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

SCOx?

[MaxVlast]

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.

Re:SCOx?

[Mendax Veritas]

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

B F Deal

[RebelTycoon]

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.

Re:B F Deal

[uk_greg]

Perhaps a more appropriate subject line would be "SCOwhat".

Re:B F Deal

[evilviper]

'SCOlong' Caldera. And thanks for all the fish.

Hmm, perhaps "SCOtch" to illustrate the share holder's drinking problems when their customers all "SCOaway"?

That's when they'll start the "It's not SCObad" program.

Personally, I'm kinda partial to the IBM/Sun/HP "Say It Isn't SCO" campaign.

So many puns, SCO little time. Umm... No pun intended???

Caldera...

[Reality Master 101]

Well, I've always said they were a Mickey Mouse organization. Just look at the logo! :)

Re:Caldera...

[karmawarrior]

A billionaire is celebrating his birthday with his family, and announces there will be a twist to his celebration. "Normally, in any birthday, it is the guests who bring the person whose birthday it is presents. But this time around, to celebrate having a wonderful, wonderful, family, I ask my three sons what they want in all the world, and it will be theirs."

The three sons are baffled but delighted, and the eldest steps forward. "Father, all my life I have wanted my own fast car. Just something I can enjoy driving, out on the open road."

"It will be yours!" says the father, and a few mouse clicks and phone calls, and the son finds himself the confused but pleased and excited owner of the Ford Motor Company.

The middle child steps forward. "Father, I don't want to ask for much, but I like photography and would love a camera to play with. Could you possibl..."

The father cuts him off, and the child stands excitedly as he sees his father work the phones again and finally announce, "You are now the owner of Universal Studios! Do with it as you wish!"

Finally the youngest child stepped forward. "Well dad", he says, "What I want in the whole world is a Mickey Mouse outfit."

So the father buys him SCO Group.

Re:Caldera...

[billstr78]

Finally the youngest child stepped forward. "Well dad", he says, "What I want in the whole world is a Mickey Mouse outfit."

So the father buys him SCO Group.


Surprisingly, that troll was not to far from the truth of the origin of the original SCO (Santa Cruz Operation). The company was started 10 miles from where I am sitting right now, by a young buck who decided that he wanted the source to AT&T Bell Lab's little operating system so that he could start his own company around re-packaging the SysV code. His extreemly wealthy father wrote a check and SCO was born.

Re:Caldera...

[Reality Master 101]

Look at the logo at the top of this story (the blue and white globe). Now rotate the global to the left and fill in the missing part.

the business plan sounds fishy...

[vluther]

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...

Re:the business plan sounds fishy...

[alsta]

Well, what happens with UnitedLinux now? I thought Caldera^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSCO was the founding member of this organization.

Re:the business plan sounds fishy...

[El]

Advantage: SCO appeals to all those business types out there that are uncomfortable with getting their operating system for free, and would rather pay money for their operating system.

Why hasn't SCO gone out of business yet? Beats me.

Re:the business plan sounds fishy...

[erat]

You clearly have little understanding of how the VAR business works. Many little VARs set up many little businesses that have limited potential without either venture capital or some big, magnanimous organization to either partner with them or outright purchase them. Over the past few years the market for buying up VARs has dropped into the gutter, and venture capital is hard to come by (and when you do find it, the amount is typically more like $2 million instead of the $20 you would have gotten back in the late 90's). The buyback program is another way of motivating VARs to make their businesses as valuable as possible so they can unload the business to a company that has the means to push it to the market (and in the process, the VAR gets to retire early).

This is how business works, with the possible exception of little mom and pop shops that have been running for generations in the same small town with no aspirations for growth. They can continue to pass the same $5 bill back and forth all they want if it makes them happy and keeps them in the black. Most people with aspirations grow their businesses with the intention of being bought for a hefty sum.

It sounds like all that the SCO Group is doing is giving their own partners, resellers, ISVs, etc. first priority when acquisitions are being sought. This makes them more favorable to work with, as opposed to other companies who will partner with anyone but will step outside their own circles to hunt for acquisitions.

Exactly why is this a bad thing??

Hrumpf.

