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Citing both frustration and opportunity, Blake Stowell has resigned as spokesman for Utah's controversial SCO Group.
Stowell acknowledged Wednesday that he grew weary of mounting restrictions on his comments about SCO's $5 billion federal complaint against IBM and its other Linux-related lawsuits.
"I understand the reasons," he said, stressing he still supports SCO's legal campaigns. "Any time a company is going through litigation it has to be much more limited in what can be said. But there definitely were times when I wanted to say much more than I could."
On Monday, he began media relations work for Omniture, an Orem-based Web analytics company.
SCO's CEO Darl McBride said he understood Stowell's frustration, and that their parting was amicable.
"Omniture is an up-and-coming company . . . and public relations is a valuable tool," McBride said. "He got recruited and had an opportunity. We hated to see him go; he's been a real warrior for us."
Stowell was with SCO more than five years, but it was the company's 2003 filing of its suit against IBM that made him the public face - and lightning rod - for the Lindon software operation.
In U.S. District Court, SCO charged Big Blue with leaking its proprietary Unix code into the freely distributed Linux operating system. When Novell challenged SCO's Unix ownership claims, SCO sued for alleged slander of title. Trials are pending for both cases.
It was SCO's short-lived efforts to, in effect, issue its own licenses for Linux that ignited the wrath of the "open source" community. The global network of free software developers saw the move, since suspended, as an assault on the freely distributed Linux.
The rhetoric on both sides has eased some in recent months, particularly after a federal judge struck down two-thirds of SCO's purported evidence against IBM. That decision left a shell of SCO's case against Big Blue.
SCO is waiting for what could be a mortal wound to both lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball is considering a Novell motion that, if granted, would reject SCO's Unix ownership claims. If SCO loses that battle, the foundation for its IBM suit also slips away.