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SCO Reorganizes, Issues Profit Warning
Recently, Jay Maynard wrote: "According to this story in Computerworld, SCO is reorganizing to increase investment in its Tarantella software and Linux, and reduce investment in its core Unix business. They expect to report "significant losses" after reorganization costs. They blame Y2K delays for the slowdown. The story also appears in C/NET."
When Linux became mature enough to compete with SCO OpenServer, I dumped SCO OpenServer in a hearbeat. I was tired of bugs that SCO refused to fix, the yearly price increases, the yearly re-shuffling of the product line so that any quote I did for my customers had to be totally re-written (as vs. just update the pricing) for SCO's latest "well, we didn't like the way we'd split up Unix last time, we have a DIFFERENT split this year!" trick... and the unreliability. God, the unreliability! We still have OpenServer at the office. The NFS is flakey. The SCSI tape driver locks up every other night (or did until we moved the nightly backup to the Linux box). The print spooler has locked up semi-randomly for the past ten years, and SCO has never managed to make it work right. Getting any free software to compile on OpenServer is a pain in the rear because it is totally non-standard. Etc. etc. etc.
In the past SCO has skated over all of this because, as buggy as they are, they were still less buggy than Microsoft products. But most of us who were forced to use SCO Unix in an earlier life find Linux (or FreeBSD) to be such a relief that singing "ding dong, the witch is dead!" is a natural reaction to seeing SCO in trouble.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Get a product people care about maybe? Nobody cares about thin clients because, even though buyers want them, nobody wants to sell the hardware. In order to make a compelling case for thin client hardware, it has to be significantly cheaper than the alternative. Cheap computers have terrible margins, so hardware vendors don't want to bother. And thus SCO finds itself up shit creek, and the Penguin swimming upstream came along and grabbed the Unixware paddles.
This attitude of "open source it!" is senseless. Has it occurred to anyone that maybe the reason open source software works so well isn't that it's open source but rather that a real person, not a committee or focus group, saw a need - usually his own - and started hacking up a solution? A product that doesn't meet any need will be no more successful just because the license has changed. That doesn't mean that some sort of procedure by which a failed company's IP becomes automatically open to the world would be bad. But counting on open source to save your ass from a bad product decision isn't the right approach, and it doesn't work.
The set of applications available for SCO and not native on Linux is growing smaller by the hour.
I had to use SCO for mission critical apps. It did work quite well. The only problem I had was when I needed help or information on their implementation. The org wasn't there. They seemed quite a mess.
:)
I remember seeing at the 98 USENIX convention lots of SCO boxes being offered for free with few takers. You didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing....
... at the Linux Expo in Paris. LOL. Last time I tried to install that crap (3 years ago?) the install crashed with an informative error message: "Error #6956. Please contact SCO Technical Services."
linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu -- It's free. They reply quicker than any tech support I've ever dealt with. Plus you don't have to hear the cheesy muzzak for hours. I've asked 2 very technical points lately, instant reply. (Please, don't bother them with user-land issues)
Dude, you are a bit out of touch with reality. BSD/OS and FreeBSD are merging. Now, I would like to see the new BSD corporation buy SCO just show who really did win the BSD/SYSV war :)
Any OS can Beowulf cluster. The thing is, genuine SVR4 code can scale like nothing else (well, except Unicos, but that is kind of a specialized product). Solaris, SCO, and others will beat Linux in the scaling arena for quite some time still. Only when Linux can scale reasonably well past four processors (with fine grained control, truth be known, Beowulf is crap and usefull for only a small subset of parallel problems) and hit 64 or 128 with nearly linear speed improvement will commercial SVR4 loose the edge it has in scalability.
I think this is sarcasm, so I will bite. I never said it was financially sound. I just said it would kick ass. Though, the longer I think about it, the better off both corporations would be.
WRT to "sooo much hotter," a buyout of an established Unix vendor by a free software vendor has never been done. So BSD would be instantly propelled into the limelight and may be able to chip heavily into Linux's presence just from the mere fact it bought out SCO. Additionally, SCO has a lot of really nice proprietary stuff some of the most highly scalable kernel code ever (read the discussion involving why Beowulf clusters suck for real work above). Plus, if they wanted to, they can keep control of the Tranetella technology allowing them to expand into other markets. And damn, SCO has a huge existing user base.
