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An Objective Review of UnixWare 7.1.4
Roblimo writes "Yes, SCO is evil and all that, but in between lawsuits it still puts out a product called UnixWare. NewsForge decided to review the latest version -- 7.1.4 -- just like we would any other Unix-based operating system. To ensure impartiality, we hired respected freelancer Logan G. Harbaugh, who wrote: 'On the server side, UnixWare Enterprise edition is more expensive for 150 users than either Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition, any of the Enterprise Linux distributions, or Solaris, with fewer available applications, fewer drivers for recent HBAs and other new hardware, and no currently available 64-bit version for either Opteron or Itanium processors.'"
From reading the comment, I'm not so sure...
...as the neighborhood patent bully.
Rumors are that many lines of source code are in common with Linux; and so far all the lines identified actually belonged in Linux.
The only natural conclusion is that these guys stole them.
SCO, Please pay Linus $699,000 for every copy you sell.
Why don't you point out where the story is wrong.
If you can not do that the shut the fuck up.
...when you replace developers with lawyers.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
The funny thing is, for as much as our friends at SCO are threatened by OpenSource, OS is the only way that they can compete with larger entities like Sun and HP. Look at how many of the above list of new "features" are simply OSS ports. Think of how much work it would have been for SCO, and their handful of engineers to recreate these ports from scratch.
After looking at these points, why are we to assume that SCO is losing money because of Linux infringing on their IP? Isn't it more likely that SCO has just lost touch with the market, and has been passed up by better competitors?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
That SCO is proclaiming the GPL to be the world's greatest evil while still shipping a billion GPL applications in the box.
Or maybe it just thinks it "owns" the applications as well?
And yes, I had lots of clients that used Xenix. And after a LOT of pain, they figured out that SunOS on a $15k sun was cheaper than Xenix on a $3000 386/25.
My friend still hates me for making him setup an early Unixware and it's NIS/YP "implementation" (rsh to master, copy files over, merge with local ones, done. That's like NIS, right mr customer?)
We tossed it for being grossly unsecure, even on a trusted LAN; slow and bad.
Oh, and the switch was set to Evil (but we didn't know it then).
The article might be objective, but he who submitted the story does not seem to be quite so objective.
:)
Of course, I haven't read all of TFA, so perhaps I'm doing "Roblimo" an injustice
I guess this means SCO's policy of firing all the programmers and replacing them with lawyers and PR personnel is bad.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
I mean, let's face it... no one's going to be using SCO any more. This isn't more than a PR stunt by Newsforge.
Still, I appreciate it. With all the whines about SCO the litigator running about, it was interesting to read what SCO the software company was producing.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I was in a unixware shop many years ago, and the best thing I like about it was a piece of software called Merge. But a couple years ago, Win4lin, came out for Linux. This was back in the multi-cpu 486 days, made a great call center server with a hundred operators on it. Other than than the printer queue's fscking up, it was stable. But I was already running BSD for any server I was tasked to engineer.
Today, I dont really see a reason to use unixware. The software is all GPL'ed software you can download on most platforms, and Solaris and Linux have better support.
Just my 2cents.
Dear SCO,
It was a better effort than we expected of you.
However, it still sucks.
Respectfully,
NewsForge
Hopefully, SCO will soon realize that suing other companies to hell is much more profitable than releasing an actual product.
Well, the actual introduction to the review reads:
UnixWare 7.1.4 is the latest in a long line of Unix releases from The SCO Group. It is a stable and mature Unix, with a variety of basic servers included, such as the Apache Web server and Squid, and is available in both single-user desktop-oriented versions and server versions. It has reasonable support for hardware, good documentation, and a nice integrated management utility that offers unified administration of the OS, hardware, and servers. Performance as a server platform is good, supporting a number of TCP sessions and Web server users, and file transfer performance is competitive with Linux and Windows platforms. However, as a desktop OS or file/print server, UnixWare is hard to recommend over competitors.
