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Adios, Caldera; Hello, SCO Group
An anonymous reader writes: "Caldera International, the company that sprang from Novell and went on to distribute a Linux distribution popular among users before the company's decision to withdraw from the retail desktop market, is no more. Instead, what was once Caldera is now 'the SCO Group.'
The change, announced at the company's 'GeoFORUM' conference in Las Vegas Monday, recognizes Caldera's acquisition of SCO Unix, and follows what former employees claimed was a switch in emphasis from Caldera OpenLinux to SCO Unix. At the same time, the company announced a new business plan, called 'SCOx,' and new versions of its Unix and Linux distributions. Details, which combine a multitude of press releases, are on Linux and Main."
Stop Corrupting Our Linux.
Wow.
SCO has always been my favorite company name. It's just so generic. Santa Cruz Operation. It sounds more like a fighter plane maneuver than a company.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Proprietary over opensource? Wha?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
they're going to re-brand their distro as 'XENIX' and their CEO will be sued for sexual harrassment?
Nuff said...
In related news... SlashDot.org will be depreciated in favor of Slashdot.COM to further re-enforce the idea that this site will actually generate revenue.
Tournament Management Online &
Worst distribution I've ever seen ... good riddance.
More acronyms.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
HURRY UP AND DIE!!
Why Buy what you can get for free??? Slack Ware Baby.
Well, I've always said they were a Mickey Mouse organization. Just look at the logo! :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Now maybe I can get support for all of the pathetic 7 year old legacy servers I have to keep running.
Or, maybe not.
Am I the only one still maintaining a SCO database server?
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
Mickey Mouse eclipsing the sun.
the SCOx business plan pretty much says,.. build a business on SCO, and sell it back to us.
This kinda sounds like.. spend your money on marketing sco, and your products.. and we'll buy your business from you. does this mean employees etc and you keep your HQ or does it mean.. we take your revenue from you.. and give you a percentage ?.
It really sounds like a ploy to let others build business for them, and for others to do the marketing.. and then SCO will buy it...and just the customer db, not the employees who worked hard to get the business in the first place. Anyone have a url for the fine print on this ?.
Either way.. can anyone tell me what the benefits of SCO are in todays world ? What does SCO provide that Linux already doesn't.. or is not in the works ?. just curious...
Yeah, recognition of something unpleasant.
I had the misfortune of dealing with SCO Unixware several years ago and got my fill of periodic random kernel lockups, poor tools, and kernel panic dumps that would happily corrupt regular disk mounts. I thought that pig was dead. *sigh*
Who bought Who?
C'mon, everyone knows Ransom Love never gave two hoots about Linux, he just wanted to own UNIX ever since his days at Novell when it got the cold shoulder and the shove out the door. Love's always had serious envy over SGI and SUN. Too bad for him, the days of super high margins on proprietary Unix boxen are gone.
No time for Love...
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
So, I guess that's the end of the free-for-non-commercial-use "vintage" Unix licenses that caldera handed out a couple of months ago. :(
What's up with UnitedLinux members? Last week TurboLinux, now it's Caldera ... who's next? Will SuSE change their name too? or get Sold? Hope not. I like SuSE. I hate Sushi.
Though I generally don't have any issues with Linux and Main (aside from some rather storm-in-a-teacup editorials), when was the last time you saw a breaking news story and saw L&M as the source?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
is still a dead horse.
It has been long since I have seen as confusing messaging, this seems almost like a joke. It does not make any sense at all.
Is it just me, or does that logo look like a red globe with a blue Mickey Mouse head on it?
This is a backwards place but I don't feel like driving in reverse.
http://www.sys-con.com/linux/articlenews.cfm?id=92
"a Linux distribution popular among users"
Popular? Does being used as coasters count?
The name change seems appropriate, am I going to be the first to note how it will be pronounced?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So they're just changing the name of an awful product to be more like the name of a midly-decent product, and hoping it will increase sales, as far as I can tell. They should realize that the average linux user is probably smart enough to care more about the quality of the distro than what name is slapped on it. Also, as a side note, how is one supposed to pronounce 'SCOx'? It is like 'Cox' with an s infront of it? Or is it SCO-ex? Maybe "Skokes?"
Some little black-ops army of geeks, making sure that Saddam gets his fair share of spam and telemarketing.
