An internet connection owned by SCO, the firm at the center of a legal battle over the open source operating system Linux, was used to delete information from SCO's Wikipedia entry last month.
Contributors to online discussion groups have now suggested that the same individual later went on to remove substantial amounts of unfavorable information from the Wikipedia entry, but the evidence they have so far offered to support this view is not strong, and appears to be circumstantial, at best.
On February 12, Wikipedia's records show, the SCO page was edited to delete a paragraph introducing SCO's Marketplace Initiative program. The IP address used, 132.147.251.249, is apparently controlled by SCO. The change was later undone by another user.
A contributor to the Investor Village forum noted this a few days later.
More recently, posters at that forum, and on the Yahoo message board for the SCO Group have attempted to show a link between this IP address and an online SCO advocate using the name CJHebgen - who first appeared on Wikipedia one month later, on March 13.
CJHebgen has repeatedly edited Wikipedia's pages about SCO, and SCO director, Darl McBride. The user has often removed information that could be seen as unfavorable to SCO. These edits have been swiftly reversed by other Wikipedia users.
However, the sole piece of evidence they have offered to link CJHebgen to the IP address is the fact that CJHebgen's first edit on Wikipedia included the removal of the same paragraph about the Marketplace Initiative program.
The SCO Marketplace Initiative was an attempt to encourage third party development of SCO's software base. Under the initiative, SCO says it will pay open source developers to create device drivers and port open source applications to SCO Unix. It is unclear how successful this has been. SCO is extremely unpopular amongst open source developers because it has claimed that small parts of Linux infringe on its intellectual property, and is fighting IBM in the courts over this issue.
It is not obvious why SCO staff would remove their Marketplace Initiative from Wikipedia. The program's main page still exists on the SCO website, although the FAQ page explaining it is no longer available.
'Hebgen' is a very uncommon surname. There appear to be no SCO staff with this name. Lake Hebgen is adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, about 300 miles north of SCO's home state of Utah.
Further discussion at Groklaw.
SCO CHEATING AGAIN? I'm shocked, shocked!
Everybody knows SCO is playing those sorts of tricks, but the smoking gun is not quite there is it?
Glad you just reported the facts. SCO sucks, but inspite of that they're innocent until proven guilty. The day when they finally get nailed can't come too soon.