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United Linux Dead
DesScorp writes "ZDnet has a story about the impending demise of United Linux, with former general manager Paula Hunter stating that 'the legal entity still exists but I turned the lights out'. While a couple of reasons were given for UL's demise, most of the blame was firmly laid on the shoulders of SCO. As a member of group, their lawsuits killed off any real product development. SCO apparently refused to resign from UL, and Hunter said that 'As long as they remained a member, it remained impossible for us to begin new projects'. Which brings up the question, couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?"
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
...is like Madonna running a mirror for suprnova.org, isn't it?
Or to put it another way, why would SCO join an organization designed to standardize the way in which their IP rights are violated?
Unless of course they have no IP claims to begin with. Which they don't. And we know that. And so did SCO, at one point in time.
I don't understand why that fact alone doesn't throw this whole case out.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?"
That would depend on the agreements they had signed. It might have just been easier for everyone else to pull out and just reform a different group at a later time.
Truly, a masterful side-stepping of the question.
The Army reading list
I live in Utah and we have a little weekly paper calld the Salt Lake City Weekly. This week they had an article on the whole SCO debacle. It can be read here. Not a whole lot on the UL effort but an intereting read into the shennagings going on here. I just was reading it on lunch at work and came back to this.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Come on, boys, that trick is as old as the hairpiece on Darl's head.
well, if they are dead, they should open source the code.
oh wait...
I'm pretty sure that 'united' doesn't mean 'backstabbing'... It's about the only thing they could do and keep some shred of dignity for the partner companies...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Which only goes to prove the old adage:
"One rotten apple spoils the entire bunch".
No matter where you go... there you are.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
"SCO is bad", now mod me up assholes.
Novell pulled SUSE out of it already. Was that due to SCO or did they just not want to be part of it anymore?
Yes.
KFG
Is this a support group for vampire geekheads?
Not to be confused with Linux Dead United, the zombie penguin football team.
So UL died. Financial chaos insues. Just create another distro based on what you learned. I find that Linux distrobutions are successfull based on the research that was done to them. Debian has apt and has official packages controlled and standardized. Redhat pushes ease of use with a corporate twist. SuSE has european nations in its grasp and has a little of column A and a little of column B in it, a well balanced distro you might say. Slackware is the tried and true throw everything in and let the user sort it out "hackers" distro. Though its become a lot more friendly to use and is evolving nicely. United Linux wanted to take all the ideas and somehow work them into one. Thier goal was to make a standard set of packages what would work seamlessly together and be user friendly. They wanted to create a set of rules to follow when adding non-official packages and work on schemes to make packages work together and not break each other be accident. There goals have never been met by any distrobution to date. I still see hope for what they were trying to do. Just move on and do it under a different name. Rework management AKA reorganize and try again. The little distro the could so to speak. /rant off
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
They just reincarnated as Desktop Linux Working Group. No SCO this time...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I've been involved in a lot of activist and community projects, and the one thing I've learned is that sometimes it's not a bad thing that a project ends.
The worst thing is to stay together when everybody in a bitchy mood and one person's causing trouble and the project really isn't going anywhere.
Usually it's better to quietly end the project, say your farewells, take some time off, and then start new.
Food for thought.
SCO can be blamed for this, but when it comes down to it UL wasn't making any progress for ages before this, it had a big hype then didn't do anything, I think all the partner companies realised it wasn't working, this SCO crap just finish it all off.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
I *hope* you meant that they are violating the GPL. "Violating the GNU" brings up a whole other set of connotations, some entailing a risk of contracting anthrax....
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: United Linux is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered United Linux community when IDC confirmed that United Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that United Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. United Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be Kreskin to predict United Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: United Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for United Linux because United Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for United Linux. As many of us are already aware, United Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
SCO is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time SCO developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SCO is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
SCO leader Darl states that there are 7000 users of SCO. How many users of TurboLinux are there? Let's see. The number of SCO versus TuboLinux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 TuboLinux users. Connectiva posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of TuboLinux posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Connectiva. A recent article put SuSE at about 80 percent of the United Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SuSE users. This is consistent with the number of SuSE Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of SuSE, abysmal sales and so on, SuSE went out of business and was taken over by Novell who sell another troubled OS. Now TurboLinux is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that United Linux has steadily declined in market share. United Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If United Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. United Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, United Linux is dead.
Fact: United Linux is dying
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
It'll work, I promise. And there will be people who want to support you.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.