I am not treating it like it is nothing. I am treating it realistically. There are things which Beowulf clusters are simply useless for. They are all things which require fine-grained multiprocessing. Beowulf (by design) only supports coarse-grained mutliprocessing. This is why you cannot build a database server around Beowulf. This is also why you can build a 3D render farm around it. SMP will have a place for quite some time. As for the 50th place, that revolves around the fact the Top 500 test uses a lot of linpack routines that simply are coarse-grained. This is done so that fine-grained processors are not at a unique advantage. They may sure as hell be fast, but they are useless for somethings. Kind of like running a GUI on a teletype.
I think you should look at the problem realistically instead of eating the shit you would typically be fed around here. Beowulf clusters built on Linux are not the end-all/be-all of computing. There are real needs and uses for hardware and software of all types and Linux simply doesn't cut it for most if them. Nothing does. This is why we have multiple tools.
Microsoft sold Xenix (which Gates wanted nothing to do with) to SCO (which then, in 1979, sold a V6 derivative) in return for a 12% stake in SCO. Xenix later became OpenServer.
You obviously didn't read my post. For most problems, Beowulf simply imposes too much overhead to be cost effective. In fact, power and flexibilty come only with SMP. Beowulf works well for large problems with highly independent calculations. But for most problems and mathematical modelling, using Beowulf only imposes overhead and offers no performance gain and usually a performance loss. You should really learn about such an advanced topic before posting comments which do not make sense.
Also, Beowulf would do notthing for website hosting. SMP could help on the back end if a lot of CGI or database access were involved. But most (nearly all?) websites have bandwidth as the bottleneck. This is why it is perfectly acceptable to use Linux on a webserver. But for a serious database server which will be handling many, many simultaneous queries, Linux is out, use SVR4.
What's the point in Tarantella, now we have cool things like Workspot (on Slashdot a few days ago) which are a free solution for delivering Unix apps over the Web?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Call up your local IBM, Lotus or Sybase rep and ask them which x86 Unix-family OS they recommend for their products. Even a year ago, the answer would have been SCO. Not anymore. I'm told Sybase now even goes so far these days as to encourage their existing SCO customers to make the switch to Linux.
Oracle seems to be ramping up to do the same, given the pace at which they're porting much of their product line. The bigger-iron Unixes aren't being hurt much by Linux right now, and won't be until good support for SANs and 8-64 CPU servers finds its way in. Which it will. But in the 1-2 CPU server market, Linux is rapidly becoming software vendors' reference platform. It's hard to imagine SCO getting any new OS customers these days, save for the few shops picking Tarantella as their thin-client environment.
Looks like SCO is going to be the first Unix effectively killed by Linux. Sun will prop up x86 Solaris as long as it costs them practically nothing to recompile it. I'd wager BSDI/OS is next to go. BSDI's big selling points over *BSD were robustness and commercial support. The robustness gap has largely been closed, with things like Solaris and AIX RISC boxen more affordable from above, and Linux and *BSD eating its lunch from below. And anyone with a staff of smart techs and some seed money can set up shop providing support for the free OSes.
well, Linux will still have plenty of competition in the Unix world... the 3 BSD's and the really high-end (64+ processors) OSs like Solaris. as for CDE and Motif, I don't hate them, but since their development appears to be as good as dead, I'm glad they're being replaced by open source alternatives. if they weren't dead already, the open source world would probably put more effort in cloning them than in replcing them.
Because SCO SUCKS.
SCO SUUUUCKS ASS.
Have you ever called SCO tech support? Apparently not.
'SCO Tech support, may I have your credit card or account number so that I can begin charging you the $50 hourly support fee please?'
And their systems are incredibly over priced. The reason its dying is because linux/bsd can do everything it can, but better. Makes it rather hard to sell thousands of dollars worth of system software when you can download it free off the net, with source.
I love Unix as well, but SCO was asking for this for a loooong time.