And the actual conclusion:
UnixWare 7.1.4 offers some high quality Unix features including OS stability and security, disk replication, a decent GUI management package, Windows emulation, good documentation, and a reasonable suite of server applications. However, the relatively high prices for adding multiple users and CPUs, high cost of the support package, and relative dearth of available software since the LKP package was removed make UnixWare hard to justify as a file/print or mail server, or desktop OS. It would make a good Web server or application server.
Doesn't sound quite as bad as the slasdot summary, does it?
Looking at those pricing numbers, and the [lack of significant] advantage UnixWare has over, say, everything else, it seems that SCO is still stuck back in the glory days of Unix, when it was the only choice to run web servers and such on. Considering SCO is a company on the edge, you think they could at least slash the prices.
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
... If you still want to make a profit, you have to charge more for your software when there's fewer people willing to buy it.
SCO produces software? This whole time I thought SCO was a law firm comprised of ludites. Their lawyers must be true renaissance men. I mean they put in a hard days work slandering Linux and sit down to write code and debug it at night.
I don't have anything up for auction at this time, when I do I place links to it in my sig so it is easier for people to see. ;->
'On the server side, UnixWare Enterprise edition is more expensive ...'
I think because SCO ain't getting enough businesses/organizations to pay for 'Linux licenses'. So how to stay a float/viable?
Punish your existing users with more expensive software upgrades and maintenance agreements.
Way to go SCO.
Ok, nice and all.. lets be objective.
Sorry. As the systems/network engineer here, I get a fair amount of say in what goes and what doesn't, and even a bone-headed PHB (and I've got 2 out of three directors who fit that mould.. and I can say that here because I'm changing jobs anyway in a couple of months) can see that anything that makes as much noise as SCO is not a long term bet.
Short of it: Doesn't matter if Unixware is great or crap if its not a cast-iron guarantee that the company will be around in 3 years to support the platform.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Don't give these bozos any publicity.
Unixware, SCO Unixware, SCO Unix, everything SCO touches turn to dog shit. They survive EXCLUSIVELY by business weight and marketing to stupid MBAs who don't know any better.
At least Microsoft provides some tiny amount of value and a semi-stable OS (nowadays) to go with their FUD and pump.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
I've used Xenix, Open Desktop, Open Server, and fairly recent versions of SCO UNIXware. I like Xenix the best of the lot.
The original UNIXware when Novell had it was pretty good, actually. Not like your typical commercial UNIX, because it didn't have nearly as much BSD influence as most of the survivors, but it did the System V thing as well as anything I've used. Don't expect it to be real happy in a BSD/Sun/Linux environment, but off by itself or surrounded by Windows or Netware boxes it was pretty solid. And, after all, that's what they sold it for.
The version I used after it had been in SCO's hands had an awful lot of Open Server in it, and it suffered from the transplant. The biggest problem was that the system just had too many different subsystems and components each with their own configuration interfaces all hidden behind their clumsy (but not much worse than other CDE-ish front ends I've used) GUI configuration tools. The result was that when things went wrong it was terribly difficult to diagnose.
This isn't something that you're likely to notice until you'd actually been using it in production a while, unless you had the bad (or is that good) luck to step on a crack in the initial install.
Back when it was Xenix, particularly the early versions, it was a lot more coherent and internally consistent. They really did start out with a pretty good system for the market they were selling into.
It might as well have read:
"NewsForge decided to review the latest version -- 7.1.4 -- just like we would any other Unix-based operating system. To ensure impartiality, we hired respected freelancer Logan G. Harbaugh, who wrote: 'UnixWare 7.1.4 offers some high quality Unix features including OS stability and security, disk replication, a decent GUI management package, Windows emulation, good documentation, and a reasonable suite of server applications.'"
Would have been just as "objective" (and still true).
