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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?"
I always kind of wondered where SCO/Caldera fit in. I wonder if that settlement for OpenDOS was really just a buy-off to make Caldera microsoft's lap dog.
It would seem that SCO's current actions are very much helpful to microsoft in the end.
Just a thought...
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.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
SCO will achieve nothing. Actually, this lawsuit will backfire them big time. Sun Micro., which being a little troll here, will come back to Linux once SCO gets its nose bloodied. Speaking of Sun, I don't really see where its heading. I've heard that they'll be introducing blade-based (a la Cisco 6509, but withs server gear not switch gear) chassis soon with a load-balancer and stuff. Will Sun be a next SGI ? Hope not...
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
They have their own Solaris flavour of Unix that they worked so hard on. I don't think anyone's taking this SCO lawsuit that seriously. So I guess perhaps they are taking the chance to downplay Linux and beef up the image of their proprietry Unix.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I found this in the alt.folklore.computers news group.
Zoid.com
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.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
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.
...so I can say this: SCO are absolute motherfuckers.
OK, but think about this: If a company started using GPL code in a closed-source way, the Slashbots would be up in arms about it. Why then, are we so outraged at the mere idea that SCO might also seek to protect its licenced code?
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.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Hmm, I wonder if anyone here can detect the cycle here:
Sun/SGI/HP/IBM all make big, expensive, customized Un*x-based platforms, that are huge cash-cows for a long time and get people to buy in on the promise of "open standards" while all the while working to "differentiate" their platform enough to keep customers from switching.
Meanwhile, IBM hedged it's bets on a low-end platform cooked up in Boca Raton with a crappy OS and a ridiculous licensing deal with some kid out of Seattle.
Ten years later, the gloss is starting to fade on the Un*x side (mostly due to lack of innovation broughht about by lack of real standards and a serious lack of competition) while the PC side is about to get into the fast track with 32-bit CPUs and a REAL OS co-written by IBM and the slimeballs from upstate Washington.
On the other side of the planet, a smart young CS student is whipping up a bit of the ole black magic, and with a little help from some GNU friends, will soon unleash the original Unix concept back onto the masses (Portability - what portability? This is UNIX my boy!).
Another ten years pass, the PC is ruling the roost once M$ screwed IBM, and the big Un*x guys are all searching high and low for a raison d'etre. The smart ones (read: IBM?!?) figure out that the kid from Finland was really on to something, and they'll never have to pay Redmond a damn cent for it, so they go whole hog. Those that keep fighting, start to die the slow death of ignorant luddites (can you say SGI boys and girls -- I knew you could! Gee, I wonder where 3Dfx and nVidia got all those engineers from!)
Ok, so who's still left out of our wrap up? SCO, who's failed attempt to corner the market on Un*x on Intel (haha, Open Server my A$$!)? Looks like tricky lawyering is truly the last bastion of the dying corporation (right up there with sneaky accounting tricks 101 on the VC Top 10 list).
What about poor Sun, who went from knowing the network was the computer before there even was a network, to being the dot in some dumbass VC plan, to being a wishy-washy half-way cover-our-asses supporter of all thing not-M$. Geez, the enemy of my enemy and all that, but Larry E? Come on guys. And now this? Forget the purple PC, and forget the Slowlaris "better TCO and long term stability" crap and contribute what you have to the one true Open movement - Open Source! IF Sun spent 1/4 of the $$$ they have on FUDding Slowlaris vs. Linux on porting theyr fantastic sh*t to Linux, they could be a real force to be reckoned with (hello IBM? Wannt do the enemry-of-my thing?).
All I know is they all better watch out, because once the Chinese start mass-producing cluster machines made with Godson-2's onto 1U racks running Linux, the game's up for those who would be king!
Just my $0.02...YMMV
-- People who think they know it all, really annoy those of us who do!
Goodbye SCO, I won't miss you...
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Ummm, IBM probably couldn't have produced OS/2 without at least some code from Microsoft.
