Darl McBride Quotes

United States, Entrepreneur
November 24, 1959

Darl Charles McBride is an entrepreneur and CEO of Shout TV Inc. McBride is best known as the former CEO of The SCO Group. On March 7, 2003, during McBride's tenure as CEO of the company, The SCO Group initiated litigation against IBM, alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement claims connected to Unix. The case is considered one of the top 10 technology battles of all time. SCO Group lost in a series of court battles, and was eventually forced into bankruptcy.

Linux doesn't have IP roots.

Darl McBride
- Roots
- Linux
We're not talking about insignificant amounts of code. It's substantial System V code showing up in Linux.

Darl McBride

When we take a top-tier view of the amount of code showing up inside of Linux today that is either directly related to our Unix System 5 that we directly own or is related to one of our flavors of Unix that we have derivative works rights over--we don't necessarily own those flavors, but we have control rights over how that information gets disseminated--the amount is substantial. We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred [sic] of thousands of lines of code.

Darl McBride
The business model of Linux distribution is broken; it's like the business model of the dotcoms. Running your company on Linux is like running your company on Napster.

Darl McBride
We counted over a million lines of code that we allege are infringed in the Linux kernel today.

Darl McBride
- Today
- Millions
- Kernel
I've been pounding the table here for a year or so saying there's no free lunch, and there is going to be a day of reckoning for every company that thinks they are going to try and sell a free model.

Darl McBride
- Thinking
- Company
- Models
And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++.

Darl McBride
Mark my words, there will be a day that will come when you will all see many, many documents that will directly contradict IBM's current public posturing.

Darl McBride

IBM has taken our valuable trade secrets and given them away to Linux.

Darl McBride
- Taken
- Secret
- Given
At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value.

Darl McBride
Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim.

Darl McBride
- Claims
- Heritage
- Code