How about training, documentation, support and device driver support from third party hardware manufacturers. It isn't cheap for an individual but a business may consider the cost to be trivial.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It was the fragmentation of Unix that allowed Micro$oft to take over in the first place. The more proprietary Unices that die, the happier I am because we can only win the market if we are united and compatable. Open source allows many people and companies to provide solutions for a _single_ base.
The value of many tools comes from the number of people using it. A fax machine is useless when no one else has a fax. To a lesser extent, the same can be said of Unix - more users = more software = more hardware support = shiny, happy, crash free computers for everyone.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Incidentally, something I've wondered about for a long time now . . . why is it called Skunkware?
(Don't get me wrong; I absolutely LOVE the name ^_~ I'm just not sure I see how they happened to connect "skunk" and "open source software" to make it)
iSKUNK!
I ran several SCO boxes for some time in the early to mid 90s. Back then, they had pretty good SMP. They also had a very good implementation of shared memory that sped up Oracle something fierce (Oracle used about a gazillion back end processes that communicated with shared memory -- fast on VMS, slow on Unices). Put those two things together,and you could get some eye popping performance out of SCO on something like a dual 486/33. Remember Sybase was kicking Oracle ass back then because Oracle ran slowly on Unix.
I was often frustrated because they where somewhat behind the times in terms of implementing the latest Sys V releases, so porting stuff to it was a bitch, but in a production environment it was great -- really, really stable and fast. I had machine that literally ran for years with no down time. This is what computer users should expect in an OS -- day in day out great performance.
I've lost touch with SCO over the years, but back then their real strength was squeezing the utmost performance and reliability out of commodity hardware that can be had.
From a developer standpoint, Linux is the place to be today. It's pure fun fun fun. You never have to wait for the goodies -- somebody has already done most of the work of porting whatever you want,if it wasn't actually developed on Linux. The freedom that a free license gives you is exhilarating -- it allows you to concentrate on your job instead of squinting at obscure licenses agreements and bean counting your usage (where you can convince management that this is worth doing when all you're going to do is find out that you need to spend more money). Linux is also quite good in a production environment, especially in a world where Windows is the benchmark -- that's a bit too much like shooting fish in a barrel. However, if I had a serious production environment today, where I wasn't always installing the latest bleeding edge stuff, I'd consider SCO if scaling Linux was a concern. Yes, I know there are ways to do it, but given a choice I'd rather have the job simpler.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I got Openserver and UnixWare for free after I bitched them out because they didn't inform me prior to purchase that their product was single user. Isn't that ridiculous, single user unix? Kinda defeats the purpose of unix. Anyways, bitch to them and you will get your cash back.
I didn't pay anything for it, I bitched at them about their "FREE" Unixware 7 costing $69 on their website and I eventually got a free box set...
-- iCEBaLM
The best thing SCO could do right now is to free the trademark "Unix"
SCO doesn't own the trademark, the X/Open Consortium does. Novell donated it to them several years ago. X/Open will license it to any system that can pass the Spec 1170 suite of compatibility tests. That's how DEC OSF/1 became Digital Unix.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I'll go rescue him. Why don't you stay here and work in my system kernel?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have to work with their UNIX every so often now and not one damn thing has changed. At least these days it's easy to snarf GCC down and compile the gnu stuff for it. My only regret is that I can't convince my department to drop support for them completely and pick up a more worthy UNIX (Like DG/UX. Man they rock...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I like open source software as much as the next guy--it's great to have access to the code, as a programmer. It's also nice to get things free of charge. But one thing we have to admit is that Linux isn't anywhere near the point at which it can rival any of the major Unix systems in actual performance. Maybe some day it will be, I'm not sure. The major benefit of Linux (to businesses) seems to be cost at the moment. So why are you all so happy about a Unix system dying? Can't open source co-exist with these other things? Especially when Unix is so damned good.
And another thing. I don't think I'd personally want to see Linux do better than all the Unix systems, or even equal them. Because if it equals them, but it's free of charge, it will beat them. A world where there's only one operating system is not a world in which I'd want to use computers. When we have just one operating system, we have no competition, and most of the drive for innovation is lost, plus there's nowhere to run if you don't like something. I've always thought Unix fragmentation was a good thing, not bad.
