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But now, thanks to a volunteer working on doing the exhibits in the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation as text, we find an email thread in Exhibit 8953 [PDF] where Microsoft employees, including the managing director of Microsoft in India at the time, mention SCO in a discussion about heading off the Linux threat in India. The emails are dated September 11, 2002. Given the date, I believe this opens up the question of Microsoft's involvement once again. At a minimum, it needs clarification. If it doesn't demonstrate Microsoft knowing about SCO's plans before they unfurled, what does it mean? I'd like Microsoft to tell us. Because I have a lot of questions about the email thread.

First, the date. Let's put it in a timeline context, in reverse chronological order, because this email thread is before any public mention of SCOsource and long before SCO sued IBM.

        * Microsoft announced it had paid for a SCO license in May of 2003.

        * SCO sued IBM in March of 2003.

        * SCOsource was announced in January of 2003.

        * David Boies was announced as representing SCO in January of 2003.

        * Darl McBride said in August of 2003 that when the company filed its stock sales plan in January of 2003, it was "months before legal action was contemplated" in the context of trying to claim there was no connection between the two. I think we can put that in the hardy har bucket.

        * The Microsoft email thread mentioning SCO is dated September of 2002.

        * Darl McBride joined SCO as CEO in June of 2002, according to this SEC filing, and he is described as "responsible for the Company's strategic direction and planning".

Does it not strike you as strange, given the timeline, that here in September of 2002, Microsoft seems to have known something was pending that would be helpful to Microsoft in its Linux competition that related to SCO? It does me. Some Microsoft employees are discussing an EDGI-like education plan for India, and Rajiv Kaul, then managing director of Microsoft in India, says this:

    Am in Redmond this week. Wanted to catch up with you. You might be aware of the work Bric team is doing on the proactive EDGI like proposal. Given the impact of Education market in India globally for us and the threats from Linux and piracy, I want to make this a big bet plan in India (post Novell - Sco and Trishul).

 

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