Caldera/SCO Co-Founder Ransom Love Speaks

securitas writes "CNet has published an interview with Caldera (now SCO Group) co-founder Ransom Love, in which he talks about the Novell acquisition of SuSE, Novell's Linux history, the early history of Caldera, the SCO-IBM lawsuit, his new role at Progeny and open standards. It's a good read that covers a lot of ground in a relatively short space."

Comments

Decent

[ActionPlant]

This DOES shed some good light. I would like to get a better picture of just who the hell SCO thinks they are in their recent "let's sue EVERYONE!" kick, but I appreciated the perspective. I've heard a lot from the other companies; it's good to hear from the troublemakers and get a good idea where they're coming from.

Damon,

If anyone is going to set the standard for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It will probably be Novell, since they have the resources to push their offerings. They like IBM are fully embracing Linux and probably succeed.

Long-standing issues ?

[Space cowboy]

I wasn't surprised about the lawsuit against IBM because there were longstanding issues we weren't able to resolve with IBM.

This was interesting - it's the first I've heard of a long-standing disagreement with IBM. The SCO press I've seen so far has presented it as a "We've just discovered this" rather than a "We've been trying for years to rationalise this". I'm surprised they're not taking the latter path, it would look better from a PR perspective. Must be legal reasons, I suppose.

Simon

interesting...

[zeruch]

...in that it offers some mildly engaging history, but not much else. The phrase that bothers me is:

it's so ironic, the turn of events. (Caldera began discussing) what we can do through UnitedLinux to indemnify people who had used both Unix and Linux. Apparently, Darl took that in a little different direction than we intended.

I can't tell if thats Ransome indicting Darl or simply distancing himself from the brouhaha.

Re:interesting...

[anantherous coward]

Yes, it bothers me too. That and his comment that Linux needed Novell, and his comment regarding the IBM lawsuit leads me to think that Love believes SCO's claims have merit -- which they do not.

But, on the plus side ... Love also seems to believe that Novell has sufficient rights to the old Unix code base and that they can effectively indemnify Linux users. Perhaps that could be a fall back position in case the courts do something stupid. Regardless, it is another reason to believe that SCO is toast.

You're missing the point.

[Ikeya]

"They could have owned Linux" was said in regards to the fact that Novell could have been a huge player and market leader in the Linux market.

ikeya

Re:You're missing the point.

[rifter]

"They could have owned Linux" was said in regards to the fact that Novell could have been a huge player and market leader in the Linux market.

I'm not so sure about that. I think Ransom Love really thinks they could have owned Linux. After all it was him that started Caldera on the road against Linux in the first place, by trying to charge per-user connection licenses to connect to a Caldera Linux server and trying to make SCO UNIXware and Caldera the same product by mingling the codebases.

What Love wisely leaves out...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Is that he and his management team burned through many tens of millions of dollars worth of venture capital, along with a significant portion of the original Microsoft settlement, and, in the end, had nothing to show for it. The venture capital org behind Caldera (Canopy, remember them?) finally wised up, threw out Love's team, and put it a disaster recovery team.

Caldera/SCO may or may not have any legal basis for when they're doing now, but they've certainly got a better plan that Love's gang of Underpants Gnomes did...

Re:Just how well did Ransom know Darl?

[sjvn]

First, Darl McBride worked in building up Novell Japan and before he left he headed Novell's Embedded Systems Division (NEST). Love would have worked with him at a distance, very different departments, in the late 80s, early 90s.

Steven

Facinating "if's"

[downix]

Hindsight is always 20/20.

If only IBM pushed OS/2 onto the desktop
If only Commodore could market their way out of a paper bag
If only Atari hadn't fumbled the desktop
and now:
if only Novell had pushed for Linux rather than UNIX in the 90's...

Re: Facinating "if's"

[gidds]

Some of us stuck with Atari past that. Most of the utilities you mention weren't needed when alternate OSs, notably MagiC, came along. (A surprisingly advanced system - full pre-emptive multitasking even on apps written for the original single-tasking OS, full memory protection (on supporting hardware) ditto, and with a few subtleties that I've never seen elsewhere. For example, far better GUI-terminal integration than anything else I've seen.)

But it's true that Atari dropped the ball. Commodore brought out the Amiga a short while later, and the STE wasn't quite up to the job. But worse was the hiatus after that. The Falcon, while a nice machine, was really too little too late. It was great for us folks who had a big investment in the platform, and no doubt musos everywhere loved it (the first version of Cubase to feature digital audio was Cubase Audio Falcon), but by then everyone was using PCs and the battle was lost. A few third-party manufacturers advanced the system further with machines like (IIRC) the Hades and Medusa, but there wasn't enough compatibility or consensus to keep things together. A shame, because the Falcon and MagiC made a great combination. People are surprised to hear that even three years ago I was running most of the GNU toolset, doing decent web browsing, email, and all the usual stuff on it.

