“November 7, 2003 Naperville, IL.
Jeff Gerhardt CEO of IBSS, Inc and the internationally known host of The Linux Show (www.thelinuxshow.com), announced today that he has laid down the challenge to dispute the claims being made by SCO CEO Darl McBride at this months Enterprise IT Week/CDXPO event (www.cdxpo.com). Gerhardt will challenge McBride during the November 18th CDXPO Town Hall Meeting that Follows a key note address by McBride
For over a year Mr. McBride has recklessly been making outrageous claims on issues and allegations impacting the Open Technology communities and the IT community as a whole. These claims have been damaging to all firms in the IT business; but in particular have done great disservice to business growth in the Linux and Open Technology Industries. These claims are near 100% spurious, and have gone unchallenged by most of the press. I do not blame the members of the media as they can not be fully versed in every issue, especially one so complex as this. But, enough is enough, it is time for McBride to stop spouting allegations and platitudes against entire industry groups unless he has specific evidence for his claims. In well over a years worth of FUD and whining, about the supposed wholesale theft of SCO Intellectual Property, I have found only one single claim against a single vendor to have even the slightest hint of validity. The millions or hundreds of thousands of lines of Obfuscated SCO UNIX code supposedly included into Linux are simply a fabrication by SCO.
It is time for a SCO Reality Check said Gerhardt, McBride has become unhinged with his latest flurry of charges and claims; you would think that the commies are at the gate. Just because Caldera/SCO has had a bad business plan and bad management does not mean Open Technology is a flawed business model and bad for the American economy. Open Technology and Open Source software has been a key part of the growth of the IT industry since our beginning. Further, the fact that a large number of very stupid venture capitalists blew a whole bunch of money on very stupid dot com ideas in the late 1990s, does not mean the Internet community, which is part and parcel of the open technology community, has somehow poisoned the well for profit based businesses on the internet. This Culture of Intellectual Property Theft as McBride claims exists, is a diversion away from the real issues. The mere idea that SCO (and McBride) is elevating itself into the role of defender of the American way of life; democracy, MOM, apple pie, free enterprise and the IP rights of the Hollywood industries, is just laughable. I think Darl should join the RIAA and the MPAA, he seems far more comfortable with them than competing in the IT industry.
The main stream press, not being aware of the subtleties of this debate, do not have the facts at hand to challenge Darl McBride. I am very gratified that the people at Enterprise IT week and CDXPO have agreed to allow me to participate in the Town Hall meeting immediately following McBrides key note speech. I will of course present the audience with any needed data to counter the claims that McBride may make in his key note. I have the facts at hand to dispute 99.9% of all the claims SCO has made over the last year. I am happy to take on this role as I am aware of information that only a handful of people in the world have had access to over the last year. In particular specific knowledge on how McBride was offered the opportunity by Linux community leadership to prove his case and then partner with the Linux Community on resolving SCOs issues. Had SCO taken this action, it may have significantly helped their case against IBM. SCOs legal team basically spit in the face of the Linux community, preferring to continue the FUD battle. Even if I did not have the other mountain of evidence to disprove SCOs claims, the only thing a reasonable person could conclude from SCOs action of turning down a gift horse offer is that even they do not believe their case has a chance.
However let me make it clear, although I will be armed with facts as needed, I see no point in some sort of silly battle with McBride. The facts will speak for themselves. SCO does not need my help to embarrass themselves. What I feel is FAR more important for me to convey to the audience assembled is the great news about what is going on in IT as it relates to Open Technologies. I want to give a positive upbeat commentary on why Open Technology continues to make as much sense today, as it did in the early days of IT, and especially in the specific reference to the enterprise focused audience that will be assembled. The Enterprise IT manager has more to gain right now, than any other market sector. Medium and small business will follow in the future, but Linux and Open Source are here NOW for the Enterprise and that includes the Enterprise Desktop client machine. This is a great time for Open Technology.”
In addition to participating in the Home Town meeting on Tuesday the 18th of November, Gerhardt will be the Moderator of a Linux Round Table on Monday the 17th of November. Both events will be held at Enterprise IT Week Conference held in conjunction with the CDXPO. Information on the convention can be found at http://www.cdxpo.com
About Gerhardt, Ibss Inc., the GeekCast.Com Network and The Linux(R) Show!!
Jeff Gerhardt is a 48 year old entrepreneur, and CEO of IBSS, Inc celebrating its 20th year as an IT Integration and business development firm. IBSS is presently engaged in several development projects and has previously started up three different ISPs. Gerhardt and his key partner in IBSS, Kevin Hill, are well known for developing bleeding edge Internet technologies and have won a number of Best of Show awards through the years.
Gerhardt has been a believer in Open Technology since his days writing basic language code for the Tandy Corporation (late 1970s). He has continued to act as an advocate to create public awareness to the benefits gained from Open Technology ever since those early days. Primarily because of his broadcasting activities on The Linux Show, Gerhardt is recognized around the world for his work as an evangelist for open standards and open technologies.
Gerhardt is about to celebrate his 25th year of marriage (to the same woman) and has a 13 year old daughter.
In his spare time when he is not running his business, or broadcasting, Gerhardt can be found teaching Computer Science classes at Northwestern Business College, (www.northwesternbc.edu) a private college in the Chicago market. At NBC, in addition to teaching, Gerhardt is presently drafting the curricula for approval by the State of Illinois for the first (2-year) Associates Degree program focused on Unix and Linux in the state of Illinois.
GeekCast.Com Network is the home network of The Linux(R) Show!! Headquartered in the offices of IBSS, Inc an Illinois ISP doing business as IbssNet.Com. GeekCast was started as a demonstration of the flexibility, capability and power of broadcasting using Open Source IT tools. The business model and technology base created by GeekCast, is now being used by small broadcasters around the word.
The Linux(R) Show!! is GeekCast’s “flagship” show, and is the No. 1 and longest running Linux and Open Technology focused webcast in the world. Broadcasting in their sixth year every Tuesday night, TLS as it is known to its listener base, is regularly listened too live or in archive delay by an estimated regular listener community of 75,000
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.”
