Darl McBride
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Darl McBride (b. circa 1960) became the CEO of The SCO Group (formerly known as Caldera) on June 28, 2002. During his tenure, Caldera renamed itself The SCO Group, and on March 7, 2003 initiated litigation against IBM regarding the intellectual property status of the Linux operating system.
McBride holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University and received a Master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is fluent in Japanese and spent time in Japan as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[1]
From 1988 to 1996, he worked at Novell, where at first he was in charge of Novell Japan and later was vice president and general manager of Novell's Embedded Systems Division (NEST). He left Novell to become senior vice president of IKON Office Solutions. IKON fired him in 1998 after he rushed the execution of 33 business acquisitions.[2] McBride then filed a lawsuit against Ikon for $10 million, claiming breach of contract, nonpayment of wages, and fraud. IKON countersued, but the parties settled when IKON paid the disputed $1.14 severance fee in his contract. At that time, McBride was also fighting a divorce battle in court with his first wife. He was also involved in two startups, SBI and Company, a professional services company, which he founded and served as CEO, and later was CEO of PointServe, a software company, both of which he raised venture capital for.[2] From August 2, 2000 McBride was the president of Franklin Covey's online planning business until a few months prior to his recruitment for the SCO Group.[3]
Recently, he has become notorious in the information technology industry for his strategy of claiming intellectual property rights covering all of the various UNIX operating systems developed by IBM under a license originally granted by AT&T (see SCO v. IBM Linux lawsuit). SCO and McBride's series of confusing and complex legal actions targeted at Linux have especially angered the open source, free software and Linux communities.
A close friend of his, Ty Mattingly, is said to have told him, "Congratulations. In a few short months you've dethroned Bill Gates as the most hated man in the industry."[4] He has claimed to have received death threats from convicted felons, prompting him to carry a firearm and to employ multiple bodyguards.[1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b SCO so despised that chief is armed. deseretnews.com (2004-03-08). Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
- ^ a b Stone, Brad (July 2004). The Linux Killer. Wired. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
- ^ Darl McBride – President and Chief Executive Officer. The SCO Group. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
- ^ Torode, Christina (2003-11-14). Top 25 Executives: Darl McBride, President and CEO, The SCO Group. CRN. Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
[edit] External links
- Darl McBride Home Page
- Darl McBride Profile - Forbes.com
- Groklaw's complete list of all major legal filings in SCO v. IBM, both PDFs and text
- An Open Letter from Darl McBride
- SCO Company Directory: Darl McBride
- Monty Python Meets Darl McBride