[Whispers_in_the_dark]

A quote of a quote from the article: "The new name draws upon the company's significant brand recognition in its SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare product lines."

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*

Once again....

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

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...

Re:Once again....

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

First of all... where'd your sense of humor go?
Look at Ransom's history and you'll see the numerous faux pas he's made.
Caldera was always trying to be another proprietary Unix, it's only when the market beat it into his thick skull that that wouldn't fly, has he changed his tune.

In the beginning some of this was OK, it made Caldera a more polished Linux distro. I had a lot of good to say about the Caldera 1.0 beta back in '95. But he always went too far, it was pretty obvious that he saw the only way to be successful was to copy the old proprietary Unix model. The same model that handed M$ a lot of market share on a silver platter.

Contrast RedHat who has really pioneered the service and support style model that most in the Open Source community agree with. While Caldera prolly has done more to build a Linux channel for VARs, they've gone about it wrong and have built it around SCO's old model instead of getting the VARs to look at a different focus (service, support rather than product points). Ransom has essentially let dinosaurs hang on to their dying model, not doing them any favors, since IBM and M$ are going to come eat their collective lunches over the next 10 years or so.

I think you may be the one who needs to read up more on Caldera's history and especially Ransom's. BTW, I never said he was over Caldera, just that his original intent as far as getting involved with Linux was creating his own version of Sun, HP, DEC, SGI.

The projects like li18nux have been necessary to achieve that goal. Ever seen AIX error codes? Even for command line stuff, they are available in different languages. Like I said before, some of this was good, and necessary to make Linux competitive with the Unix's of old, but his intentions have always been a bit transparent and something I've never thought were wise.

A dead horse by another name...

[Alomex]

is still a dead horse.

When things dont work, change the product name

[jukal]

when everything is lost, change the names of the whole product line, rebuild your business plan and mutter mantras like "We are firmly dedicated to providing our partners with powerful choices, both with technology and in business. The creation of TeamSCO and SCOx is a tangible example of that commitment". Also, as last hope, announce availibility of some alpha/beta software.

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.

Re:When things dont work, change the product name

[einhverfr]

when everything is lost, change the names of the whole product line, rebuild your business plan and mutter mantras like "We are firmly dedicated to providing our partners with powerful choices, both with technology and in business. The creation of TeamSCO and SCOx is a tangible example of that commitment". Also, as last hope, announce availibility of some alpha/beta software.

Now, you have to admit that naming one's company after a geological entity with cataclysmic possibilities isn't all that smart, now, is it? Especially when the cataclism is caused when they erupt and then collapse in on themselves.

Look up "caldera" in your dictionaly ;)

Re:When things dont work, change the product name

[Observer]

Yes indeed. When a series of "reorganisations" (the modern corporation's equivalent of shamanic rituals to cast out evil spirits) have failed to do the trick, the high priests of the seventh floor corner offices frequently resort to stronger magic, changing the name of something in the apparent belief that this will somehow change its true underlying nature.

The other use of this technique is for diversion and camouflage; a classic example occured after a graphite-moderated, air-cooled(!) nuclear reactor at Windscale in the UK caught fire in 1957 and released a significant amount of radioactive pollution. The site was subsequently renamed Sellafield.

Looks as though the folks at Caldera may be using the "Sellafield solution".

Re:I'm confused.

[billstr78]

It boils down to SCO's OpenServer product being more profitable in the enterprise server market than Caldera's Linux distro.

As a Santa Cruz resident and friend of current Caldera^H^H^H^H SCO Group employees, I can say that SCO OpenServer is fine product. We were disapointed when we first learned that Caldera Was aquiring SCO but not planning much integration or cooperation between the two products.

I am glad to hear that OpenServer is being re-released into the wild.

SCOx seems appropriate

[frovingslosh]

The name change seems appropriate, am I going to be the first to note how it will be pronounced?

Re:SCOx seems appropriate

[Per Wigren]

Like "socks"? ;)

Re:SCOx seems appropriate

[red_dragon]

... am I going to be the first to note how it will be pronounced?

Maybe not, but here are my suggestions:

• Ess-Cee-Oh-Ecks
• Skoh-Ecks
• Santa Cruz Ox
• S-Cocks

Take your pick.

