Novell appears to be attempting to cut off SCO’s lifeline to its cash reserves. By not focusing on the arguments over who owns what in Unix but instead hammering on the far more simple matter of SCO not living up to its business contract, Novell hopes to put a quick end to SCO and its seemingly endless Linux litigation.
This whole SCO story goes on for much too long. I’d applaud anyone who ends this, no matter whether it’sd IBM, Novell, or anyone else. In the end they should probably join forces – Caesar didn’t make it, why should SCO?
I know SCO seems to be sue-happy lately, but are they really that bad? Was SCO always litigious or were they a good company before they “jumped the shark”?
Do you mean SCO or “The SCO group” because they are two very different companies. The SCO group (scox) calls themselves “SCO” to confuse the issue. Scox also tried to pirate the USL (Unix System Labs) name.
Scox has never been a whorthwhile company.
“Scox has never been a whorthwhile company.”
That’s not true, as this one was formerly known as Caldera. Caldera were really good guys. Ask at Erlangen University about them for example.
Nobody knows what changed them
“””That’s not true, as this one was formerly known as Caldera. Caldera were really good guys. Ask at Erlangen University about them for example.
Nobody knows what changed them
“””
Well, in all fairness, SCO, the *original* SCO was a good company with a good product… except that it really started falling behind, and then they got all focused on UnixWare, and then Linux started eating their market, and they started working on Tarantella and sold their OS division to Caldera. (And I think Tarrantella is doing OK. Anyone know? Didn’t Sun buy it or something?)
Caldera was a decent Linux company with a proprietary streak. Whenever they needed something for their distro and it wasn’t available as OSS, Caldera’s first impusle was to look for something proprietary they could license.
Contrast that with RedHat. It’s true that early on, they did resell things like Applixware. But they stopped that a ***long*** time ago. When they needed something for their distro and it wasn’t available as OSS, they either started a project, or joined an existing one.
Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera, made some unpopular statments. (Particularly saying that sometimes GPL licensing was better and sometimes BSD licensing was better.) He was a figure that the community loved to hate.
Anyway, during that period, with buying power that no one would have believed except in the dot.com days, when buyfreshclamsonline.com was a *real* domain name, Cadera bought SCO.
One day, Ransom and his crew found themselves ousted, without much public explanation. And the new crew, headed by Dear Darl, took charge.
I sometimes wonder what might have been possible if Old SCO had decided to hang in and ride the wave. Or if Ransom, and his unpopular, but not beyond the pale, strategies had been implemented.
But that was not to be.
Darl got put in charge, to carry out… well… the plans he was put in charge to carry out, and sadly, that is what newer Linux users think that the grand old name of SCO represents.
I despise the current SCO as much as anyone. I take a sort of petty delight when their stock price takes a dive.
But I also recognize that Old SCO kept the Unix on PC’s concept alive until Linux was ready… or even existed for that matter.
So, cheers to you SCO, the real one, wherever you are…
Edited 2006-10-04 02:03
Reply to the article: Law suites have never looked so sexy; I’d love to see SCO go bankrupt; and with that, Novell pick up the pieces and opensource the whole damn UNIX tree under a BSD licence; put it out there, once and for all, under a licence that no one can complain about
Regarding SCO; SCO used to be called “Santa Cruz Operations (SCO) back when it was run by a chubby bearded guy; IIRC, he has since left.
SCO Group formed after Caledera bought SCO, then called themselves Caldera, then that smarmy asshole Ransom Love re-appeared on a Harley claiming that it’ll rename itself SCO and ‘let the good times goll once more’.
The nutshell is; its a company of lawyers, not businessmen or coders – SCO could have been rescued, they could have bundled their whole SCO product line up under one product name; SCO UNIXWare, and place a price of $1499 up front or $399 per year subscription.
The fact is, they wanted to get their money quick, they made a stupid investment ( they being Canopy Group), and now they want their money back asap, by hell or high water, regardless of whether the evidence is based on lies of stretched interpretations of the relevant contracts.
This SCO is quite a bit different than the one you may be remembering. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group
It more-or-less dates back to the CEO change from Ransom Love to Darl McBride. “SCO” gets confusing, because there was another company called “The Santa Cruz Operation” from which Caldera/SCO Group acquired some UNIX properties. It can all get rather confusing.
Caldera was a good company at one point in time. They were behind some interesting technology including a WABI port for Linux that let Linux run 16-bit Windows programs before Wine was viable.
When I first heard that SCO was suing IBM over Linux I commented that they better have a slam dunk case or they will be eaten alive. I know IBM isn’t the biggest kid on the block anymore, but seriously they probably have more lawyers on staff and retainer than Caldera has employees. Even then. I refuse to call them SCO out of respect for the original SCO. Its just nice to see them get their just deserves, but sad to see the death throws of a once at least decent company, of course that was before Love left. I can’t say I was fan then but but they were respectable. Oh well
Matt
When scox planned the lawsuit, scox had a market-cap of less than $10 million – not nearly enough to fund this sort of lawsuit. So it would it seem that scox was out of their leage.