Let's face it, IBM is a Business Machine company. They'll always be making metal plates to rivet onto whatever kind of business machines they're currently selling. Years ago it was wall clocks and timeclocks for factories, copy machines, etc. They've had a strong market share in computers for almost as long as computers have existed. But they're a business machine company that happens to make computers, not a computer company. So they hire out and borrow what they have to.
Speaking of Davids, SCO has hired David Boies to prosecute their case. Nice choice. Lost the DOJ case against Microsoft. Lost the Gore case for the White House. At this rate, he is going to be the Dan Marino of law - a great, but never could win the big one.
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
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.
Things just can't get any better for IBM as far as it public images, can it?
With the $1b it spent on Linux a few years ago, it got the view of the great savior of linux and the rebel with a cause.
Now look at this suite and what half the linux community is seeing, its now the great defender and the motherly figure.
Thought it couldnt top itself before. Got to love IBM.
forget it.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I don't think SCO has a chance:
1 - First, IBM has too many patents to counter-sue SCO.
2 - Second, I think most the stuff that IBM has been bringing to Linux, like their journaling file-system and LVM is very recent software, that was develloped by IBM staff and not derived from the ancient Sys-V.
3 - Even if we have to remove the parts developed by IBM from the current Linux kernels, we would still have sevaral alternative implementations.
4 - Evern if SCO has patents that cover some parts of the Linux kernel, they (SCO) have also been distributing Linux under the GPL. Consequently, they have offered permition for everybody use it.
5 - SCO can also be sued for using the Linux trademark: remember Linus owns the Linux trademark.
Finally, this shouldn't be a major concern to the open source community, becvause even if we couldn't use the Linux kernel, we could allways move to HURD or a BSD kernel.
For most aplications, users wouldn't see almost any change.
BSD has already had a batle in court and won.
In the end, we will be stronger than now.
Whatever. Sun is so schizophrenic it's amusing.
"Sell Solaris Computers" "Let's sell Intel computers running Linux." "Wait, uh, let's sell both" "Buy StarOffice" "Open Source StarOffice" "Uhh Whoops. Let's close source StarOffice again" "Whoa! This nanotechnology freaks me out. Maybe we should stop innovating altogether" "Java this. Java that. Java is great!" "Let's sue Microsoft and force them to include the latest Java on their desktop" "Strange, we don't seem to be using Java very often, I wonder if Microsft was on to something" "Whoa. SCO's suing everyone. Maybe we shouldn't be involved in Linux, after all."
Although I don't believe that this will really damage the Linux movement, it certainly warrants each of us, as Linux supporters, carefully analyzing what this is all about, and just what it is we are working for.
I've played around with computers long enough to have been a part of the garage days of the early 80's, where the introduction of the personal computer turned everything everyone thought about computers upside down. The heart of computers before that time, the stuff you would have seen written up in national newspapers and in Wired magazine, as we did ad nauseum during the heady and ridiculous 90's bubble, was room sized mainframes sold at truly absurd prices from IBM. It was universally agreed that only the most wealthy corporations and governments could afford to use computers, and the technology remained safely ensconsed in the top 1%. Then a couple of idiots built one out of wood in their garage. I'll spare the historical details from here becuase the point is that the PC revolution put complex information tools in the hands of everyday people. This is what it took for computers as we know them now to come into being. This turned IBM from a 20's style all encompassing megacorp to an important but surpassed purveyor of technology as they are today. This was a shocking, powerful, important change that we need to keep in mind in todays age of mistaking computer science for what takes place in posh Silicon Valley campuses among people wearing Armani suits. Computers went for nearly 20 years in an environment of very big money with very professional researchers, programmers, and engineers working on them without becoming a revolution. Certainly, almost all of the important technology that makes up computers today, TCP/IP, the GUI, C, etc., were developed in the top 1% environment that I described, but when the day is over and the history is being written, what you know is irrelevant. History is a record of our actions. And history does not care how long the Chinese used magnetic compasses to build according the the laws of feng shui. Compasses began to matter when people starting using them to navigate ships. Similarly, computers started to matter when you and I started using them.
