Slashdot Mirror
Caldera Gets Mucho Dolares & Case Against MS Continues
The PR people at Caldera Systems e-mailed me with the news that they've gotten some major outside investment. The press has got more news, but the company's getting $30 million dollars from SCO, Sun, Citrix, Novell, Egan-Managed Capital and Chicago Venture Partners. In other news, their case against Microsoft continues to progress.It should be noted that while they have similar names, and are owned by the same man, Caldera (lawsuit company) and Caldera Systems are separate companies - thanks to all those who pointed out my mistake.
Palm pilots with linux installed.
the PR people at Caldera Systems e-mailed me with the news...
Looks like our little boy Hemos is being recognized as a mover and shaker in the tech news business. *sniff*
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Please forgive this slightly offtopic comment, but I find it amusing that now companies are submitting stories and information directly to Slashdot, rather than waiting for readers to submit them after the mainstream media has reported them.
How often does Slashdot recieve stories directly from companies and orginizations now-a-days? Could one of the Slashdot employees answer this?
Add this to the fact that they recently started pushing for a up to date linux JVM implementation, couple it with the fact that Caldera are moving into embedded stuff in a big way , in bed alongside Motorola, sprinkle with a little irrelevant transmeta, add three or four conspiracy theorists to the mix and leave to stand for half an hour.
Serve along with the tidbit that Intel aren't investing in a linux company for once, consume and then sit back and wait for the traditional after-dinner IPO and coffee.
-- Oh Well
I guess while I plug the Caldera NDS tools, I need to ask a question. I've seen Netware boxes with 1 year uptimes. They have proven dependable and completely functional. Why is it that Netware doesn't get more attention? Has Netware and all of it's interoperablity become the "thing that we hide in the back room? I'd sure like to see a continued focus on Netware interoperability and less worry about NT, especially in Linux.
Yes, Caldera has a valid case.
No, I don't think Microsoft should get away with with this kind of aggressive behavior.
However, it can't be healthy for a company's future to invest in anything that might damage Microsoft.
Shouldn't these companies be focusing on profit? Or at least making products that are better than Microsoft's?
Adversarial behavior is ugly enough when it comes from Microsoft, but uglier still when it comes from companies I actually like.
Thank you for not thinking.
It's nice to see that Caldera is getting some cash, I've used their distro from time to time, and while it isn't as popular as Red Hat, it isn't bad either. Hopefully this cash infusion will be used for the creation of quality software rather than marketing or executive retreats.
Still, this does also vaguely bother me. When I began using Linux is was about freedom and quality software. Now, Linux brings to mind two things: money and litigation. Yes, it's great that VCs everywhere are seeing Linux as The Next Hot Thing (tm) - but is that necessarily a good thing in the long run?
I do suppose that it was inevitable that Linux would become commercialized, just as the net has. Still, there are times when I think the sense of real community is diminishing. Everyone and their dog is jumping on the Linux bandwagon, but they don't seem to really understand it. (LinuxOne, the fights with Corel, etc...)
So, to actually stay somewhat on topic: I have a suggestion for Caldera. Now that they've got a few extra dollars laying around, they should use that on writing good software. Forget the marketing, forget public relations and Just Code It. When people see companies like RedHat or Corel seemingly more interesting in marketing than in software development (although this is perception, and not neccesarily the truth) it would be a breath of fresh air to remember what Linux was designed around: solid, open code.
From the story header...
but the company's getting $30 million dollars from SCO, Sun, Citrix, Novell, Egan-Managed Capital and Chicago Venture Partners. In other news, their case against Microsoft continues to progress.
Are you sure it's strictly "other news"? Sun, Novell, and SCO have a history of teaming up with companies that are going toe-to-toe with Microsoft. Can't have Caldera going bankrupt while the case progresses. Can't have it falling off the media scope either.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Linux needs big money, PR, VC investment, etc., if it's to compete with Windows in the real world, as opposed to being just the darling of the /. set. Just being good isn't enough to compete with a PR engine like MS. Personally, I expect to see Linux start making very serious inroads into the business and SOHO desktop market by the third quarter of this year. That's when this starts being a "revolution" in more than name.
Wow! Such feelings of hatred to a piece of software? Time to see a psychiatrist!
