SCO to Groklaw's PJ: Who Are You?

SCO to Groklaw's PJ: Who Are You?

A routine earnings call for SCO Group, with a few cloak-and-dagger comments about a well-known anti-SCO blogger thrown in.

Jim Wagner
InternetNews

April 14, 2005

Who are you really, Pamela Jones?

For the chief executive of the SCO Group, the Unix vendor in the midst of copyright lawsuits over parts of Linux, this is a question the public needs answered in more detail.

For the operator of a popular anti-SCO blog Groklaw.net, that is -- Pamela Jones -- the answer to such a question depends on how deep one wants to go: to the existential realm or to the Web site for some background.

Pamela Jones, PJ to many, runs a Web site following the legal twists and turns of the highly publicized SCO suit against IBM over copyright claims in Linux code, as well as other legal proceedings affecting the free and open source software (FOSS) community.

To say PJ's not a SCO fan would be an understatement, a fact that has won her the adoration of a legion of FOSS fans.

The site's popularity, and expansive collection of documents and analysis related to the SCO case, even prompted SCO executives to launch a resource site of its own -- its second attempt at doing so -- to foil Groklaw.

It also prompted executives at the Lindon, Utah, company to check into the background of their blogging nemesis. The result, McBride said, is that PJ is misleading her readers by not being the person she claims.

"Who is Pam Jones?" he said. "And it's all about credibility; I believe that once people learn some of the things we've come to learn, there is going to be a serious question as to the credibility of that organization.

"You'll find that everyone is being misled as to who she says she is, and that the identity of Pamela Jones is much different than is advertised," he said.

The comments came during a conference call with analysts and members of the media discussing SCO's first-quarter 2005 results Wednesday afternoon. Specifically, they came when McBride was trying to elaborate on some of the difficulties the company has generating revenues from its SCOsource licensing program.

In the first quarter, the company only netted $70,000 in revenues from the program, which protects Linux users from SCO litigation.

Listening to the same conference call as other media types, PJ had a rejoinder in place on her site shortly after the conference call saying she is honored "to be smeared" by SCO. For her part, PJ says in the Groklaw entry, she knows who she is and poked fun at the idea of speculation into who she really is and what's being said about her true identity by SCO officials.

"One guess was that I was [Open Source Initiative co-founder] Eric Raymond, with his lawyer wife whispering in his ear," she writes. "Another guess was that I am a composite of IBM lawyers. Another was ... I forget. It's too silly. They didn't get it right yet, that I've heard. The truth is, I'm an alien from a galaxy far, far away ... or I'm Shakespeare, who was really a group of American housewives pretending to be an English playwright ...."

McBride said that once the company has all its facts complete, it will release PJ's identity "at a certain point in time."