This history continued through the implementation of the Internet among those personal computers, the open source movement, and now through what I believe will be the next step in this new information revolution, which is the development and use of advanced peer to peer networks which will make information sharing completely uncontrollable. None of thse things, especially the last two, were envisioned, pioneered, or wanted by people like Microsoft, IBM, or Sun. I know we see IBM and Sun as friends, but we need to remember that their support of Linux is part of their business plan, and they are doing it because it damages Microsoft and puts them in a position to compete with that company. As this event demonstrates, corporate friends are fair weather friends.
What does all of this mean to us? It means, in short, that we need to remember that the computer revolution is and has always been about US. They are the ones who are marginalized (by history, not by RMS style activism), so it is wrong for us to believe that anything we do depends on their recognition, esteem, or money for it to become important. Furthermore, as this affair demonstrates, we need to be continually suspicious of their involvement, because their goals are not our goals. They will shove Linux into the underground through patent law just as quickly as they will spend money working on big open source projects if they believe it will make them money.
The last renaissance did not require a business plan. There is no need to believe that this one will.
Oh, and support Gnunet and/or Freenet. You may be downloading your ISOs from them before long.
Oh, please... this is complete crap. IBM is profitable, they're smart, they've survived by knowing how to both leverage old technology in new ways (VMS, still making them hundreds of millions a year through various different business models), and pursuing "new" technologies in their own, conservative, focused, profitable kind of way (AIX, OS/2). Are they the most leading-edge? No. Are they the coolest? No. Are they a good example of how to keep your head down and make a profit in the software industry? Well, most of the time (yeah, they screw up like everybody else, but they recover more quickly than most too).
Don't get me wrong, I'm no IBM lover. I don't use any of their stuff at home, but when I've had large IT budgets to spend in big companies, they have often provided me the best price/performance I could find, and I went with them. And, my users have always been happy with the outcomes. I have always been impressed with their ability to roll with the changing industry and figure out a way to deliver value to people with checkbooks.
Oh, yeah -- just because *you* aren't in their target market doesn't make them wrong. They understand their target markets very well, and don't give a damn if you get it or not.
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.
At this time, you are correct.
My suspicion however, is that we will eventually see all proprietary UNIX's fall to Linux, and while RedHat is the market leader today, there is still Slackware, and Debian is not going away any time soon.
I also suspect that the domination of the market by Linux will also benefit *BSD as well. One of the issues is that choice is needed as you point out, but while the proprietary OS's are still in control, the big companies are unwilling to contribute code to FreeBSD because they are essentially subsidizing the proprietary software fo their competitors. So in Today's market, the GPL makes the most sense for operating systems, but that could change, and BSD license could be important as well.
Remember that when Apache was first developed, the market was dominated by two public domain web servers (CERN and NCSA). The BSD-like license of Apache is not a problem because the market share of open source and public domain comptetitors more or less was locking out higher-priced proprietary competitors. Even today Microsoft's "free" IIS is unable to get more than about 20% market share.
So I don't think that choice will go away. It will just change.
And yes, I think that proprietary UNIX is dying with the exception of a few specialized markets.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Just wondering.
Best Buy can have you arrested
It's actually rather different because AIX still includes code licensed from Bell Labs/USL/Novell/SCO. If there has been cross-pollination between AIX and Linux at IBM, misuse of SCO's UNIX IP is conceivable.
I don't think it's likely that IBM employees have misused IP licensed for AIX in Linux, but this sort of thing is always a possibility when two similar products with incompatible licences are being concurrently developed within one firm.
NT has never included any code licensed from Bell Labs/USL/Novell/SCO. Moreover, Microsoft Xenix was sold to SCO in 1985, three years before NT was started, so there was never any concurrent development. Finally, the original NT team comprised developers brought to MS from DEC, including the architect of the VAX/VMS OS, who may have had knowledge of DEC trade secrets relating to VMS (there's a rumour there was a lawsuit to this effect), but were never involved in UNIX development.