Re:SCOx seems appropriate

[bigjocker]

More like s-cocks i think ... :)

Re:Support

[cdrudge]

Nope...Well, maybe as a database server. My current job is to keep aroudn 650 POS servers up and running. Unfortunately, I know a few people that feel their 7+ year old servers are more then fine for what they need. Of course they are the same people or scream when we can't find parts or tell them that their SCO v3.4.2 server isn't supported anymore.

Re:VA Software

[jukal]

why don't you go straight to FIASCO :)

Re:Support

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I had an ODT 2.0 server, ran for 9 years straight before we mothballed it in favor of a OSR5.0.2 server.

Re:Support

[Surak]

We have one running on an HP server...it serves up our job and payroll information.

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...

[Ami Ganguli]

In fact, the text WP used to be highly cross platform. Multiple Unixes, at least.

I don't think there'd be much of a market for this, though. What do you want it for?

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[haggar]

I agree that some sort of integration with NDS would have made Caldera Linux a product with an edge for certain applications.

However, I disagree with you and all others (seems to be 90% of posters here) who claim that SCO is failing in the market. First of all, everybody who has worked with UnixWare described it as one of the best Unix on any platform. I am mostly a HP-UX and Solaris guy myself, so I just report what I heard from dozens of my colleagues. And second thing; The only really profitable products Caldera has had till now were UnixWare and the SCO-related Unices.

Even if you don't accept my arguments, you should see that there are shades of grey, there.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[fm6]

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...

Uh, hello! Netware is dying too! Besides, no matter how good your distro is, it's pretty clear that there's a lot more to a successful Linux business model than a good distro.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[decefett]

Not here.

We had UnixWare on EMC boxen, it sucked so much we took the migration path to Linux as soon as it was offered.

Haven't looked back.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[Ami Ganguli]

Netware is dying, but NDS is still the best way to manage large numbers of servers that I've ever seen. That's why I think NDS for Linux, with the ability to configure everything through the NDS tree, would be a killer product.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[Ami Ganguli]

In fact I've never heard that, and I've administered Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, SCO OpenServer, and UnixWare. OpenServer was absolutely the worst Unix I've ever had the misfortune to use. UnixWare was tolerable, but still not up to the standards set by the others. Linux doesn't have all the high-end features, but it's just nicer to use.

I think there was a window where SCO could have produced their own Linux distro and kept their user base, but they missed their chance. Legacy SCO will be around for a while, but new projects are going to Linux - mostly RedHat.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[Wdomburg]

>However, I disagree with you and all others (seems
>to be 90% of posters here) who claim that SCO is
>failing in the market. First of all, everybody
>who has worked with UnixWare described it as one
>of the best Unix on any platform.

I've got SCO ACE certification in Openserver and Unixware, SCO Master ACE certification in Non-Stop Clusters and Openserver, and supported as far back as SCO Unix 3.2v4.0 and Unixware 1.1 (as a legacy product after it was purchased by SCO).

Openserver was a nightmare to work with. First off, just BUYING it was a task. Need a licence for the operating system, tcp/ip support, multiple processor support, disk mirroring, and whatever user count you need. If it was an upgrade, you had to know what version you were coming from, how many users you had licensed, what units they were licenced in, etc, etc.

Then you get to buying the hardware to install it on, and half the supported hardware is discontinued. Whoops.

Finally get a system to put it on, and you're greeting with a picky installed worse than what Redhat had on version 3.0.3, which you complete only to have to start the arduous task of installing all the patches and hardware supplements - RS505, OSS471, OSS491, OSS600, etc. And God help you if you accidently installed one out of order, because then its time to roll back, reapply, and pray it goes smoothly so you don't have to reinstall.

After installing nothing but the base operating system and the vendor supplied patches, its time to run a verify on the operating system, because oft times there'd already be issues with permissions and symlinks.

Then maybe you'd want to do a backup to your shiny new DAT drive. Whoops, have to relink the kernel for that. And as you manually type in the location of your tape drive, you accidently put in the wrong bus. When you notice your error you try to delete the device and add it correctly, but it won't go away. Turns out you have to manually edit six different files scattered across the filesystem, including the kernel headers.

