The leaked e-mail about Microsoft was shown to be genuine – but SCO argued that it was a misinterpretation of the facts. The Computer Associates problem is potentially more damaging.
SCO announced last week that Computer Associates was one of four named companies to sign up to SCO's UnixWare licence – the licence that it says most Linux users should buy if they want to avoid the wrath of its legal team.
But SCO neglected to mention that the enterprise solutions company only signed up to the licence as part of the settlement terms for a dispute with SCO's majority shareholder.
EV1Servers.Net last week became the first company to admit purchasing an SCO UnixWare licence. Then, on Thursday, SCO announced that Computer Associates, Leggatt & Platt and Questar had also purchased licences. This was met with a denial of support for the licensing programme by both Questar and Computer Associates.
Chad Jones, spokesman for Questar, told CNET News: "our usage is so small and isolated, it made business sense to pay the licence fee they were asking rather than risk potential litigation". The deal was not made out of support for SCO's claims, said Jones.
Computer Associates issued a statement from its senior vice president Sam Greenblatt saying that it had taken a licence but that: "CA disagrees with SCO's tactics, which are intended to intimidate and threaten customers. CA's license for Linux technology is part of a larger settlement with the Canopy Group. It has nothing to do with SCO's strategy of intimidation".
There were further embarrassments for SCO. Last week SCO launched its first lawsuits against Linux end-users, with filings against AutoZone, a Memphis-based car parts retail giant, and DaimlerChrysler – alleging that their use of Linux is in breach of SCO's copyright.
Embarrassingly for SCO's lawyers, however, a copy of the Word document of the DaimlerChrysler suit found its way into the hands of tech site CNET News.com, and proved to contain hidden prior versions of the document, which show that the Bank of America was the original target of the suit.
Microsoft Word contains a feature that allows contributors to a document to track the changes that have been made. Unfortunately this 'metadata' is not always removed when the document is made public, as appears to have happened in this case.
According to CNET News, the Bank of America was the named defendant in the legal action until 11.10 on 18th February. SCO, the Bank of America and SCO's lawyers have made no comment on the discovery to date.