:-)
But, on the lighter side, everyone else but you found DR-DOS a MUCH better alternative to the version of MS-DOS that was out at the time. It included novel features like compression, memory management, and multitasking (the latter MS-DOS never even bothered with), and a sweet semi-graphical editor to boot (much better than edlin, which was until MS-DOS 5, MS-DOSes only standard editor).
You should really read the suit - if you do, you won't feel so good for MS. They did sabotage windows 3.0 so it would report fake errors when DR-DOS was running. There is proof to that. And with a less than 500 byte patch/tsr to windows, DR-DOS can be made the window's DOS subsystem, rather than MS-DOS.
If your reputation and ability to sell product were stolen from you like this, you'd expect compensation too. Try DR-DOS (isn't it OpenDOS now) and you'll agree - it is 100x better than ANY version of MS-DOS that has been released. They even have a web browser for DR-DOS now (optional, not integrated).
I think that #10 is pretty fun when you apply the context of the parent to it. It does not deserve to be moderated like it was. The parent just said that Hemos was a big mover and shaker because caldera emailed him and then #10 went on to say that he is a real animal at limbo. Why is this moderated negatively? At worst it should of been left alone.
after the mainstream media has reported them.
/. readers themselves, and felt they should throw a bone back.
Perhaps the Caldera has come to the realization that Slashdot is fast becoming a mainstream media outlet. Or perhaps they are
.sig: Now legally binding!
From the last line of the article:
"Caldera Systems was spawned from Caldera Corporation, but is independent and not involved in its progenitor's suit against Microsoft."
So money into Caldera System != money in the case against Microsoft...
I suspect what you meant by that was that investing in something merely because it isn't M$ or M$-oriented is not a successful business strategy.
On the face of it, I would tend to agree. But given Microsoft's obvious intent to own everything (if you can't better it, buy it. If you can't buy it, destroy it), I would argue that any competing company that doesn't commit at least some of its resources to "anti-Microsoft" activities is only asking to eventually get buried.
Every time I see a company drop support for non-M$-Win platforms I say to myself "there goes another one." As was made clear in the DoJ vs. M$ trial: M$ has a curious way of rewarding its "friends."
(When you think about it, what does a company locking itself in to M$-platform-based-solutions tell you? You know if something gets big enough, M$ will defeat, buy or destroy it. So a company that locks itself into M$ is saying that they either don't intend to get big enough to end up on Microsoft's radar, they're not thinking about the future at all, or they intend to get bought. Yeah, that's a company in which I want to invest, all right!)
The up-shot is that the only way to buy insurance against the day when M$ may decide it wants your business is to avoid locking one self into utter dependence on it. "Opposed to Microsoft" may not be a valid business plan in and of itself. But it certainly ought to be part of a business plan, I think.
Sun Microsystems, in particular, appears to understand this. (And so, apparently, do investors in SUNW.) This is why (in part) we have Java. And why Sun bought Star. And the reason, IMO, for many of Sun's other moves. I'd like to see Sun invest in or purchase some engineering tools firms--such as something to compete with AutoCAD--to guarantee availability of high-quality tools in that niche on platforms other than M$-Win.
Trolling? This is hilarious. Off Topic -1 maybe..but, wow. Hahaha. (Although, I DO think the poster needs to get out more...)
I should have read the article more closely. ;-) It says:
So I guess these new investors don't really have a shot at collecting the Microsoft money. Yeah, I wonder about the rest of Caldera's business plan too.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I thought that Bill Gates (or was is MS) owned a portion (~15%???) of SCO. So if SCO is owned in part by Gates/MS, and SCO is supporting Caldera, then Gates/MS is indirectly supporting Caldera. Ironic isn't it. Reminds me of a saying about building your own coffin.
Another step closer to: Linux Everywhere.
disclaimer: I use OpenLinux 2.3.
1000 SlashDot sigs
The article makes it sound like Caldera/DR-DOS said "Hey, we lost- let's sue!" Some things on Caldera's side:
1) Per-processor licensing. Caldera can prove that Microsoft used pressure that no one else could have brought to bear (i.e. monopoly-based pressure) on to the OEMs to prevent DR-DOS from being preinstalled. Microsoft's relationship with (and coercion of) the OEMs is discussed in depth in Judge Jackson's FOF. Caldera can use all of that and more.
