Sun Rethinking Linux Strategy Over SCO Lawsuit

manyoso writes "Sun is waisting no time taking advantage of the SCO lawsuit against IBM. They are making statements trying to play up Solaris as a safe harbor for worried Linux and IBM users. John Loiacono, VP of Sun's operating platforms group, "For people looking at the issues at hand, we are a safe harbor. We have absolute rights to our technology ... We're changing our strategy around Linux (but) we're pausing because we're trying to figure out what the implications of this are going to be". So, this begs the questions... What are the short term implications for the new Linux based desktop we've been hearing about from our fair weather friends? How will the SCO lawsuit affect Sun's long term strategy with Linux and Open Source?"

Comments

SCO in its death throes.

[acceleriter]

This lawsuit doesn't mean a thing in the long term. Either SCO will end up (finally) dead or as a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM. They figured out that selling something available for free didn't work, and now they're about to discover that trying to gouge former customers for license fees doesn't work either. And it's about time.

Re:SCO in its death throes.

[IWannaBeAnAC]

No. The GPL explicitly requires that if you own any patent rights on the code, then you must allow everyone all the usual GPL rights on modifications and distribution.

That is, either everybody can share the code with no restrictions (other than the usual GPL), or nobody can - not even SCO themselves.

But the whole thing is silly anyway, it can only possibly affect more recent parts of Linux, the core parts (e2fs filesystem etc) are pretty obviously developed independently of SCO, and owes nothing to them. Indeed, the main response from everyone is that the whole complaint from the beginning is a load of hot air. Especially since they havn't actually given any details on exactly what parts of the kernel are supposed to be infringing their patents.

Re:SCO in its death throes.

[manyoso]

Quit spreading this stupid FUD. You are making yourself look very silly. Qt is Free Software licensed under the GNU GPL. Trolltech has no way to 'turn the screw' and Qt would be released under the BSD license if they did. Besides, Trolltech is one of the most graceful and pleasant Free Software companies around. They have given and given to the community and we have no reason to mistrust them. The SCO connection is dubious at best since they have invested at most 5%.

Keep your petty Trolltech FUD to yourself please.

Tells you a lot...

[Anonymous Coward]

When their stock rises 40% on a worthless lawsuit. You just gotta ask yourself, what the hell value did they have before, when worthless adds 40% to them?

It's like David and Goliath - sure, David beat Goliath... once. Who's taking bets that SCO won't be the one killing the giant that is IBM?

Sun had better not gloat too much - they may as well be the next ones on SCO's list of people to sue for making something remotely resembling UNIX.

-Erwos

Re:The SUN is setting...

[Angry White Guy]

Unfortunately, these dinosours give us something that we need: Choice. I really don't want to see the whole computer industry to be M$ or RedHat.

Implications

[1nv4d3r]

From Sun: We're changing our strategy around Linux (but) we're pausing because we're trying to figure out what the implications of this are going to be.

From where I stand, the implication of you pausing is that you're embarassing yourself worse than SCO. I'd never buy a product from a company scared that SCO will somehow take IBM for $1Billion, or somehow stop Linux development.

At least we can understand that the lawsuit is SCO gasping its dying breath. Sun just looks stupid.

It doesn't make much difference

[Ami Ganguli]

Sun's big contribution to Linux is OpenOffice. Their efforts on Linux proper have been pretty limited anyway.

Honestly, though, I don't think will effect their Linux strategy either. It's just a short-term marketing/PR stunt.

Despite what they say, I really doubt that Sun thinks they can keep people on Solaris long-term. They're just not that dumb. More likely they're trying to keep customers from defecting for a few years while they work on improving the upper layers of their environment (Java, SunONE). Then they can switch the bottom layer to Linux but keep some proprietary advantages.

Re:It doesn't make much difference

[christophersaul]

What do you mean by long term? There's a ten year road map for Solaris, there are hundreds of thousands of customers and Solaris excels over Linux in various areas.

The two OSes can sit together well in Sun's strategy.

Re:It doesn't make much difference

[nbvb]

It scales enough.

Until it outperforms Solaris on a 106-way Sun Fire 15k, I'd say it doesn't scale enough.

