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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.
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!
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 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.
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.
One thing I remember is the better memory managment/manager, you could have more things loaded about the 640k, freeing memory for games etc. :).
I remember exactly I changed to ms-dos 5.0 in order to be able to install windows.
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.
I respectfully disagree.
Caldera's case accuses Microsoft of unfairly achieving a monopoly. But as evidence of this unfair action, they point to pre-release announcements Microsoft made after they were a monopoly. That, my friend, is circular reasoning.
Furthermore, if you do a quick websearch, you will see that the judge in the case is highly skeptical of Caldera's chances. So am I.
And as I stated in the post to which you are replying, I don't believe MS "pulled" any "stunts" either.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
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.
You bet I remember using DR DOS! At the time, I had an IBM PS/2 Model 50 computer which had a microchannel bus, a 20MG harddrive, and 1MB of RAM on the motherboard plus 8MB more RAM on an Acculogic memory board that fit into one of the PS/2 slots. That PS/2 used IBM's PS DOS 3.1, under license from MS-- it was essentially MS DOS licensed to IBM, that IBM had tightened up to perform better than MS DOS.
I attempted to install MS DOS ver 4.0 and then 5.0, but both times I gave up and returned to PC DOS 3.1, because it was just somehow better than any MS DOS-- it seemed to be more stable.
Then I tried DR DOS. I moved to DR DOS from the PC DOS 3.1 that had come bundled with the computer. Why? Because IBM PC DOS 3.1, was almost an identical copy (but slightly better quality) of MS DOS, and it lacked all the latest features of DR DOS. Neither PC DOS nor MS DOS had any form of disk compression, nor did MS even think about it before DR DOS bundled it; MS DOS did not have any memory management utility for RAM above 640k before DR DOS came out with a version bundled with a very effective utility for memory management. I used all of these extra features in DR DOS and they all worked beautifully. After DR DOS made their big splash with these features, MS tried to copy them (remember the Stacker lawsuit, which MS lost hands down when it was proved that MS had stolen Stacker's technology almost verbatim?) but MS's first effort using their stolen technology to defeat DR DOS in the marketplace was a total failure-- I believe it was MS DOS 5.0-- MS DOS had been a TOTAL bug-ridden failure. And ver 5.0 was rushed out to correct the bugs.
But MS DOS 5.0 was not much better. I believe it was MS DOS 5.0 that resulted in the Stacker suit that MS lost.
DR DOS was the one PC operating system that worked much better than anything that was coming from Microsoft at the time, no matter who it was licensed to (like IBM)-- and then somewhere around 1992, or maybe it was 1993, no one could get the latest version of Windows, the copycat GUI stolen from Apple that lay over DOS, to work with DR DOS. It was for that reason that I considered giving up using DR DOS, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it-- I rather just gave up the idea of using Windows.
DR DOS included a taskswapping GUI that looked different from Windows but allowed me to swap back and forth between several tasks in my 9MB total RAM, and it worked just like Windows was supposed to work, but without the "pretty" graphics that were just a cosmetic skin covering a rotten piece of fruit.
DR DOS booted faster and ran much, much faster than MS DOS, so I decided to hold out on upgrading my OS until OS/2 came out with version 2.1. I made the move to OS/2 in 1993 (or was it 94?) with its new ability to see and use all of the memory in your system, but I still hated to abandon DR DOS at that time, so I kept it on the 80286 PS/2 and installed OS/2 on the 250MB IDE harddrive that came with my new 80486DX2/66MhZ machine. That machine had come bundled with MS DOS and Windows 3.1 installed.
After the old PS/2 blew its video chip, around 1995, I installed DR DOS 6.0 on the 486 machine's newly upgraded 1.8GB SCSI hard drive along with OS/2.
Today, I run Linux on two machines-- the old 486 and a newer P133 with 128MB RAM and two-4.5 SCSI hard drives. There is a small partition (800 MB) for OS/2 on both machines for the DOS legacy programs such as Quicken. The 486 has Windows 3.11 and PC DOS 7.0 installed on a tiny 400 MB partition of the now total 3.5 MB SCSI hard drive on that machine-- it's harddrive has been upgraded again-- so my children can run their old Windows games.
The use of Windows is fading as the kids grow older and move more and more to OS/2 and now Linux to do their work. I can forsee wiping Windows 3.11 off both machines within the next few months.
DR DOS exists no longer on my machines-- I use OS/2's DOS virtual machine to do my legacy DOS stuff. I can't even find my DR DOS disks any longer.
Erchie
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
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!
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
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