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Why SCO UNIX Is A Bad Idea
Ashcrow writes "SCO UNIX has long boasted its 'true UNIX' code base, but is that really the case? A story running at The Jem Report looks into SCO's claims and holds it up to other UNIX variants to try and find validity for SCO's claims." The author has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, but worth reading for the comparison of various *nix's.
The article is missing the single largest UNIX distribution in terms of licenses shipped, OS X. Of course this begs the argument made on Slashdot before, but given that I run much *nix code on my OS X boxes, many with a simple recompile, it's UNIX to me.
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This article is very in depth. I agree with the arthur. UNIX comes in many different form nowadays, especially in the backend perspective. The appearance might look and feel similar, but each OS is very different in how it is implemented. SCO's "true UNIX" is but a propaganda phrase. At the end of it, it is just another form of UNIX. SCO should not have the rights to claim what is being developed by indenpendent companies and open-source communities.
This article has one of its most important facts wrong. In the list of UNIX operating systems, there's no mention of IRIX, which is a UNIX98-certified and Open Group approved UNIX operating system.
I quit reading at that point. If the author can't be bothered to get the most basic (and trivially verifiable) facts right, why shoudl I waste my time reading what he has to say?
So,
While 5 years SCO had the code under their eyes, they participate to the project where the code was injected, they add SMP management to this project, they participate with IBM to enhance this project and to port it on other architectures.
Ok they didn't own the rights of Unix at this time but, they didn't tell the Unix right's owner that they have found a similarity in the Unix and Linux code. Why ?
Ok they didn't have the code under their eyes at this time...
But now, how they can prove that's not them who inserted the code ?
This story seems to be primarily focused on operating systems features and seems to gloss over almost completely some of the basic reasons why people select the operating systems that they do: application availability and support.
...
If all you need is a commodity web server, then go for whats cheap and good like Linux or BSD. If you need an application to run a dentist office and have vendor support, you're probably going to be looking at SCO or Windows.
I find it curious that HP/UX wasn't discussed at all due the the fact that it isn't Unix 98 certified, but SCO, Linux, *BSD were. HP/UX is a major force in the Unix market whereas Tru64 Unix is on its way out.
I find the statement that GNU/Linux is not quite as scalable as the *BSDs are, but it's close to be very curious. Linux runs about anyplace NetBSD does, and runs on more CPUs. I don't know of any "Mainframe BSD", but Mainframe Linux is real.
Comparing stock AIX with Trusted Solaris 8 and calling them about equal? I don't think so.
Digital Unix used to have some fairly strong security tools with it for at least some things, but thats glossed over.
I think that it is also instructive that the article complains bitterly about the ~ $1,400-$8,000 price of SCO's products while saying nothing about the ~ $1,500 - $2,000 cost of Red Hat. Nor is there any discussion of the annual cost of Red Hat and SuSE enterprise support of up to $3,600/year per system!
A little SCO bashing doesn't help either
Furthermore the company is highly unstable, having gone through a long period of financial loss before deciding to blackmail corporate GNU/Linux users with legal threats backed by invisible and baseless claims. To add to it all, SCO refused to respond to any of my queries about product features, leading me to believe that most of their information is mindless propaganda. In short, the company stinks, their products stink, and you'd be insane to buy one of their operating systems for any environment, let alone a corporation with sensitive and important data. SCO may be the "true" Unix, but it's also the weakest.
I think that there is more smoke than fire in that article; it's interesting but not authoritative, and marginally useful.
Did OpenServer and/or UnixWare ever have much in the way of "market value" to devalue and destroy in the first place, though? I was under the impression that they have always been fringe OSes at best, though I admit I haven't really looked into the history.
oO0OoO0Oo:
;)
"We Are Familiar With Elephants By Virtue Of Their Size" -- that sounds like something that should be familiar, but isn't. Is this the basis of a mnemonic device? Did I spell the mn-word correctly? I wonder if there's an easily-remembered sentence with words whose first letters spell out the right version
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
SCO didn't have a hand in any of the code in question; they bought it.
That's an important point, IMHO.
If this lawsuit was about AT&T suing IBM for their misuse of UNIX technology, I wouldn't mind so much; AT&T gave us Unix, and they'd (hypothetically) just be looking for a little compensation. I still wouldn't like it, but at least I could understand "where they were coming from", so to speak. But because it is SCO doing the sueing, I am not at all impressed.
Basically, SCO is a company that has done nothing good; they having not done any hard work, they have not contributed anything noteworthy to society, they just haven't done anything positive, and now they're looking to get paid for it.