I'm not about to start arguing the virtues of non-open source software; I do like and use open source software every day. But when I first started using it, I really thought it was absurd that anyone took software so seriously as to think there should be this whole philosophy surrounding it. I mean, it's just software. It's a tool. And having a philosophy about it is like having a philosophy about a screwdriver. (I know I'm going to get attacked for that) In any case, the way this relates to the story is that I think a lot of the reason so many people are posting so happy about this is that they're like "Oh, great, another piece of proprietary software dead!"
I find this really, really sad. I love and respect Unix.
Flame me as much as you want, but I am one of the few Linux users who really really loves and respects the CDE--because unlike most Linux users, I took the time to learn about the technology behind it instead of just saying "Oh, it's proprietary, it must be evil" ... I have yet to see one Linux user explain why CDE's technology is bad, but I see them every day talking ignorantly about it and making tons of false statements about it... why? Because it's proprietary, I assume. But I think it's a really good product, and, like Unix, it's irrational and sad to want it to die because you can't see the code (when you probably wouldn't use it anyway) and cause you have to pay some money for it.
I like open source software. But I don't believe the "philosophy". I like Unix too. I like a lot of technology, open source or not. Why do we have to do this? Why does there have to be such enmity toward stuff like this?
When I see IBM, SCO, SGI & co chasing after Linux, it sickens and saddens me. Not because I don't like Linux, but because I love Unix. I want these things to co-exist. I don't want one of them, driven by cost and massive hype, to kill all the others. If anyone should be pro-choice in operating systems, it should be Linux people.
I just don't understand.
> And their OS is so bad compared to an advanced
> multi-user OS like linux.
I agree with the sentiment, but I question your
qualification to pass judgement on their product
if you don't realize they don't have one single
operating system.
To be more specific, they are *currently* selling
Openserver 5.0.5, Unixware 2.1.3 and Unixware
7.1.1 (and yes, that is a different operating
system that Unixware 2.1.x).
IMHO, their products really aren't terribly good,
but mine is an informed opinion, having done
support on all three operating systems as well as
their previous products (SCO UNIX, SCO OpenServer
3.0, SCO OpenDesktop 3.0, SCO Xenix) and holding
every certification they currently offer.
And it should be said that at least one of their
operating systems does have some advantages over
Linux. Unixware currently scales better, supports
larger files and filesystems out of the box, has
a proven extent-based journeled filesystem (vxfs),
as well as a few other niceties.
That being said it is flaky as hell, over-priced,
has a confusing licencing structure, has limited
hardware support, limited ISV support, and is
generally harder to work with than any of the
free Unices on Intel.
... and open-source (GPL/LGPL) Tarantella, thus propelling them to the forefront in the thin WinClient market.
Otherwise, I give 'em a year. They've lost the Intel/Unix OS battle, with Linux and BSD and other freely available *nixes cutting into their market. That leaves Tarantella, and in that regard they're competing against Microsoft...
So the only thing I figure they can do is get on the OSS bandwagon as soon as possible. I dunno what else they could do to maintain any form of economy.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Actually, well built systems are more reliable than people. Always are.
There is a lot of interest in the airline industry these days concerning the possible use of fully automatic flight systems for commercial and other flights. These systems have been shown to be more reliable, and the level of fault tolerance is impressive (it better be...).
Initially pilots would still be there to baby sit the autopilot.. but it would handle take off, flight, landing.
Some companies are even proposing no pilots whatsoever and solely automated flight systems.. Though I doubt that will catch any time soon.
So, as far as safety and ability in a statistical sense, computers always outperform humans in such critical tasks. The higher the time sensitivity and complexity, the larger their advantage.
Wasn't the CEO of SCO one of thoese bozo's who was blasting Linux about a year ago...hmmmm lets go here for a quick read ... then hop over here for more.
Here's my favorite quote from the brilliant SCO CEO:
Q: Do you consider Linux friend or foe?
A: Linux is a religion. It's like considering the Catholic Church a competitor. I'm not a religion; I'm a commercial operating system.