UnixWare comes with a C compiler
No C++ compiler? That means one will have to install g++ first to be able to re-compile many free software... a lot depends then on how well gcc supports SCO
While NeTraverse Merge 5.3.26c allows the UnixWare server to run Windows application all the way back to Windows for Workgroups 3.11, I found that Windows NT applications did not run in three out of four cases...
Hmm, never heard of NeTraverse Merge... who develops it ? How does it compare with WINE?
Anyway, I guess the conclusion from the review is that UnixWare + LKP is not bad, but too expensive, though this extra cost can be justified in some narrow curcumstances?
Does not sound too optimistic for someone who claims to own UNIX, IMHO.
Given SCO's behavior, really, I've got to wonder who'd purchase this. I'd think pretty much any Unix-leaning admin or CIO knows what SCO's been up to this past couple years, and will summarilly dismiss it whether it's good or not. Plus no Windows-leaning admin or CIO would buy it in the first place.
So who is the target market?
#DeleteChrome
Why bother masquerading this as news? We all know it's just another chance to rant and make lame Darl McBride jokes. Why not just post the article as "SCO sucks and we hate them, read for comments"?
You are hearby ordered by this court to attend regular anger management classes at the location set out by the Department of Corrections until such time as we give a flying fuck what you think.
(WHACK!)
It is so ordered. NEXT CASE!!
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
-I hate Open Source.
-But you're using it in your own products!
-The best there is!
-But you just said you hated it!
-But.. the you who.. I... It's... differeee.... (head explodes)
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...
..If you still want to make a profit, you have to charge less for your software to make more people willing to buy it.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Believe it or not, we are still nursing a few old SCO Openserver 5.0.x boxes along. Recently, I tried to purchase a SCO 5.0.8 because, I believe SCO is going to go belly up soon, and I wanted any last drivers they may have compiled into their O/S... I had to order the media and license separately. The SCO 5.0.8 media showed up, but the license has been backordered for about a month. It's really wierd that a piece of paper containing a license key could ever be on backorder. Maybe SCO fired their printer after all their NEW Linux license keys didn't sell.
I just wondered if anyone else has experience has tried to purchase any SCO product lately and experienced anything similar. Also, if anyone has any unused SCO 5.0.8 licenses they want to sell, please let me know. We are going are best to move off of SCO, but unfortunately some of the old applications just won't DIE easily.
Not going to RTFA, why bother.
So you know WTF you're talking about?
KFG
Did you READ the article?
... of course, I admit to being biased. That he still decides it's a bad choice merely echos what most of the market has already decided, so it's hard to call that biased.
It's written by an "independant reviewer" because Newsforge didn't trust anyone on staff to qualify as unbiased.
He says nicer things about the product than I would
My main quibble with him is that he didn't factor in their history of suing their clients, but that's actually reasonably fair, as SCOX has so far only gone after deep pockets. (Still, I would consider it sufficient reason in and of itself to avoid the company.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
... why we don't have any screenshots what so ever.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Let's keep posting these until we topple the silly new color scheme!!
Out of all of them, SCO has always been the biggest nightmare to setup and sysadmin out of all of them.
- The SCO documentation is rubbish. It was spread over a huge number of volumes that took you hours to try and find the answer to any problem
- Bearing in mind that SCO's an x86 UNIX, the driver support is minimal
- No publishers have ever taken much interest in writing specific books for it. Aside from generic UNIX books, there's not a lot else compared to the very good books on all the UNIXes
- Even Evi Nemeth's "UNIX System Administration Handbook" (the UNIX bible for those who don't know) has never even mentioned it (at least in the 2nd & 3rd editions I have) whereas even IRIX and DEC OSF/1 get their own sections!
- I don't even remember it coming with a C compiler by default
IMHO SCO is UNIX from the Dark Ages.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Unix, one of the peaks of engineering history, has fallen into the grubby paws of this band of hapless Utah lawyers. Of course coding is deprioritized - that only costs money, and is extraneous to the SCO business model. Help us, Obi-Wan, you're our only hope!