I guess I'll start 'The Open Source Group'
All the local consulting firms are renaming, example:
Jorge-Schulz, and associates, CPA's
Now known as
The Jorge-Schulz Group
Who started this little trend?
why don't you go straight to FIASCO :)
SCO sells its Unix line to Caldera because they know that Linux is killing Unix on Intel. Then Caldera, finding it can't compete in the Linux market, decides to emphasize Unix on Intel? What's the point of giving up one failing business model for another?
Caldera needs to find itself a nice niche. Given it's links to Novell, a Linux distro with tightly integrated NDS would make a great product. Climbing into the sinking SCO ship is a stupid idea.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
All that's left is SuSE and Connectiva
Fate of Linux is in the hands of spics and nazis? HAH!
It will be sadly missed.
They may have had issues with GPL and not the fastest to embrace the newest stuff, but it was solid and predicatble, with less fluff then the other 'big' distros.
They also did contribute some back to the community, even if many of you refuse to admit it.
Guess its time to do my own install set, and not rely on anyone else.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does that Random love is gone?
Seriously, I've got nothing against commercial Unix OS in theory, but SCO is the worst. It's a commercial operating system without one of the main benefita of a commercial OS, in that doesn't have any commercial ports, save for a few obscure and dated applications. That leaves open source apps to compile yourself, so why would you use a commercial OS to run open source apps? Perhaps they are using the chewbacca methodology.
I love Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, and several others. Each has advantages. SCO, as far as I can tell, has none.
Hey...what do you know...giving the software away and selling stuff people are giving away isn't making us money.
Well...we do have this company we bought that was making money some years ago. Perhaps we could try selling that product and see if it makes money.
Is it just me, or does Caldera seem to get into business deals WWWAAAAYYYYY to late into the game? I see Caldera going nowhere really fast.
So what happened to Ransom Love? He used to be the President and CEO, but I don't see a link to his bio on the new website.
v e.html
http://www.caldera.com/company/execs/
But, I do see that a page on him exists:
http://www.caldera.com/company/execs/rlo
Ok, not first, but these muthafukkin' moderators better read their damn history books before moddin' me offtopic, muthafukkers. Troll would have been acceptable, however. Asshats.
SCO-X (Experimental SCO, Extreme SCO)
Scotch (If it ain't Scottish, it's crap)
Scocks (Smells like socks)
They bought Novell.
The business model they employed was to sell a product that looked like it might be a competitor to MS, then sue MS.
DR-DOS and Novell were both purchases of Caldera, and tried to use them both as a basis for anti-competitive lawsuits.
I thought it was a nice touch to buy them for a song when they were already run into the ground. That really demonstrated that they had no interest in making money the old fashioned way. They just wanted to sue for it.
Linux == chapter 7
The current logo looks to me like the shadow of a gigantic Mickey Mouse head starting to slowly loom over the planet and would fit better as a Disney logo given they are bent on control of the world, or at least control over what the world is allowed to do with the movies they buy anyway...
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Best "Underpants gnomes" joke EVAR!
Thank you, that was actually funny!
Are you smoking your NDAs or is this a troll?? I can not see how you would prefer closed source UNIX, especially DEC, over Linux. I'll admit it's been a few years since I've been on a DEC system, but I've found Linux to be just as stable and MUCH more flexible. Perhaps you could enlighten us with a point by point comparison?
(hardware architecture does not count)
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
I'm sure anybody that uses it will pronounce it SUCKS
SCO used to have a 'free for personal use' program that allowed those so inclined to mess around and work on porting stuff to their commercial OSs. Interestingly enough, Caldera canned this program AFTER Caldera bought the SCO OS's from SCO.
I participated in the program when it was first opened. The whole experience was pretty educational for me. SCO OpenServer (and UnixWare, I think) are really very close to the original AT&T unix. It was pretty cool looking into the workings of an OS that branches so close to the roots of unix. Even the boot messages looked very close to those on an old AT&T 3b2 I used to have.
It was especially educational experiencing the way Caldera unilaterally canned the program. I don't suppose Debian is going to start charging me
$250 a copy for Woody. I think I learned my lesson.
is their netcraft uptimes
"oohhh... I didn't know Schopenhauer was a philosopher!"
"Love of Linux" huh? Why don't you add that the piece also says he's in need of a publisher - clearly it ain't gonna be the SCO Group's Darl McBride!!
then they need to do what Apple did with MacOS X -- except for x86.
MORTAR COMBAT!
You beat me to it.... I was just about to post the question, "Does anybody else see first the blue Mickey Mouse ear(s)before they see the red C in the Caldera globe logo?"
