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."

Comments

Re:SCOx?

[Mendax Veritas]

"Santa Cruz Operation" sounds doesn't sound to me at all like military jet manufacturing -- more like cocaine smuggling.

Really, really dumb move...

[Ami Ganguli]

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.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what happens if Red Hat decide (or are forced by the balance sheet) to stop subsidising their loss-making Linux business and focus on the profitable businesses they acquired?

This is the fundamental problem for Linux vendors: they were built with massive amounts of venture capital, but the only way any of them have managed to stop haemorrhaging money is by acquiring profitable, commercial (proprietary) businesses with their inflated shares; for example, Red Hat acquired Cygnus and Caldera acquired SCO.

Acquiring profitable businesses with inflated shares hasn't even been enough to put Red Hat, the leading Linux vendor, solidly into the black. How long do you think Red Hat shareholders, who have lost so much already, will continue to allow their money to be thrown into the bottomless pit of the Linux-packaging business? What about the other Linux vendors? TurboLinux/whoever-they-are-now already sold their Linux business and Caldera/SCO are obviously moving from Linux back to UNIX.

If the Linux vendors all fold or abandon the Linux-packaging business (and unless things change, this will happen), will Linux have any future outside the hobbyist market? Will those who have left SCO and commercial UNIX come running back? Large hardware firms like IBM could afford to sustain Linux, but without the hype/publicity, is there any reason for them to? Why keep Linux afloat when they can easily acquire (and in most cases already own) more advanced UNIX-based operating systems?

The Linux 'revolution' is looking increasingly like a replay of the .com bubble in slow-motion. The primary result of the .com 'revolution' was nothing more than the transfer of existing businesses to new owners, who acquired them with inflated (and now virtually worthless) shares.

It didn't spring from Novell

[ACNeal]

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.