Mind you, Unixware was better... at least Unixware 7 was. However the initial releases were buggy as hell, and were a bizarre mixture of SysV, Netwarisms, and Openserverisms.

I think their best bet for carving a niche for themselves was the Non-stop Cluster product. Platform aside, it was a pretty damn slick single system image cluster. I got to play with some of the first ones in existence, and actually built out four of them (two on my own, one while I was assisting a SCO instructor doing an on-site training, and one at an advance training out in Santa Cruz)). Very cool stuff, though it suffered from the expected flakiness of a new product; doubly so since it was built on a brand new operating system.

Unfortunately, it seems that they never managed to capture any marketshare, and from what I can see on the website, it looks like they only offer a high availability solution now.

So what do these products have to offer the market now aside from legacy support, and a few niche markets which are slow to change?

Matt

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[Ami Ganguli]

RedHat is the one Linux distro. company that isn't likely to go under. They're essentially break-even now, and the future looks good.

It's quite possible that we'll end up with RedHat as the only big commercial distro. There would still be Debian, various hardware vendors, and perhaps a few small niche distros.

Linux is good for the hardware vendors precisely because nobody owns it. They can contribute to it's development without feeling that they're working on a competitor's product - it belongs to everybody.

It's also not clear anymore that proprietary Unix is better technically. Unix is still better in some ways, but Linux has clear advantages in the embedded space, and has incredible cross-platform support. Even AIX won't run on all of IBM's hardware, but Linux will. The few remaining advantages of Unix are quickly disappearing.

So no, this doesn't look anything like the .com bubble. Well, if you're taking a stock market perspective then yes, Linux companies were caught up in the hype. But from a technical perspective, Linux is delivering better than anybody could have imagined.

Re:Really, really dumb move...

[Corrado]

I agree with NDS being good. Now, what do we have on Linux that can compete with NDS & Active Directory in managing an enterprise network? I have looked and looked with no results.

Please, someone tell me that there is a way out of AD!!! :)

change of business plan

[Sabalon]

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.

Re:change of business plan

[gmhowell]

Don't forget that not only were they selling what others (Debian) were giving away for free, Caldera was doing it at a premium over others (RedHat) while offering very little of value.

Ransom Love is not a friend of the Linux community. The more distance between him and 'us', the better.

Part of the problem is that he wants to be Scott McNealy when he grows up. And it's just not going to happen.

Caldera dead?

[Lissst]

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.

Re:What's next,

[Tackhead]

> they're going to re-brand their distro as 'XENIX' and their CEO will be sued for sexual harrassment?

1) Get sued for sexual harassment.
2) Cut off internet access to all employees.
3) Pay a fortune for the name "UNIX"
4) Because Linux is "a religion" [...] that "didn't break any new ground" written by "punk young kids"
5) Shuts down all your development teams.
6) Change your mind on Linux 5 years too late and call it Caldera?
7) Umm, rename it to SCO again?
8) ????

I dunno what 9) is, but it sure as hell ain't gonna be "Profit".

Re:So Who's Next?

[erat]

How are you relating Turbolinux to Caldera? All Caldera did was change their name, add a few new marketing/support programs for resellers, and re-state their commitment to sell OpenServer. Turbo sold its Linux business outright to someone else.

The comparison doesn't make sense.

I wonder if they will get a better logo

[Arcturax]

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...

Re:the first real business orientated distro

[r_j_prahad]

Glad to see there is someone else who agrees with me. Caldera was the first distro with a foot in the door where I work. They had PHB appeal when RedHat conjured up images of long-haired kids in basements. And the Lizard installer would put together a working system on esoteric collections of hardware that made Mandrake choke and puke.

If only Love could keep his mouth shut they might still have a future.

Re:No More Free (legacy) Unix?

[foonf]

AFAIK everything that was available under the old "enthusiast license" deal that began with SCO before the buyout was reissued under a BSD-like license more recently, so I don't think they could take it back even if they wanted to. Here is the license itself in PDF format.

Re:No More Free (legacy) Unix?