And so it came to pass that Novell begot Canopy.
And Canopy begot Caldera.
And Caldera coveted DrDOS
And Caldera and DrDOS begot Caldera Systems and Caldera Thin Clients
And Caldera Thin Clients begot Lineo
And Caldera Systems begot Caldera (again)
And Lineo coveted more than a _half dozen_ others
But Caldera Systems coveted UN*X and lured SCO into another unholy union
And Lineo begot Embedix while disowning those it had coveted
And Caldera begot United Linux.
And Caldera begot SCO (again)
And it's not over yet!
I'm going to be sick.
I always thought "Dr. SCO" had a nice ring to it.
Why not? Linux doesn't run well on non-intel platforms; Most of the best hardware is non-intel.
Perhaps you could enlighten us with a point by point comparison?
Perhaps you can come up with a comparison showing why you' think Linux is better?
OpenLinux more and more sounds like "Hey SUSE, I dont want to do my own linux distro anymore - can I have yours?"...
:)
For real - SUSE seems the only one who is still commited to Linux - Turbo & Caldera just cant efford the cost of development any longer... They should just be honest and say "SCO Linux powered by SUSE".... Gladly SUSE doesnt care - they can be happy to get more marketshare out of this deal - and if they develop it themselves or have a few others help them shouldnt make a big difference to them.
On another note - am I the only one who hoped to see SCO die when Caldera bought it and is not scared... Night of the living dead I guess
Umm. Who slapped you across the face with the dead herring first cockbrain?
lets face it for many years Caldera had the best Linux installer.
SCO Unix, on the other hand, is a dog. I mean, woof woof woofity woof woof. It's slow, it's uncompatible (try building some perfectly POSIX C code of any size on it) and it's not free/open. Linux has been working on slaughtering it for some time now, and I really thought it had succeeded.
Now caldera is trying to make a business out of SCO Unix? It'll NEVER. HAPPEN. Where the hell do they keep getting money for this crap?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Look for SuSE to eventually become IBM Linux.
for Linux too.
Just a reminder, Caldera has three UNIX(like) OSes.
1) OpenServer, the "old" SCO unix. This is a dog, and is not getting any real updates. Basically just fixes, SCO is milking this cash cow as long as it can, but it's already pretty dry. Anyone who's used it will remember the symbolic link hell it was.
2) OpenUNIX 8, nee UnixWare 7. This is where the real development is going to. This is SVR5 UNIX. Why? because thats what SCO says SVR5 UNIX is. It's it's party, and it can call it what it wants. SCO owns the UNIX trademark. OpenUNIX has a lot of GNU userland tools and pretty strong Linux compatibility in the kernel. Said to run Linux binaries a bit fqaster than Linux, mostly because of a better VM.
3) Caldera Linux. Don't know much about this except to say it exists. Well I had a login once, it was Linux, really.
A lot of folks seem to be comfusing 1 and 2 above. They're different beasts.
http://www.caldera.com/unitedlinux/ still shows the mickeymouse logo
Just off the top of my head I think both Corel Linux & Redmund Linux/Lycoris use Caldera's Lizard installer as the basis of their installer.
I think they would have been better off if they dumped SCO unix and just concentrated on linux. SCO was never my favorite brand of Unix to work with. Too many bugs/patches required out of the box - even with the latest and greatest releases. They always seemed to be a year behind in updating their releases. Plus, they were very expensive and it didn't even come with a development system.
When all else fails, run.
Caldera did only sensible think they could.
They foud out, that once their customers can
download somebody's work for free, they wiould
let them, their programmers and their families
starve to death.
And it is not only greredy corporation, it
is also whole army of Linux users who want the
software free as a beer.
SCO users base is small, but udnerstand that
labourers deserve their wages.
And as long as SCO unix is still unix, I will wholehartedly approve.
Petrus
Another linux distribution bites the dust. Enough said.
I was looking at the latest 10Q for Caldera/SCOx. Roughly halfway through the document there is a breakdown of the revenues for Caldera and SCO (aka Tarantella). It looks like SCO (excuse me, Tarantula, excuse me, Tarantella) has 15x Caldera's revenue. Maybe Caldera bought SCO with inflated stock?
& FID=912057-02-24744&SID=02-00&OrderNumber=1360253& Format=TXT
If I misread the document, correct me.
