Investor to SCO: Dump CEO McBride

Polarizing Linux legal assailant and SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is not to be a part of the bankrupt Unix vendor's turnaround, according to a statement nestled in the Memorandum of Understanding between SCO and bailout patron Stephen Norris & Co. Capital Partners (SNCP).

The deal, in which an unnamed Middle East partner and SNCP will pour up to $100 million into SCO, states McBride "will resign immediately" from the company.

The bailout will privatize SCO and give SNCP a controlling stake in the company. SCO filed for Chapter 11 in September of 2007 and has been seeking a financial bailout while being kicked off the Nasdaq in December 2007. An earlier $36-million-deal with New York-based private investment firm York Capital fell apart in November 2007. Calls to SCO and SNCP were not returned, though McBride is widely controversial a chief architect of the lawsuits and is seen as a pariah in the open source community.

While a Novell spokesman declined to comment on McBride, the company, along with IBM, was the target of an Linux intellectual property (IP) lawsuits filed by SCO. In August, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball has ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix's IP rights, which largely negated the validity of the IBM lawsuit. While SCO plans to appeal the ruling, the decision could end up costing SCO millions in licensing fees to Novell.