Perhaps if SCO had actually done some innovating, instead of just whining like a little baby, I might be a little more compassionate for them.
That is more or less why I hate SCO.
There is something else of import in this. Back in the days of the at&t/bsd debacle something interesting happened. Apparently Novell asked for the details of the findings to be sealed. What could this mean? Why would novell do that? I have my suspicions, if a may wax conspiracy for a moment...
Its known that whole pieces of 'cloth' were taken, we really arent sure how much, but as the settlement fell out, it seems like a lot. My suspicion is that the judgment was sealed to keep the customers from knowing how much of what was begin sold was really available for free. Why would the BSD crowd allow this? I also suspect they wanted to have their project left well enough alone and couldn't care less about what the other guys passed off to their deep pocketed clients.
So we are kind of left with a mystery. How much of SCO unix is really unix.. and how much ( if any) is BSD? Does it have any effect on the claim? If it does will it turnout that SCO/Caldera bought a load of goods, so to speak? Tainted by thievery in the past? This plot twist could make this from messy into a cesspool.
Just wondered where IRIX is on that list.. As I can't see it
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
GNU/Linux has an amazing amount of native software packages and supports a modest number of CPU architectures. It can easily do symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) with up to 16 CPUs (the 2.6 kernel can do up to 32) unlike Free/Open/NetBSD which is still struggling with proper SMP implementation
Oh, really? I know OpenBSD isn't quite there yet. but what's not proper about the SMP implementations in FreeBSD (5.x) and NetBSD? Inquiring minds want to know, can anyone here shed some light?
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Yeah, and there's no avoiding a nasty trainwreck at those crossroads; the train being the entrenched interests with all the inertia (mountains of cash and old IP cashflow), and the VW Van being the public who is being refused the legal right to easily stand on the shoulders of giants as they've done throughout history...
A future where ideas are owned in perpetuity is dystopian to all except a tiny minority. ...Such as in the short story Melancholy Elephants:
--
Power to the Peaceful
Wait... now they're calling what IBM "stole" from them Trade Secrets? Isn't the rule with Trade Secrets such that if you don't protect them and they become knowledge it's your own fault? I thought they were claiming a violation of copyright, which would presumably have a bit more protection from courts.
Am I correct here, or am I misreading this whole thing?
--Obyron
Back in 1998, I was in the midst of creating my consulting business and was introduced to SCO via a business support group that I had become a member of to gain industry contacts. I spoke with a SCO representative and was told that I could could become a SCO reseller/authorized support center. I figured this could be a good opportunity (SCO was one of a few UNIX vendors that I was looking to work with) and maybe could get some cool enterpise software in the process. Anyhow, my wonderful SCO pack arrives with nearly every piece of software they were pushing at the time (it really was about about 30 cds!) and I get out the latest copy of SCO Openserver and get ready to install it on my dual pII box with the very common LX chipset. I put the cd in, begin the installation... FREEZE... I reboot.. put the CD in.. FREEZE I reboot.. put the CD in... FREEZE I hit all the documentation shipped in the box, and everything on the web.. Nothing.. Nothing.. I would have to get SCO support to get the damn thing to load. SCO succeeded in proving one thing to me, supporting their "product" would be a living nightmare! It amazes me how long it takes such an antiquated pile of junk to finally make it to the trash heap.. -Mind
AT&T took a lot of code from BSD and stripped off the copyright notices off, and incorporated it into there codebase. There is conjecture, that the clean "rework" of UNIX that BSD did ended up getting a lot incorporated into AT&T's UNIX. BSD at some point, removed all of the original AT&T code they licensed. It's my understanding that the court agreement was there were 8 files that didn't get re-written. That's way BSD 4.4Lite is, it's the BSD source, with the 8 files removed. 386BSD is the BSD that caused the original lawsuite. It was picked up and turned into FreeBSD after the original maintainer just stopped responding to communication or releasing stuff. I'm not sure which code base NetBSD started from, and OpenBSD forked off NetBSD when Theo had his spat with the NetBSD core.
Thus it might be that SCO owns the tube of toothpaste, that the BSD guys squirted all the paste out in the early 90's. Novell could have asked to seal all the evidence, that the toothpaste is all gone. It's mostly based on urban legend, and rumor. There might be some truth to it, who knows, the documents are sealed.
I believe that's the conjecture he's talking about.
Kirby
I did not believe anybody on Slashdot had read the scifi authors who extrapolate the human consequences to technnology.