But, after msft and sun arranged about $100 million to finance the scam, that all changed.
This is really about msft trying to intimidate other companies into 1) not using linux and 2) not contributing to linux.
When IBM started contributing to linux is when msft got POed.
Scox – or more accurately msft using scox as a proxie – went for the throats of: ibm, novell, redhat, and the entire Linux community.
Novell is mere defending itself against msft’s abuse.
I hate to be the guy who defends Microsoft. I for one have no love for them. Well except for their hardware division. Anyway, it was too easy for them to output a small output of cash (relatively) for such a great reward. Trust me they made their money back in stupid business manager fall for the hype and buying those stupid software contracts. Do this and come out clean in the end. Maybe not very ethical but smart.
Matt
“Scox – or more accurately msft using scox as a proxie – went for the throats of: ibm, novell, redhat, and the entire Linux community.
Novell is mere defending itself against msft’s abuse.”
There has been no proof of this given, just hinted at. Don;t be so quick to claim conspiracy.
“””There has been no proof of this given, just hinted at. Don;t be so quick to claim conspiracy.”””
Does it really matter if they gathered together in a back room and whispered to each other, or if SCO independently decided to file a frivolous suit against IBM, and MS independently decided to send them $15M in funding to fuel their FUD mongering against what was mutually their greatest potential competitor? (And then referred Baystar to them for even more funding.)
Or do you really believe that MS decided, all of the sudden, thet they needed to send someone $15M for a Unix license, and were so sure that SCO was the proper party to send it to that they just mailed it in without question, so to speak?
The motivations and the end results are the same, whether the cooperation was explicit or implicit.
“Does it really matter if they gathered together in a back room and whispered to each other, or if SCO independently decided to file a frivolous suit against IBM, and MS independently decided to send them $15M in funding to fuel their FUD mongering against what was mutually their greatest potential competitor? (And then referred Baystar to them for even more funding.)”
What competitor? Linux? Sorry, but until the likes of Adobe start actually porting software to Linux, Linux is no threat to any of the major OS. I am not against Linux at all and use it myself, just saying it is not a threat until proprietary vendors start porting mission critical software over. There is no tru photoshop replacement for business, The Gimp needs a lot of work, and Dreamweaver is considered critical to some places.
” … any of the major OS.”
Hu? You imply that there is a second one apart from Windows? You aren’t going to tell me it’s Mac OS X which has a market share that is smaller compared to Linux’?
“Hu? You imply that there is a second one apart from Windows? You aren’t going to tell me it’s Mac OS X which has a market share that is smaller compared to Linux’?”
Actually I was referring to OS X, as well as HP-UX, Solaris, etc. I am not necessarily talking Desktop. Last I knew the Market share for OS X and Linux were both about equal, but then Linux is harder to measure as a good chunk of folks download it and install it, so therefore it never gets counted. I do agree that it is most likely higher then OS X, just that the numbers are very hard to get accurately.
Whether or not Linux is “a competitor” to MS, the Halloween documents prove that at one time, at least, Microsoft were seriously worried about the effects of Linux on their business.
Either way, it is very suspicious that within a very short time frame they (a) gave Corel a large cash injection; (b) Corel stopped porting WordPerfect to Linux; (c) soon after SCO’s litigation against IBM (which they loudly proclaimed was an attempt to claim back “lost” profits) Ms gave them (SCO) a cash injection. It proves nothing, but it is, as I said, highly suspicious.
Of course, they *may* have been paying SCO for royalties they already owed them, but I suspect that if there had been a general panic in the industry over SCO going after licence-fee defaulters, (a) Novell would have been in bed with them, (b) other companies would have been quick-as-a-flash to pay up.
Someone who’s not afraid to stand up to IBM (whether through bravery, arrogance or stupidity) is not going to be afraid to stand up to HP or SGI.
>>What competitor? Linux? Sorry, but until the likes of Adobe start actually porting software to Linux, Linux is no threat to any of the major OS.<<
Don’t confuse Linux with “desktop linux.” Linux is strong force on the server side.
Also, don’t forget that msft is insanely paranoid about the slighest chance of real competition. What Netscape that great a threat to msft?
“Don’t confuse Linux with “desktop linux.” Linux is strong force on the server side.
Also, don’t forget that msft is insanely paranoid about the slighest chance of real competition. What Netscape that great a threat to msft?”
True enough on the server side. We use it here at work along with OpenBSD. We have one MS server that was put in before I got here.
