[DMCA-Activists] "My Ongoing Battle to Try to Give SCO Money"

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Free Software Law Discussion list)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [fsl-discuss] SCO sales isn't yet authorized to sell Linux licenses
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 23:13:56 +0000
From: "M. Drew Streib" <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden, address@hidden

"My ongoing battle to try to give SCO Money"
by Drew

========

Thursday, Sept 4, 2003

Two weeks ago, I wised up.

I was sitting at my laptop, developing a product for my business on Linux,
and thought to myself "If SCO really does have IP in Linux, then I'd better
get me some licenses."

I called SCO.

The salesperson assured me that though they were backordered, I would hear
from a sales rep within two weeks. This was sort of frustrating, since this
meant that for two weeks my business was probably using copyrighted software
without a license, but owhell.

Two weeks passed without a phone call.

I called them again today, and a salesperson, beginning with "I don't know
quite how to explain this", let me know that there wasn't a product manager
for Linux licenses, and that there wasn't currently a way for salespeople to
sell these licenses. They were frustrated, too.

Since my business model involves distributing application servers,  I
expressed concern over the transferability of the license, and asked if the
license itself was available. It is not.

More assurances followed that this will be productized soon, and I'll
receive a phone call from my sales rep. Apparently the sales force for SCO
is pretty much in the dark about the whole thing (and none to happy about
it).

When I offer money to a sales rep, and he can't manage to give me any
product for it, we have a problem. As we all know, a sales rep would sell
his boss's children if it a customer was willing to offer money for them.
(And it counted towards his quartly sales quotas.)

=======

Moral of the story? I don't quite know. Despite all the arm waving, SCO is
still unable to let me throw money at them. They don't even have a
prospective license for me to view.

I'm continuously pointed to the three sentences on their web site, which is
all that even their salespeople know about the product.

How is it that they already have a fortune 500 customer, if they can't even
sell the thing to me using advertised prices?

Didn't they have a $699 offer for licenses that expired a couple weeks ago,
and the price went up to $1399 or so? According to my own research, not ONE
person must have bought at $699, because it  is impossible according to
their own salespeople to even purchase a  license right now.

Odd.

-drew

-- 
M. Drew Streib <address@hidden>
Independent Rambler, Software/Standards/Freedom/Law -- http://dtype.org/

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