[erat]

Are you saying you actually use this "vintage" code?

if they want to make money on UNIX

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

then they need to do what Apple did with MacOS X -- except for x86.

Re:It didn't spring from Novell

[jafuser]

I thought SCO bought Xenix from MS?

Re:what about united linux?

[foonf]

All that's left is SuSE and Connectiva

Erg...if tbat was really true, it might be a decent system. Unfortunately the charnel house which acquired TurboLinux intends to continue their participation, and "The SCO Group" will probably do the same.

Re:It didn't spring from Novell

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Read here.

Re:What's next,

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

3) Pay a fortune for the name "UNIX"

They already did; The UNIX trademark passed from Novell -> SCO -> Caldera, aka SCOx. None of them seemed to made any money from it.

but best installer

[DABANSHEE]

lets face it for many years Caldera had the best Linux installer.

This is hilarious

[drinkypoo]

I used to run SCO Xenix on my 286-6 with 1mb of ram. What a great OS, a zillion times faster than DOS, and with preemptive multitasking.

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?

Re:This is hilarious

[drinkypoo]

As for 'uncompatible [sic]', SCO UnixWare _is_ Unix. AT&T sold it to Novell who then sold it to SCO. So it isn't SCO Unix that is 'uncompatible'.

Uh, yes it is. "UNIX" (tm) means diddly-shit in this world, it's what people are actually running that matters. That means it's something to the effect of Solaris, Linux, and AIX that matter, and everything else can either do the things they do, or fuck off.

POSIX is all. "UNIX" means dick except for a trademark someone paid for, and who cares about that? "Unix" (See the jargon file) should be POSIX.2 these days, anything else would be uncivilized.

1st modern installer

[DABANSHEE]

for Linux too.

SCO UNIXen

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

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.

Re:SCO UNIXen

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

To be annoying and follow up my own post, I forgot to include:

4) Monterrey, the stillborn joint project with IBM to get UNIX on Itanium. IBM isn't releasing theirs yet (a lot of Monterrey went into AIX 5L), they're waiting to see what Itanium does in the marketplace. Under what situations would SCO release it (assuming they survive long enough to) into the marketplace is unknown.

Liz's quite popular

[DABANSHEE]

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.

Re:What's next,

[HiThere]

4) Because Linux is "a religion" [...] that "didn't break any new ground" written by "punk young kids" [computerworld.com]

Nice link. It's hard to remember that that was only three years ago.

Betting on the wrong horse

[dublin]

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?

Caldera did spring from Novell, sorta

[alienmole]

Caldera sprang from Novell in the sense that it was co-founded by Ray Noorda, the founder and ex-CEO of Novell.

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.

Re:So Who's Next?

[Jason Earl]

The question is simple. Would Caldera change their name if there Linux strategy was working?

Nope.

So instead of chasing the future, which is clearly Linux, Caldera err... SCO Group is going to focus squeezing the last few pennies out of their customers that are too dumb to have migrated to Linux. That's a clever strategy.

Re:the first real business orientated distro

[aussersterne]

The Lizard installer (1st graphical Linux installer), a number of administration tools, and believe it or not, early versions of RPM (a.k.a. the "Red Hat Package Manger").

The problem was, rather than advertise their contributions back to the community, Caldera was actually secretive about them, believing that giving away code for free and opening code up would make them scary to point-haired bosses.

I worked in the Utah Caldera office for a while and there was a lot of this around -- a kind of pride in giving back to the community, but at the same time, an undercurrent of unspoken *fear* that some of the customers might actually *find out* that they gave back to the community and because of that, switch away to more traditional Un*x operating systems.

What?

[timeOday]

I've never seen rats scramble ONTO a sinking ship!

Do your marketing

[Paul Johnson]

Reading through this, I've seen some responses along the lines of "Build it and we will come". Don't believe it.

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.

Half of "United Linux" is already gone

[MobyTurbo]

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.

Re:Support

[rasjani]

Wh00t!

What a f#!"#ing co-insidence! I used to work for one company in Finland who made Pharmacy POS systems for Sco (and Ingres DB it also had other features too, not just pos..) and i helped them to migrate to Linux. And yeah, they are now shipping Redhat ;)