SCO"s CEO Darl "Mr. Clean" McBride is threatening legal action against Novell should its buy of SuSE be completed. The SCO chief laid down the law, so to speak, in a revealing interview with IDG News Service.
The SCO Group is charging that Novell"s purchase of SuSE would put it in violation of a non-compete agreement signed between Novell and The Santa Cruz Operation. The non-compete deal was part of the Unix System V software agreement the two companies forged in 1995. "When (The Santa Cruz Operation) sold us the property, included in the property was a non-compete," McBride told IDG News Service. "Last time I checked, Linux was intended to compete with our core products."
Add the non-compete agreement on to SCO"s concerns about Novell"s right to sell Linux, and you have a huge potential mess. In related news, SCO expressed its litigation love to Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP in the form of a $9m pay-out. SCO announced that it will hand over $1m in cash and 400,000 shares of SCO stock valued at close to $7.9 million to keep up the fight against IBM, Red Hat and the Linux community at large.