I avoid posting to the "stories" about best fiction, because they tend to honor people like Ian McDonald. I am reading his books now, and they remind me of early C.J.Cherryh, before she learned that the story is more important than the setting.
Heinlein extrapolated the consequences of technology very well, and wrote entertaining fiction about them. The problem with reading his stories today is that he miscalled the future of technology. "The Roads Must Roll" is a great story, but we bypassed the tech. His first sale, "Lifeline", was written in 1939 about the corporate reaction to new technology, and is relevant, even if the particular technology has (still) yet to be invented.
Asimov did the same, but the Slashdotters seem to prefer the Foundation series, where technology (psychohistory) learns how to control people, rather than the Robot novels where people are adjusting to technology (robots).
IMO, Robinson is the best writer of this type of fiction today. "Melancholy Elephants" was written in 1984, and summarizes the entire case against perpetual copyright in just over 20 pages. I kept wanting to scream at the posters and legal people who are arguing about copyrights while avoiding the main point. Did Lessig submit this story as evidence?
Art is about discovering pieces enjoyable by humans, and humans have serious limitations on types of input. Eventually everything likable will be discovered. But humans need art, and if we do not allow the repeat of discoveries, calling anything reused to be "derivative" and illegal, we will lose a major part of being human.
The problem is new, since the ability to record art is new. The printing press is 500 years old.
- Recorded music is around 100 years old. New generations have learned to like new instruments (electric guitar), which has helped. But if "On Top of Old Smoky" was not public domain, we could not have the theme to "Chariots of Fire".
- Moving pictures are younger, and the combination with sound is very new. Yet Disney is busy reusing the old stories because there are not that many stories that will appeal to human beings.
Even Spider Robinson is moving away from discovering new ideas and spending more time telling stories. His short story collections of early work are incredibly full of new ideas. He even found a new twist on time travel. Now he spends less on finding original ideas and more time telling each story. "Callahan's Key" milked one more out of the Callahan series (Thought-provoking AND funny: read them all!). "Free Lunch" took one cool concept (living in an amusement park) and filled a book. He is living proof of the concepts in "Melancholy Elephants".
Anyway, this is all off-topic and will probably be moderated to oblivion. I may repost it the next time we discuss copyrights.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
The question in my mind is, if the findings of the AT&T/BSD case are relevant--and I suspect they are-- does that mean they can be unsealed for this case?
Can we finally find out that bit of history?
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
In looking over these tables, one can't help but wonder why SCO's UnixWare and OpenServer are even mentioned. They offer nothing over GNU/Linux, *BSD, BSD/OS, and Solaris, yet UnixWare is astonishingly more expensive than its competitors.
In every single instance that I've seen SCO installed, it's been running a vertical market application running on unibase. The single biggest factor driving SCO sales has been a varitable legion of programmers and resellers who are making money from programs that were written 10 years ago when SCO made some amount of sense.
Given that the programs are unique to Unibase, and given that Unibase runs just fine under Linux and has for some years, SCO's market (which is small businesses that are just large enough to spend a few thousand on a computer system up to ~$50M/year businesses that aren't large enough to buy a real Unix system) is running to Linux. I've seen a few VAR's holding out on SCO, but very few and dwindling.
I have one client still using SCO, and they're doing all they can to leave it. I've been out in the real world as a consultant for 9 years now and in that time I have never (not even one time) heard of or observed a new SCO installation, nor have I found anybody who has even considered it.
SCO was basically dead a long time ago, I guess nobody bothered to tell them.
Do you have ESP?
One question I've wondered about is "Who interprets the contract?"
By that, I mean that the contract was not between IBM and SCO, it was assigned to SCO.
What if Novell announces that they interpreted it quite differently in a way that agrees more with IBM?
After all, the meeting of the minds was between IBM and Novell, not between IBM and SCO.
"So, although I'm as eager to slam SCO as the next guy, I'm somewhat skeptical of this article's criticisms, seeing as they seem to be based entirely on SCO's website and product literature."
That's why his criticism is so mild. Some of us have actually had to support SCO systems, and I guarantee that those of us who have would have much less friendly things to say. Linux took over from SCO almost instantly, mainly because the companies pushing SCO as a affordable Unix (check out Sun and IBM prices back then, ouch!) were desperate for _anything_ better than SCO's offerings. That's also why very few here believe SCO's claims, I can't imagine _anything_ in SCO Unix or OpenServer that Linux could benefit from having.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!