2) The christmas beta. If Microsoft hadn't encrypted that code to make it harder to find and determine how it worked, they might have been able to claim it was just a Beta bug. But the _premeditated_ attempt to hide what they were doing says that they knew they were wrong.
Microsoft's defense is "Yeah, we committed a crime- but it can't be undone and it was aeons ago in computer years, so who cares?" Bleh.
Brian
I've been reading The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates (don't buy it here!). There's some interesting tidbits about MSDOS vs DRDOS, MS vs Novell, and Bill Gates vs Ray Noorda in there (Also lots of boring bits; I give the book two stars out of five - I didn't hurl it from me, but I have to force myself to read it). Noorda was the CEO of Novell in the early 90s. He retired from Novell and founded Caldera. This article summarizes the history of Noorda and Caldera. The current CEO of Caldera is also from Novell. I'd guess that Noorda brought him over, and that he has a fair amount of personal loyalty to Noorda, his values, and his goals.
Noorda has it in for MS, and I would say deservedly so. MS proposed a merger with Novell and basically pillaged all kinds of inside business and technical information before saying "Nevermind." Novell bought DRDOS, only to have MS...well, you can read that history yourself. A couple of passages in the book indicate that Noorda felt that Bill Gates had lied to him personally.
Noorda doesn't think that MS is good for the software industry. A benign dictator can be acceptable, but an blood-crazed psychopathic tyrant is a Bad Thing (tm). De facto industry standards are fine as long as they don't come from the end of a gun.
I think that your opinion (about business plans)is tactically sound but strategically wrong. If Microsoft is taken apart - or at least taken down a few notches - there will be more opportunities for everyone in the software industry. If EVERYONE said "Our plan is to take something away from Microsoft," MS would find itself assaulted from all sides and unable to compete effectively without choosing some battles and losing some battles. Noorda is doing his part, and if everyone else would do the same, the software industry would be a different place. Better or worse, I honestly can't say, but definitely different.
I got moderated down to OFFTOPIC in the news that Riva released new XFree drivers when I asked if someone had tried to run quake with it ... I don't think there was anything more on-topic than this question, but still ...
And YEAH ... this ONE post is OFF-TOPIC. Please save your mod points for Natalie Portman's friends, ok?
Does anyone remember actually using DR DOS? I'm curious as to how well it competed with MS DOS at the time. Looking back, I remember hearing good things about DR DOS (but most of it faded with the advent of Windows). It's not hard to imagine that another company could have implemented a better version.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
Guess why the 95 consent decree was put into place.
Have you heard about the per CPU licensing contracts MS had with OEMS? Why are these no longer around?
Product pre-announcements that have no basis in fact by a known monopolist are also illegal.
The Caldera case is deeper than Windows beta stunt MS pulled.
The CNet story starts off citing this as another example of the market's infatuation with anything with the Linux name on it. I wouldn't mind so much except that they didn't point out that Caldera is an existing player with a good track record, technically at least. The same is true of RedHat and VA Linux. Yes, there is significant money flowing into Linux, but much of it is flowing into companies that have developed a reputation and a customer base. The Motley Fool article a few days ago about Linux One did a good job of pointing out why that is important. This article gives more of the impression that anything with the current buzzword in it may be all hype. I don't think that is the impression that CNet intended.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I used DR-DOS, and have to say that it was better than MS-DOS. Although the disk compression software (Stacker) crashed and destroyed the contents of my hard drive, in general it was a better product than DOS. However, for most users, the benefits to DR-DOS just weren't very significant. If a clone product wants to gain significant market share, it has to be significantly better than the product they are cloning. DR-DOS added small features, or bundled free software such as Stacker, but Microsoft was the one who made evloutionary changes. There was nothing in DR-DOS I couldn't easily do without, they never created a product that had enough benefits to grow beyond a niche. When the market changed to a graphical interface, they couldn't compete. If Microsoft did do the things Caldera claims, then it was not only unethical, but pointless.
