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SCO’s Darl McBride shown the door


By Jeff Feinman
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October 21, 2009 —  One of the more notorious fire-starters in the software industry has been doused by his company.

The Chapter 11 trustee that has taken over company operations for The SCO Group relieved Darl McBride of his duties as CEO last week. COO Jeff Hunsaker, CFO Ken Nielsen, and General Counsel Ryan Tibbitts will remain with the company and work with the trustee to get the company out of bankruptcy.

“These actions, while difficult, are essential to SCO becoming a more agile and efficient company, not just for this year, but for years to come,” Hunsaker said in a statement.

The company also hopes to finalize its latest restructuring plan by the end of November.

McBride was seen as a controversial figure in the software industry, frequently sending out open challenges over intellectual property ownership of Unix products. Rob Enderle, founder of the Enderle Group, said SCO had an “outspoken and divisive” style under McBride that really hurt the company’s image.

Enderle said the company is likely restructuring itself to fight the lawsuits. “That’s something I thought they should have done right at the beginning,” he said.

“The path SCO was on was one of litigation, and it needed to be focused on that first. Now you’re gonna see a company structured for litigation.”

SCO’s biggest blunder was trying to balance running a software company and the lawsuits at the same time, Enderle said. The analyst predicted that SCO will soon be run primarily by an attorney or a litigation expert.

While SCO’s chances to win its litigation might have seemed near impossible at one point, the United States Court of Appeals in August overturned a U.S. District Court decision that declared Novell the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights. The decision will send the matter to another trial, although SCO still owes Novell royalty payments.

The company said it will continue to try to raise funding and sell non-core assets. Those assets likely include SCO’s OpenServer Unix product line and its mobile business division. The company hoped to sell off those products through an auction earlier this year, but that attempt was shot down in court.




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