The View from Utah
Off GROKLAW's forum: mobucote talks about embarrasment that McBride is causing to Mormons:
When a fellow Mormon is mentioned in the media I usually feel excitement for the accomplishments of that person. However Darl McBride's behavior is hardly something to feel pride over. I feel his business ethics are questionable and embarrassing to his religious community. I hope no further reference in the media will be made to Darl McBride and his religion for the sake of all Mormons.
I think Mobucote (whose MT "Reply" link is broken) is a little oversensitive. "$company_name, a $location based $category company today announced" is absolutely standard cliched boilerplate for the start of a business news story. A fair fraction of the stories mention that IBM's headquarters are in Armonk NY, as if that has anything much to do with their global operations.
Aside from that - yes, Utah is a slightly unusual location for a software company (i.e. it's not California). No more strange than mentioning "Ottawa", or "Helsinki" or "Sydney". Yes, I realize Novell and WordPerfect are in Utah. Making the connection to them is one reason why it's interesting to mention the location.
Another reason is the presence of the Canopy Group in many Utah technology companies. Apparently they have a deeper involvement in this shambles than merely being a SCO shareholder. IBM's subpoena of Canopy may bring out more details.
Why does the Economist and other publications mention McBride's Mormon belief? Partly just human color for the story. Partly because if you publicly make some kind of commitment to a particular moral code, people are going to expect you to live up to it on little matters like honesty and fair dealing.
posted Mon 15 Sep 2003 in /issues/sco-vs-linux | link
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