Netscape kind of killed themselves off actually. I used Netscape myself until one thing happened, and that was that MS gave away the plugins for free, and to do something as simple as listen to an audio file one had to pay $29.99 in order to do the same for Netscape. Anyone else remember when you had to have Crescendo to do that? If Netscape had not gotten so cocky as to keep charging so much they could have won the browser war, although I will admit that MS sped things up a bit once they came out with IE 4. If Netscape could have kept up there are many of us I am sure who would have stayed with it, instead we went with the most for the least amount of money.
Economically impossible. Netscape was a company built on web browser sales. Microsoft decided to pull that market out from under them by making web browsers free (by licensing Mosaic and then giving it away). They paid for this ability with money from their profit ventures and introduced a vector where they could exert some influence over how the Web was read and written, thus creating dependence on a $200 product instead of a $30 one if you wanted a browser with working plug-ins. I was trying to watch some music videos on Logo’s website. They don’t work in anything but Windows (WMDRM only, lousy Viacom). The site author knows this and doesn’t care. I guess I have you to thank for that.
“The site author knows this and doesn’t care. I guess I have you to thank for that.”
Huh? Any web page I write is w3c compliant and validated. So, I guess you have the site author to thank for that. I have not slammed anyone, so don’t attack me without cause..fair enough?
“They paid for this ability with money from their profit ventures and introduced a vector where they could exert some influence over how the Web was read and written, thus creating dependence on a $200 product instead of a $30 one if you wanted a browser with working plug-ins.”
Actually Netscape had working plugins as well. In fact, the exact same ones MS had. The difference was MS gave them away, and they were about $29.99 for the ones that worked with Netscape. In that effect yes, MS did play hard ball. As well, between Netscape and MS they each had browsers that were no where near standards compliant and had their own tags and such, not readable by any other browsers. Stupid on both parts IMO.
Incorrect, Netscape introduced the proprietary tags first along with javascript extensions – no one caught onto them because they were of no real benefit to web developers.
Microsoft then turned around and added their own extensions, the extensions they developed were actually useful for developers; webdevelopment IDEs embraced these extensions.
There is nothing wrong with these extensions, the fact is, these standards move way to slow to keep up with the demands of what end users expect; what Microsoft need to do is work with the likes of Mozilla and Opera and say, “hey, here is a really cool feature, here is the documentation” and work together on implementing better features.
The simple fact is, the browser doesn’t matter any more; Microsoft is going to make money off applications whether the application is being accessed via Firefox or Opera, whether on Windows, Mac or Linux should be immaterial to the fact that as long as the end user is paying their subscription, that’s all Microsoft should be concerned about.
>>There has been no proof of this given, just hinted at. Don;t be so quick to claim conspiracy.<<
There most certainly is proof of msft involvement. Msft arranged about $73 million to fund the scam. Yes, that is proven.
“There most certainly is proof of msft involvement. Msft arranged about $73 million to fund the scam. Yes, that is proven.”
Where are the court documents please. I had heard of this as did everyone, but there was never any actual proof that I am aware of. Please direct me to the findings by the court to where Microsoft was fined and or punished after being found guilty of this, as it is most certainly a crime.
>>Where are the court documents please.<<
There are no court documents because it has not gone to court. Until the scox-scam is settled, IBM can not sue msft for funding a scam.
But:
1) in the famous halloween document, msft agrees to fund the scam for up to $100MM.
2) Why did msft want to keep their involvement secret?
3) Why did msft pay for Unix licenses that msft already had, and wasn’t using?
Please, there is plenty of evidence of msft involvement in this scam. You are grasping at straws to claim otherwise.
Now get real.
“Please, there is plenty of evidence of msft involvement in this scam. You are grasping at straws to claim otherwise.
Now get real.”
There may be evidence, all I am saying is nothing is proven yet. I honestly don’t believe MS is that evil. The only Halloween documents I know of existed WAY before any of the SCO stuff even existed, like in the 1990’s.
Didn’t Microsft use those Unix licenses? Isn’t that the technology in Windows services for unix?
Of course OSS stole IP. Thats what they do!
Even the GNU FAQ recommends blackmail!
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIfSchool
“So we recommend that you approach them when the program is only half-done, saying, “If you will agree to releasing this as free software, I will finish it.” Don’t think of this as a bluff. To prevail, you must have the courage to say, “My program will have liberty, or never be born.” ”
If blackmail is acceptable to Stallman, what makes you think stealing IP would not be.
How is this different from MS saying to users “pay up or we will sue your ass”?
MS can be expected to act in their own interest. Fine. Expecting users not to act in theirs is a damned liberty.
>>Of course OSS stole IP. Thats what they do!<<
Liar.
Stallman did not, in any way, advocate theft. Re-read the quote.
That’s not blackmail dude.
That’s the art of negotiation.
“Of course OSS stole IP. Thats what they do!”
Beyond being posting obvious flame bait, do you have any proof to back this bold claim or are you just proving yourself to be a complete idiot?
– Gilboa
Edited 2006-10-04 14:31
But WHEN is the Court going to actually start making decisions on all of the PSJs against and for SCOX??