ObURL:
http://ir.caldera.com/EdgarDetail.cfm?CIK=1102542
And search for "PRO FORMA THREE AND SIX MONTHS ENDED APRIL 30, 2002 AND 2001"
well, SCO was designed to be the "Unix" that ran on intel hardware. That was their primary market, and they ruled it until Linux came along.
The sad thing about this is that they're betting on the wrong horse - Caldera Linux is a better OS than SCO.
Unfortunately, this is all about the cart pulling the horse - like SGI, SCO just won't die: although they haven't really made money in years, they make enough to keep the campany barely afloat.
SCO is not a very good product, but is much better after an injection of goat glands from UnixWare.
I'll miss Caldera, though - I think it was probably the Linux distro best suited for enterprise use, and certainly had the best installation and managment tools.
Good question: What does this mean for Lycoris (nee Redmond Linux), since that ecxcellent desktop distro is based on Caldera?
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This is not a troll.
I take this announcement in a more positive light. I think the SCO brand has a greater recognition in the unix community. By branding their Linux as SCO I think more 'established' companies might give it a closer look. Say what you want about SCO Unix but it works in the enterprise environment. Linux is only just beginning to.
The company I work for recently back-pedalled on a previous decision to release RH Linux servers to our client sites. Once we got a fair number out there it became clear that its' ability to handle normal usage of serial terminals, printers, spoolers and terminal/port servers was far more problematic than SCO ever was. We are now trying to 'upgrade' a number of those sites to SCO because our cost to support them has likely exceeded anything we made on the sale.
There is something to be said for reliabiliy. Our clients will pay for it and expect it. Saving a few thousand dollars at the beginning of the delivery of a system (because you sold them Linux) is not what they think about when you have to occasionally reboot their whole operation because a poorly written driver has wedged something; rather, the client thinks you have sold a poor product or that your support bites.
If by branding their version of Linux as "SCO" means that the same reliabiliy might soon be expected as under their SCO Unix then I wish them well and will look forward to each new version. If it is just a ploy to get people to take a second look then they can count me out.
Caldera purchased the rights to DR-DOS from Novell in 1996.
Caldera has not acquired Novell. Novell is an independently traded public company listed on NASDAQ.
It's quite simple: If something goes on my SCO OS I can have sompleace to go to tell my situation and ( perhaps for a price ) have it fixed/resolved. What happens if my Red Hat installation goes wrong? I seriously have this doubt that Red Hat has the ability to fix my problem and I sure as hell don't feel like paying 2 thousand dollars to become Red Hat certified.
Now I know you're going to reply with "But Linux has a user support base" and that any systems engineer worth his lick should be able to fix it. Well, how about I don't want to waste my time having my engineers fix the problem when I can have the people who know EXACTLY how the OS is built do it for me? Sure it'll cost me more, but I know that it's being solved by capable personel and not by someone who hacks at an OS on a weekend.
Linux, also, has the unfortuante ability to support multiple platforms. I know you said to ignore that, but here me out here. This is probably the worst thing I hate about the kernel. It wants to be like NetBSD, everywhere and anywhere. I don't want that. I want my OS to be built for MY system. What do I care if Linux runs on an sparc processor if I don't very well own a SunMicro Computer? DEC built that OS to run on an Alpha, and it ran VERY damn well on it. I wouldn't even consider putting linux on it for the simple reason that if I already own an Alpha computer then I already own the OS that comes with it. And a decision between owning True-64 that was specifically built for the Alpha and a kernel that was BUILT WITH FREAKING GCC-2.95 FOR CRYNG OUT LOUD then I'm going to pick the OS that was built with a real compiler as opposed to the crap that is on Linux.
I bet you're the type of person who advocates open source for the bisiness field. It think that's crap. If I use Linux/GCC (Yes, I know True-64 came with GCC but there are much better compilers out there) to do my work then the only support I'm going to receive is someone giving me a gun to shoot my brains out. If I use a Microsoft Windows/Visual Studio combination and something goes wrong you can bet your ass I'll be calling them and bitching. Of course there is BCC (Borland C Compiler) for linux, but would you really agree to that EULA?
But say you do and you get all this great support that Borland is more than happy to give you, you're still writing code for an OS that has 250 thousand different ways to do things. Each different flavor of Linux does something so slightly different that the install script has to be one million lines long and requies the effort for 200 more people than necessary. That will also happen between Sun/Hp/Free-BSD versions of UNIX, but not between versions of True-64. So instead of getting 200 linux scripters for 200 different distros for linux, you can get 100 different install options for the different version of UNIX. It doesn't sound like my point here is moot it really isn't.