If DR-DOS would have survived what would be different? Windows has brought us benefits such as printer drivers for the OS/Shell, rather than a different driver for each application. Anyone remember DOS Wordperfect Drivers? How would Plug and Play ever have evloved if Microsoft couldn't control the whole package? Microsoft would just have to make the changes, and DR-DOS would be continuously complaining how unfair it is that the PC platform was evolving, and they weren't in control of it. That's the nature of creating a clone product, you're always playing catchup on the standard features, and trying to add features to distinguish yourselves. As long as the leader in the market doesn't sit still, it's almost impossible to ever be more than a niche.
No customer saw that dialog in any shipping copy of windows
Perhaps, perhaps not. Irrelevant in either case.
Members of the trade press did see that dialog in advance copies of Windows they may have received for review. If you're Joe ComputerCustomer and you read in Jerry X. Dvorak's ByteWeek column that he couldn't get Windows to work under DR-DOS (because of some wierd error) but could under MS-DOS, what are you going to think? "Better stay away from DR-DOS" is what.
MS didn't need to put that in the final shipping version because by then most of the damage had already been done.
-- Alastair
Netware is the most unstable, most unscalable piece of crap that is worse then even sco and NT. At my old job we used novell with large loads of data and a server would crahs almost on a bi weekly basis! The console looks up, YOU have all sorts of cryptic bend error messages stating that the server is going down and YOU CAN"T SHUT OFF V-REPAIR so it will take over 5 hours to reboot!
Our NT boes never had any of these problems. The fact that I am a ms hater and linux user and I defending NT on stability is pretty sad! All of modules on our netware servers run on ring 0 with no memory protection and I was told that netware 4 can not run ring 3 modules. With over a 1,000 users logged on each of our core servers, makes any ring 0 module and downtime totally unacceptable. Especially with a manditory vrepair that can leave a 4th of our bussiness down for up to 6 hours because of the lack of a journaling filesystem! ( I am aware the Netware 5 has one.)
Netware may seem fine and stable under small loads as a simple file/print server but it is no unix or even an NT in the large end. At work we disabled one of the smp modules and ran the OS in single processor mode and the performance difference was minimal showing that Netware's scalabity is quite awefull. I heard 5 should fix this.
Our NT boxes are over loaded and only do light work except for 2 sql server boxes. Only once has one of our NT boxes been down. I am sure if I ran NT as a core server with 4 gigs of ram and over 1,200 users it may crash on a monthly or bi-weekly basis but Novell has allready beaten it in terms of instability at large loads.
Even Windows95 would be better because Windows95 has procted memory. Netware 5 has some basic protected modules and memory support but our current 4 doesn't. ??? THis is a server OS! WHy hasn't Novell put in protected memory support untill version 5?
Grrr. If Novell put off ring 3 functionality into netware all the way to version 5 , then I do not want it!
Long live freebsd, linux and NT, Hell even sco. Death to netware.
Just reported on CNBC.
They said there would be a charge of about .03/share. Lets see 5 Bln shares, what's that make it, around $150M? Caldera shoulda held out for more!
And you thought their english grammar was bad...:-)
According to link on LinuxToday. Settement appears to be around $200e+06.
See the press release.
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
MicroSoft and Caldera have settled the DR-DOS lawsuit. Apparently MicroSoft didn't agree with the posters here who claimed "the lawsuit is weak" - the settlement will remove 3 cents per share of MS's expected quarterly earnings which doesn't sound like a lot but given that MS had predicted 38 cents per share for the quarter Caldera will be making off with nearly 8% of MS's earnings for the quarter, it seems. Here's the story
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
Everybody else know it except Slashdot, apparently. This case has been settled. What good are you guys if you can't even read the newspapers for five minutes a day?
I was looking forward to much the same humour relief as that provided by Microsoft's lame attempts to defend itself in the DoJ action :-).
LinuxToday says that Microshaft and Caldera have settled. The terms are confidential, but Microshaft will take a charge of $0.03 this quarter. With 5.17 billion shares outstanding, that works out to $155.1 million.
- Have a picture
Such as GEM? There were even quite a few applications written for that IIRC. And then there were the Amstrad machines that could run either MS-DOS or CP/M-86 (I believe), and which had parallel processing and some funny GUI as well.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
Nope