Hmmmm... so now they are tanking in a major way and singing a different tune. Well, I guess maybe they should have been a little more forward thnking about a year ago. I say screw em, if you refuse to change with the times you will get left behind. I would think that a "smart" CEO would try to capaitalize on the popularity of Linux ( like IBM did.. ) instead of burying you head in the sand and acting like you are the shit. So now they are going to reorganize... hhmpf.
It just goes to show that people who post replies here don't know dick about operating systems. I was a engineering consultant and software engineer for 3 years at SCO, so I think I can say I know a bit about the company. Well, here's the big surprise: some of their stuff sucks, and some of it works really well.
That isn't a surprise to anyone who really knows about the computer industry - companies all have problems. SCO's marketing is horrible - they can't sell their way out of a paper bag. Yet, people keep buying it. You know why? Because SCO OpenServer 5.x is one of the most stable and reliable Intel OS platforms you can buy. It just works, and it works forever.
Course, it's not the fastest, or the slickest, or the coolest. You really think the business world cares about all the nifty little features in Linux? They don't - they care about the bottom line. When you need stability, SCO can deliver.
So maybe you're thinking I'm some sort of SCO evangelizer? No. I don't use SCO products at all now that I've left the company. I use Linux and FreeBSD. Since I'm not running a bank, I am willing to sacrifice some reliability for all the cool little features you get with these OSes. Plus, FreeBSD is at least as stable as SCO OpenServer.
Finally, let me note that you can run all the Open Source goodies on SCO platforms. I was one of the developers who worked very hard to make that happen. Check out SCO Skunkware for the details.
I can only guess that those who ask this question are not craftsmen, nor have they spent time around one.
To a layman, a tool is a tool. A cheap, shoddy screwdriver does as good a job as a well-crafted expensive one. Heck... a hammer might do as well.
But the right tool means much more to a craftsman. A craftsman has a much better understanding of their work than a layman and is therefore capable of doing a lot more; assuming they have the right tools. Good tools might enable a craftsman to get a particular job done faster. They might enable the craftsman to do better quality work. Or they may be the requirement the craftsman needs to be able to do the work to begin with. Take away his tools and a craftsman's work suffers. It is therefore not surprising a craftsman can be very particular about their tools. They may even be passionate about them.
This idea is universal. You can apply it to any situation where a tool is used by skilled hands.
I drive my car to work daily and think little more of it. I even occasionally manage to get regular maintenance done on time. For me, the car is a practical tool I use to get around in. A friend of mine spent almost every weekend tweaking his car. And it showed. His car performed much better than mine ever had. It was even apparent when he offered to work a bit on my car. He was passionate about cars. I wasn't. But I knew if I needed help with my car, I could turn to him (and he had a heck of a tool box too).
When I started playing paintball, I did fine with a rental paintgun. But as I played the sport more and my proficiency increased, I bought my own. It was a better quality model than the rentals. And I would tweak it. I customized parts. I kept up on all the latest info on getting the most performance out of my gun. You'd almost think the sport itself was all about building paintguns. But ultimately, it was how you performed on the field. Having a paintgun that performed just the way I wanted it to without fail was vital to that peformance.
So what about the IT world?
Whether we administer networks and the systems that make them, or develop applications and operating systems... we are all craftsman. We have a level of skill that exceeds the layman. We know the differences between various operating systems and applications. We know the intricacies of using those tools. Performing our craft is much easier when we have access to well-made tools that provide the power that we need to do our work and that we are familiar with. Without those tools, our work suffers. Why shouldn't we be passionate about them?
I got an SCO Unixware 7 "media pack" with the "Free" Unixware 7 license awhile ago, and reading the EULA, this blew me away...
:)
This really is an excerpt from the EULA, I am NOT, I repeat, am NOT making this up...
RESTRICTIONS
The Software is not designed or intended for use in on-line control of aircraft, air traffic, aircraft navigation or aircraft communications; or in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility. In addition, the Software is not intended for any activity relating to the design, development, production, sockpiling or use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or missiles. SCO's disclaimer of any express or implied warranties as stated above applies to such uses as well as all others. You agree that You will not knowingly use the Software for such purposes
Now come on, can it really be any good if I cant use it to control that brand new B1 bomber I bought, or stockpile my nuclear weapons? Give me a break! Yet another reason for Linux!
-- iCEBaLM