consistently have said publicly that SCO had the legal arguments to win and that you wanted your day in court. In light of last month's court rulings, are you prepared for the idea that you actually could lose this whole legal fight? We absolutely and fundamentally believe we are right in this case, and we believe in the justice system. But we also know that things don't always happen the way they're supposed to, and we're realistic about that point.

We don't believe that this latest ruling was a reflection of the facts that were involved in the case. And the way the system works, we get a chance to put up an appeal. One of the things that we're looking at right now is an interlocutory appeal, or a halt midstream, [to get an immediate ruling even as the trial proceeds].

Let's call a spade a spade: We just took a literal pounding. We got knocked down -- there is no doubt about it. This is not a good ruling for us. But it's not the end of the line of the legal battle. In fact, there's some very encouraging things that came out of even this ruling. And we will continue to fight on those fronts.

Can SCO survive even if it ultimately loses the legal fights? I think it's one of the more exciting times for this company. There's a story my general counsel shared with me. By coming out right now and saying this is an exciting time, it's like the boxer who has come out of the ring after getting all beaten up, and he comes over to his trainer and says, "The guy didn't touch me." And the trainer says, "Then you better keep your eye on the ref, because somebody's beating the living hell out of you." I run a little bit of a risk of that metaphor coming into play here by saying how excited we are, because we truly are disappointed [by the court rulings].