Until it outperforms HP-UX on a Superdome, I'd say it doesn't scale enough.

Until it outperforms AIX on a Regatta, I'd say it doesn't scale enough.

"Most" people may use some desktop-class Intel PC-type servers, but the real money is in high-end systems.

At my job, I have all 3 of the above; Linux isn't even an option for us.

When you run Really Big Databases (tm), Linux isn't an option. When you require 4-9's or 5-9's of uptime, Linux isn't an option.

With Sun, HP & IBM, I get a bunch of suits who show up to soothe management every time there's an outage, large or small.

What do I get with Linux? Some 14-year old from the Czech Republic?

This isn't to say that Linux doesn't have a place in the world; it does. It just isn't on the high end.

--NBVB

For those who are as confused as i was

[chabotc]

The headline quotes "has a impact on Sun's shifting linux strategies". Since it doesn't give a lot of context it's a bit hard to know exactly what is ment by that. What happened is that days before it was anounced that Sun is considering striking up partnerships with mainstream Linux sellers such as Red Hat and SuSE (dated march 6). However a day later (march 7), the news breaks that The suit could affect SCO's relationship with Linux seller SuSE, whose version of Linux is the foundation of the UnitedLinux products SCO uses. Plus ofcource the posible implications for Linux patent violations at large such as forinstance the ELF binary format (SCO claims its a derivative of COFF), and other area's of linux..

Thus sun is in the mess that they decided to investigate how and if they should dive into the linux pool, but the day that news breaks, the pilar of their company (Unix servers, OS, etc) and the company they licence rights to use this from gets into a fight with linux and their bigest threat in the large-server-space.

It's gotta be shitty to be Sun to be in that position, they can't really afford to alianate either camp (openoffice, gnome2 and mozilla are contributed to or owned by them and linux seems to be a way to go for the future) but their current income comes largely from selling & maintaining large servers and they can not afford to give out the slightest impression that that market could be in any trouble, because customers buy them for the 'five nines' dream (99.999% availability)

To deep in either way to get out.. they'll have to do a switcherland if you ask me

Read the article!!!

[srp3]

So, in reading the article (and in finding the quote in context), Sun's doing a strategy shift to Linux, this comes up, and they have to figure out what the implications of this are. Are they going to be dragged into this suit? Are they safe from it because they have a license that covers it?

NO WHERE in the article did they say they were stopping Linux support.

The original poster of this article makes it sound like Sun's just going to drop everything now that the lawsuit is happening to other folks, and THAT IS NOT WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS.

Not good for Microsoft either

[einhverfr]

I don't think this neccesarily has to be some sort of MSFT scheme.

If it is, Gates, Ballmer, and their entire legal department are far more incompetent than I had thought. Consider the following:

1: Microsoft licensed UNIX back in the day and produced Xenix. They then sold this to Santa Clara Operations (SCO). I would be *highly* surprised if *none* of the original Xenix engineers are still at Microsoft. So this suit could affect them too. And Caldera/SCO has a history of sueing Microsoft.

2: This whole thing is extremely bad for Shared Source. It may be bad for Open Source if it wins, but it would be far far worse for shared source.


Great business model, isn't it? You don't need to make a profit selling anything, just sue those who do.

Have you actually talked to the Caldera sales reps? They are either clueless about the licensing of RedHat or SuSE.

The business model of SCO seems to be based on an idea that since proprietary software is the most common way of developing corporate software today, that Linux should be put into that box. They think that customers need support and don't need the flexibility that open source offers.

In this view the GPL is bad, and Randsom Love's comments to this effect make sense. But it ignores the reason *why* open source is gaining in many markets-- becuase if I run a network, I can roll out a pilot database server using Linux and PostgreSQL with no licensing overhead. Sure, I will have to get approval for the hardware, but that is it (assuming the improbable, that the management understands the licensing). It is the flexibility that this sort fo thing offers a company that is important. If I want I can deploy now, test now, and then get support when I am ready to make it official.

So Caldera is not happy with the GPL, is not focused (as I think RedHat and SuSE are) on helping companies *use* linux. They are instead trying to sell it like NT.