Blood money for SCO


Forbes is carrying the story that many knew would eventually be written about BayStar's investment in SCO. Of course, the latter is the company that has with futility tried to prove that IBM stole Unix code to bolster Linux.

BayStar investor Lawrence Goldfarb now claims years after his investment in SCO faltered that Microsoft pushed him to get involved.

In the course of my research about SCO, I became concerned that SCO might be merely a litigation company. As a result,[Microsoft senior vice president for corporate development and strategy, Richard Emerson] and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop,' or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment ... However, Microsoft would not put anything in writing on this point.

Today, Redmond claims without apparent irony that BayStar and its investment in SCO are completely unknown to the software giant, which is exactly what Goldfarb stated way back in 2003.

"The amount of paranoia relating to this issue is amazing," he's quoted as saying at the time.

Nevertheless, it was confirmed about a year later that Microsoft was the matchmaker between SCO and BayStar.

Paranoia, indeed...

What's your take?