The only thing I can give you is that Linux is more flexible. I will definitly not deny True-64 being as rigid as a frozen sloth. But I ask you this, flexible in what way? I know you can scale True-64 pretty well cause I've seen it in action. I know True-64 can be faster than linux when you cut out all the things you won't need. I use Mandrake 8.2 and True-64 on comparable systems (400MHz Aplha Vs. 400PII) and I will say that True-64 does what I want it to do faster than my Mandrake box. I KNOW admining on True-64 is alot better than Mandrake. I can hardly use linuxconf because half of it doesn't even make sense to me. Linux can't even choose between BSD4.4 and SystemV so that just makes it all the worse.
Sure Linux can support 300 different platforms, but it doesn't support one platform well enough for me. Linux dirver support is good, but it's still shit when compared to WindowsXP. If Linux would perfect itself on x86 first and then move on to somehting else, then I'd feel safer about it. On the True-64 you could be sure that everything made for that platform is supported by the OS. On top of that, sometimes Linux drivers are at version Alpha.0.0.0.0.0.01-rev1009. Does that make you feel safe at all?
To sum it up, Linux is more flexible but that doesn't mean it's better. True-64 is better as an OS on an ALPHA just as much as Solaris is better as an OS on a SPARC. I'll even go on to say that FreeBSD is a better free platform on x86 than Linux is. It's based off a closed source UNIX version.
Don't EVER say that Linux will be as good as a closed source UNIX. Might as well go on and say that Linux is better than Microsoft Windows. As much as I'd like to see Windows die, Linux will not be the OS to do it. That's why I like OSX so much, it's got money behind it and can do everything Linux/Unix can.
So that's my point by point, did it enlighten you?
Sounds like they have nothing to say, so they've changed the company name again.. back to what it was. (or whatever).
"Pass mew that whip - this horse corpse will go round one more lap" SCO unix - deary me - havn't they noticed that Linux/BSD plus XFree/KDE/Gnome is better than anything they ever had to offer?
Flame away - thats been my experince of SCO - yours may be different.
Webmin completely kicks ass! I'm sure glad they threw some development time there.
I've never seen rats scramble ONTO a sinking ship!
before "UnitedLinux" is just another term for "SuSE". Two down, how's Conectiva doing these days? :^)
Well, no change at all... first was the boycott to Caldera to be too much proprietary... now we'll continue the boycott to SCO.
Caldera: Call yourself whatever you want many of us will never, ever, use a product from you (or SCO).
Long life to any other Linux distro.
What all the /. people always fail to see is the business end of things.
/.ers.
Guess what -- they get a royakty payment for every Solaris, HP-UX, etc., box going out the door. Why? Because there is a part of System V in each one, and guess who owns the copyright?
Smarten up
The troubles with TurboLinux and the now changing Caldera does not bode well for the United Linux effort. Is Caldera re-adjusting itself for the United Linux effort, or does Caldera have no faith in the idea and trying to acquire new business oportunities?
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
i think it's because of this
I spent some years of my life prosetylising Eiffel. It was an OO language done right, far better than C++, and considerably better than Java. Everybody listened politely, but the replies always started "Yes, but here in the real world...", and then they'd explain why nobody is ever going to adopt a minority language.
Then Python happened. Why Python and not Eiffel? I'm not sure. But I can get hired to program in Python. I never could for Eiffel. Hmmm. Build it and they might come.
So you need to talk to the marketeers. I've done courses on marketing. Thats not selling, thats marketing: the two are different. And I have to tell you that the hacker disdain for marketroids is misplaced. These guys do know what they are talking about, and they have a number of really useful tools for working out just what is going to sell your product and what is irrelevant chaff. What they don't generally understand is the hacker mindset. Thats where you come in. Talk to your marketeers. Help them understand the target market and how its members think. Put the two together and you will have something.
Good luck.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Since I'm now running FreeBSD, I am hesitent to call any platform dead ;-), especially one that hasn't appeared yet. However, with Turbo Linux's near bankruptcy and Caldera's refashioning of itself as SCO it doesn't look like "United Linux" has an especially bright future. Though SuSE and perhaps Connectiva (famous for apt-get for RPM) are probably in good enough shape to get the product to market with or without their shaky partners.
So? SCO and Linux both run on Intel; why choose Linux?
Sounds like a support group for people who have had to support SCO Unixware!
Hi, I'm dan. And I use scoadmin.