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At the time when Caldera bought DR-DOS, the only commercial value of the software was to bring this lawsuit. Novell didn't think it was worth it to go through the motions, so they sold the lawsuit to someone who wanted to. Caldera has a lot less to lose by baiting Microsoft than Novell does, so it was a good match. It's not sleazy, the lawsuit needed to be filed, Caldera wanted to be the one filing it.

In the meantime, they haven't been sitting on DR-DOS, waiting for the suit to save them. They've turned it into a viable and profitable embedded systems and thin client platform. Check out Caldera Thin Clients for more details. It's not sleazy at all to take a commercially dead product and find new markets for it.

See paragraph 420 in Caldera's "Consolidated Statement of Facts...", one of the company's legal filings.

Check out Caldera Thin Clients to see what they're doing with it.
Making it into a thin-client/embedded OS, which seems a bit odd to me, but looks workable.

Furthermore, it's free for use with DOSEMU. Very cool.

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Caldera were suing Microsoft for allegedly trying to kill off DR-DOS. Windows 3.x ran perfectly fine over DR-DOS, as well as over MS-DOS, and this apparently annoyed Microsoft, so Windows 95 has some incompatibilities allegedly deliberately introduced to keep DR-DOS from working (no, despite what Microsoft says, win95 is not a completely independent OS, it's still built on top of DOS).

Links:
old news.com story.
Caldera's take on it (more recent)
A microsoft witness says the company destroyed documents relating to this case.

BTW, all these links are from old slashdot articles (some from September 1998, a few from 1999). Search for "caldera suit" on /. and you'll find some more.

Alex Bischoff
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The reference is to Peacekeeper missiles and is an example of doublespeak. The point is that MS likes to assert that it must have competition or else it wouldn't have to use hard line tactics.

As a case in point, see the article on CNET in which a MS lawyer uses the following convoluted logic: "Gates's email [which looked for ways to protect he MS-DOS gold-mine against DR-DOS], for instance, directly contradicts Caldera's assertion that Microsoft monopolized the market for computer operating systems." See the slashdot article and the Caldera news release.

Their windows monopoly comes from office. This is just to extend the office monopoly.

It's not as simple as that.

If I wanted to put it simply, I would say this: The Windows Monopoly came from their DOS Monopoly, which in turn, came from their Pretty High DOS Market Share and the unfair ways in which they took advantage of it (making programs like Windows not run (or give the appearance of not running) under other versions of DOS, licensing agreements which forbid or discouraged vendors from shipping competing versions of DOS, and other things that integrated together). This is what Caldera Thin Clients is suing Microsoft over.

The above sounds pretty reasonable and accurate, but it leaves out a lot of details. It does seem pretty complicated to explain precisely how Microsoft got its near-monopoly since they've done so many things that wouldn't do much for Microsoft without eachother to obtain it in the first place. A diagram with lots of circles and arrows and stuff might help.

Their windows monopoly comes from office. This is just to extend the office monopoly.

It's not as simple as that.

If I wanted to put it simply, I would say this: The Windows Monopoly came from their DOS Monopoly, which in turn, came from their Pretty High DOS Market Share and the unfair ways in which they took advantage of it (making programs like Windows not run (or give the appearance of not running) under other versions of DOS, licensing agreements which forbid or discouraged vendors from shipping competing versions of DOS, and other things that integrated together). This is what Caldera Thin Clients is suing Microsoft over.

The above sounds pretty reasonable and accurate, but it leaves out a lot of details. It does seem pretty complicated to explain precisely how Microsoft got its near-monopoly since they've done so many things that wouldn't do much for Microsoft without eachother to obtain it in the first place. A diagram with lots of circles and arrows and stuff might help.

zaha wrote:

until linsux is real-time, its applications in the embedded, mission-critical markets will be limited.

I wouldn't use a standard Linux kernel for a real-time application, that would be silly. The same goes for a Solaris kernel or an NT kernel. None of them are designed for real-time operation. If I was doing a simple real-time system, I would use a simple real-time kernel like QNX RTOS or Caldera's DR-DOS.

For a more complicated system, I would use a hybrid RT system like Real-Time Linux. Check it out, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.