即便是对一家软件公司来说，上合组织集团也是一个微不足道的小集团。但正如其首席执行官达尔•麦克布莱德（Darl McBride）喜欢指出的那样，“我们的足迹比我们4000万美元的收入所显示的要大得多。”
That's an understatement. For starters, this bigfoot, though it has just 200 employees, distributes and delivers its products through 11,000 resellers in 82 countries. Lindon, Utahbased SCO's customers include McDonald's Corp. and Samsung Corp. They, along with thousands of small and medium-size businesses, use SCO's software to power servers that run on Intel Corp. chips and the Unix operating system.
但让该公司在科技界产生如此巨大影响并引起如此激烈争议的是，SCO声称，被无数大公司采用的广受欢迎的Linux操作系统侵犯了其Unix知识产权。麦克布莱德希望在法庭上证明，Linux是Unix的近亲，它在过去十年中在开源社区中不断发展，不收取许可费，因此他可以向这些公司用户（及其供应商）收取可能非常昂贵的许可费。
In March 2003, SCO filed a suit against Linux promoter IBM Corp. in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City seeking at least $1 billion in compensation for alleged licensing violations. Victory would strike a blow for fairness, McBride believes -- and also give him the capital to build SCO into a world-class systems developer.
高风险的审判即将开始
in November 2005. Meanwhile, SCO has filed suit against Linux users AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler for alleged copyright infringement and breach of contract, respectively. The company has also taken action against Novell, the networking software company that happens to be SCO's former owner and likewise proclaims itself the owner of Unix.
The technology establishment is solidly in IBM's corner. Beaverton, Oregonbased Open Source Development Labs, a consortium backed by Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Intel and others, has formed a fund to fight claims like those SCO is pressing. Linux's revered inventor, Linus Torvalds, who works at OSDL, has called SCO "the most despised company in technology."
在9月份的听证会上，IBM律师万豪（David Marriott）指责上合组织没有提供支持性证据，因为“简单地说，上合组织没有证据”
由超级明星诉讼律师大卫·博伊斯（davidboies）代表的SCO反驳说，IBM未能为SCO表示需要显示Linux和Unix之间连接的数百万行代码提供“路线图”。
2002年6月麦克布莱德接手时，上合组织的股价为76美分，该公司即将从纳斯达克股票市场退市。上海合作组织对IBM提起诉讼后，其股价稳步攀升，从2.10美元升至第二年10月17日的最高点22.92美元，市场预期该公司至少会得到一些回报。但随着案件的拖延和业界反对声音的增强，截至11月中旬，该股跌至约3.50美元。
“我们没有退缩，”这位首席执行官在谈到版权之争时说我们是大卫，至少我们有大卫在我们这边”--一个对博伊斯的引用我们有非常强烈的要求，有足够的资金将这场斗争进行到底，最重要的是，我们有真相站在我们这边。”
现年45岁的麦克布莱德（McBride）成为了上合组织（SCO）的首席执行官，上合组织是“圣克鲁斯行动”（Santa Cruz Operation）的缩写，其前身是上合组织的一个开发基地所在的加利福尼亚市，当时上合组织是一个麻烦重重的Novell分支机构，名为“卡尔德拉国际”（Caldera International）。他很快决定，如果公司要生存下去，就必须强制执行Unix许可权。
McBride最近与机构投资者助理总编辑Jeffrey Kutler讨论了上海合作组织的法律和商业战略。亚博赞助欧冠
是什么吸引你来上海合作组织的？
McBride:It was like a sleeping giant. Unix, which Novell had once bought for hundreds of millions of dollars, was just sitting there -- not merely underutilized, but not utilized. The company had burned through $100 million in cash, and the tank was pretty much empty. Six months after I arrived, we launched a plan to protect the value of the Unix intellectual property.
在这之前你在做什么？
我曾在Novell担任主管Novell Japan的高管，在四年内，Novell Japan的收入从零增长到1.2亿美元。在那期间，在1994年，我帮助旋转火山口出诺维尔。后来我中断了业务，做了几家初创公司，最著名的是SBI Group，它对Razorfish、Scient和Viant等[技术咨询公司]进行了整合。【SBI于7月被互联网营销公司AQuantive收购。】当Caldera董事会找我做这份工作时，我正准备再创业一次。
SCO的核心业务被法律斗争所掩盖吗？
There are two big operating systems in the world, Unix and Windows, and we happen to own one of them. The intellectual property ownership of Unix is one aspect of our business and is the subject of the legal wrangling. That gets most of the press these days, even though we have some exciting things going on in the other part of our business, which involves taking one of our own branches of the Unix tree and developing it around the Intel chip architecture. We have an installed base of 2 million servers divided into two segments: small and medium-size businesses and large chains, including CVS, Costco and McDonald's. These companies buy our Intel-based system because it's reliable and cheap. Our mean time between failures is three and a half years, while our competition's is measured in weeks or months.
服务器业务的当前状态是什么？
Thousands of companies each quarter are buying software from us. We also have an initiative within the company called Renovation through Innovation, which focuses on new ideas for launching server-based software in the Internet age -- moving toward a Web services approach, as opposed to a pure client-server model.
How do you divide your time?
现在，法律列车正沿着轨道运行，核心业务的现金流为正[截至7月31日的第三个财政季度，Unix收入为1050万美元，毛利率为880万美元]，我将大约三分之一的时间花在诉讼上，三分之一的时间花在核心业务上，三分之一的时间在寻找新的增长机会。我们对我们的诉讼案充满信心，相信一旦我们的诉讼请求得到审理，我们就可以专注于创新和技术，为我们下一步的发展做出贡献。
So the future business strategy is closely tied to what happens in court?
It really is. Our revenue line has been going south since 2001, when IBM pulled the plug on a joint development project with us [which began in 1998] and Linux began to take off. We feel that we got pushed into a corner. We either lie down and die or fight back and defend our rights. We believe those IP rights have significant value. Since taking that fight into the judicial system, we have come under extreme attack. We just want our case to be heard, and we are confident that we will prevail. At one time, we had a $250 million revenue stream, and we're capable of scaling back up to that size relatively quickly once we can focus on growth again.
您是如何催促收取Linux许可费的？
在2003财年，我们获得了超过2000万美元的许可证费用，基于我们的版权所有权，我们认为我们对未来有很好的定位。但是在一月份，Novell提交的注册文件与我们在版权局的文件产生了冲突之后，我们对Novell提起了“诽谤所有权”诉讼。现在，IBM、Novell和他们在世界各地的数千名盟友在互联网上发布消息，称Novell确实拥有版权。这对我们的许可计划产生了令人寒心的影响，我们正在努力解决这些问题。
How exposed are corporate users to Linux actions?
We have some companies coming in asking for licenses to run Linux. We do not offer or sell a license to run Linux; it's for the right to use our intellectual property, which others have improperly put into Linux. Our license thus provides safety to the end user from any issues we have. Other companies are taking a wait-and-see approach with respect to the litigation. In terms of direct action, we have filed an illustrative lawsuit against AutoZone for copyright infringement for their use of Linux, and pending further developments in that action, we are not actively addressing these issues with companies.
Has the notoriety helped SCO, all in all?
当我加入时，市场上限为600万美元;现在它是6000万美元。当然，在另一个角落里，你拥有1600亿美元的IBM。但是，我们得到了关注，因为我们正在反对和我们的一方面，我们有20年前的unix合同，这是一个非常强大的，我们只是在加强这些产权的过程中。我们现在在重量级部门，不得不加强一点。我们要赢得这件事，或者我们要去尝试。