Re:Facinating "if's"

[downix]

That is actually what I was referring to. Atari had a tremendous leap over the Amiga in the low-cost desktop space. Atari licensed CP/M with its GUI, GEM, and did not defend either when Apple came a calling. (Turned out several years later that Atari had patents that Apple was violating, and could have used them to leveredge against a possible anti-GEM suit)

The ST had the jumpstart on software, but Atari for whatever reason never exploited it. What was even more tragic from my viewpoint was their use of illegal opcodes of the 68000, resulting in a lineup that could not be progressed to new processors in the future. (which was stated in the MC68000 manual, not to use those opcodes for this very reason) An overall mismanaged product lineup which had a lot of potential.

Shoot, if Atari had only released the Jag-on-a-card for the Falcon/TT, they'd have had another jump (since the Voodoo didn't arrive for another few years, and the card, using PCI, could have been sold to PC'ers and given them another leg-up again).

Re:Facinating "if's"

[mandolin]

if only Novell had pushed for Linux rather than UNIX in the 90's...

It would have taken a psychic, not just foresight. Novell decided to acquire USL in February '93. Linux 1.0 wasn't released until March '94, and it was (comparatively speaking!) a toy.

If even Novell had known, I don't see how they could have helped Linux in the timeframe they were looking for. Like Mozilla, you knew it would eventually kick ass, but the schedule has a mind of its own.

Analysis

[Proteus]

My first thought, upon reading this article, is that it really bears little relevance to the SCO-IBM suit. Mr. Love is no longer with SCO, and appears to have chosen to pursue more traditional UNIX flavors over Linux.

However, on further thinking this over, I realize that Mr. Love has a unique perspective: he understands how SCO conducts its business, but he has the objectivity of an outsider. Consider this:

" I wasn't surprised about the lawsuit against IBM because there were longstanding issues we weren't able to resolve with IBM."

It would appear, then, that Mr. Love is suggesting that the lawsuit in question is a vengence tactic - a way to attack IBM for 'unresolved issues'.

Mr. Love also strike a rather insidious blow at SCO's choice of filing such a major lawsuit:

" I lived through the Microsoft suit at Caldera (in which Caldera sued Microsoft over the DOS operating system), and those things take on a life of their own. They consume a business. When it first came out my biggest concern--we had done work to get SCO to a position where it was profitable, then they got themselves embroiled in this major lawsuit, and I just new it was going to go south. That's when we--my wife and I--sold our shares."

Notice how Mr. Love implies that lawsuits (and, by context and implication this lawsuit), are bad for SCO; he further indicates that selling SCO stock might be a wise idea, by relating his own decision to sell. If SCO et al still take Mr. Love seriously, they are likely to review how to continue without either giving up the lawsuit (which would look bad to investors, as it is an implied admission of error) or continuing down a fatal path.

Given the slim chance of SCO actually winning this lawsuit, it makes one wonder what their strategy is; it all must come down to how will it affect the stock?

saddening replies

[Seq]

Sadly, it doesnt appear some people are even reading the article before basing Mr. Love. If they were to scroll down to the first paragraph, they might actually get something:

But Love left in 2002, before the company renamed itself SCO Group and launched a legal attack on IBM and the open-source operating system.

Off-topic, but very interesting

[Knights who say 'INT]

Linked in a sidebar in that article's website, there's this interesting interview with Billy Gates on Linux.

If you want a quote to startle your appetite, here it goes:

Five years ago it would have been Windows versus OS/2. A few years before, it would have been Windows versus Macintosh. Before, maybe it would have been C/PM 86, and before that, maybe CP/M 80. There's always been some challenger to the operating system. Linux--which is only a kernel--is not where the interesting stuff is going on nowadays.

I should really have submitted this as a main page story, as my karma really needs some help since I've started being realistic on the LG business.

0wn3d!

[LMCBoy]

I'd be interested to know in what sense Mr. Love thinks that Novell could have "owned" Linux, had they played their cards right.

If he meant that literally, it's mind-boggling that someone could have been an executive for Linux-related companies for so many years, and still have absolutely no clue about it.

But hey, I've learned not to underestimate this guy in the cluelessness department.

Despite the Name jokes,

[Artifakt]

Ransom Love may have told a truth or two here. Freqently people have attributed the seeming irrationality of SCO to McBride and others being on Crack. However, what better explains their actions than that this lawsuit has begun as SCO's one last chance at "payback" for old grudges? Maybe it's a classic tragedy, with McBride ending up saying "For Hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee" just before the great blue whale rolls over on him.

Re:If anyone is going to set the standard for Linu

[zenray]

"I think where this could work is in the area of standards. It comes back to the Linux Standard Base. Maybe Novell can expand that so it doesn't care what's underneath. As long as applications can install and function, then Linux can truly be a platform." If Novell could make their GNU/Linux software conform to the LSB and run on any LSB compliant distro then..... However the Ximian product of Novell is VERY particular on what distro it gets installed on. Mandrake 9.1 is Ok but 9.2 is not OK.

Re:Not Exactly the News

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do Novell's profits come from these days? They must have an awful lot of funds in reserve, because they are one of the slowest-moving tech companies I've ever seen.

Thats such a valid question and statement, and after working there myself for a few years -- I have to admit I've asked myself that many, many times.

I still have no idea what theyre "about" or where they're going.