Embattled “software” company SCO (NASDAQ: delisted) has been formulating its legal and corporate strategy by reading the popular website Groklaw, and doing the exact opposite of what readers suggest.

“Truth is, we ran out of money for the lawyers and had no idea what else to do,” said a source inside SCO. “It seemed like a good way to keep things running without doing any actual thinking.”

According to emails leaked to PTTBT, SCO staffer Betty Lemar was tasked with spending at least five hours a day reading Groklaw, carefully dissecting the comment threads to ascertain popular opinion. Her reports to the executive level would then be adapted to achieve the exact opposite effect, and implemented as legal strategy.

In some cases, the legal team at IBM would throw them for a loop by raising as-of-yet undiscussed topics in court, for which SCO had no response.

“If we didn’t understand what they [IBM] were talking about, Darl told us to ask for a continuance and wait a few days for [Groklaw founder] PJ to do her magic,” said an unnamed source on the Board of Directors at SCO. “Half the filings we made in the Novell case were complete gibberish while we stalled for messages to fill out.”

However, the strategy appeared to backfire when, on September 14, 2007, CEO Darl McBride saw a comment that read, in part: “God, I hope they don’t declare bankruptcy to try and get out of this mess.”

“The very next day, we declared bankruptcy,” said the executive source, “Darl thought he’d won some major victory. He was dancing around the office chanting ‘Neener neener, you’re a wiener!’ all by himself. I think it was around this point that we realized we may have made a mistake.”

SCO had no comment on this story, but promised a full rebuttal by Friday morning, after having a chance to see what Groklaw said first.

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