--
make install -not war
and let's just put it this way, linux is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better, hell, I'd use windows over that piece of shit. it's slow,(takes 10 minutes to boot on a 200 mhz) it's not flexible, lack of apps, and if you dont have the administrative password, you cant retrieve it. it also uses a ton of outdated shit as well, the version I played with still had a standard unix shell... argh I cant even begin to point out how fucked up it is.
it's a waste, and SCO knows this. this is why they want linux to be theirs, they get some stock, they get a top quality system they never made, and they want it to be exclusive to them. unixware is simply a hack of SYSV unix, and sco openserver is much the same way.
Hi. We're SCO. We don't believe in the GPL, but we include a host of GPL'd applications in our version of UNIX that no one other than those already using it (and those are just trying to move away from it) want.
How to get fired: recommend software from a vendor who's source is closed and may not be around in the near future. No... I don't mean Microsoft. I mean SCO.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
If horseshit was seen growing legs by an evolutionist, they'd name the new species Darl.
:P
-5 Flamebait, but you can't hurt my karma
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
It's a huge pain in the ass. I've never seen a decent sized business (200+ people) without any software violations. It's just too hard to keep track of who owes what to whom and when it is going to expire. Not only is SCO's licensing expensive, it's pretty damn complicated too. Just look at the bottom of the article. The second half is all licensing details and I dare anyone to try and figure out their department's needs in less than an hour.
So yeah, it is expensive, but it also looks like a rat's nest.
Why I'm responding to a troll is beyond me, but I'll point out 2 reasons why even the trolls should RTFA.
According to SCO's own release and the review, a maximum of 8 processors are supported, not "scaling to hundreds of CPUs" as the parent states. Also, the review actually said more about SCO's products than I've ever gotten from SCO themselves, even back in '95 when I was looking for a UNIX for Intel (I chose Linux mainly because I couldn't find enough info on SCO, and the BSD documentation was something I wasn't able to make sense out of at the time). Admin GUIs are not something I expected from SCO, but apparently they're there. Their clustering technology is intriguing, and is another thing I didn't know they were even capable of.
If for no other reason than to "know your enemy" a good "technical" review of their product speaks more than any press on either sides of the lawsuits can for the company in the long run.
For those that must know, I run a number of servers, mostly Red hat ES 3.0 servers (including a 3 tier LVS cluster), with some Win 2k/2003 mixed in, and am writing this from a Powerbook running OS X. It's glad to know that is doesn't sound like SCO has made any jumps that would make me consider their product for work, so I need not fear the dark side.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
The review seemed to be pretty vanilla, clued, thorough software review. The writer only looked only at the software that he was asked to review. Yeah, the review looked favorable -- as almost all software reviews do unless the software is total crap; reviewers tend to write about the good things. The part that I found really interesting was the level of detail (and the big numbers) included in the pricing information, most reviews show rather sketchy and incomplete pricing details. SCO prices everything ala-carte and seems to be going for the "we already got you by the balls" customers. What I took from the review was that the software is not necessarily crap but that you are going to pay for the privelege of using it.
You are absolutely, positively wrong in your assumption about NewsForge. The truth of the matter is, SCO's PR would not send out a review copy to any journalist who had previously written bad things about SCO. So that's why the "new" reviewer.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
in between lawsuits it still puts out a product called UnixWare
You'd think it'd be rock-solid and bug free after so many releases!
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
CAD is the only thing people use unix systems for, so there's clearly no reason to use cheaper 32 bit proccessors when you don't need >4GB of RAM.
fewer drivers for recent HBAs
Please clue me in on what an HBA is.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The funny thing is, for as much as our friends at SCO are threatened by OpenSource
Not necessarily. It appears SCO is threatened by free software running on other companies' kernels. The GNU operating system normally runs with the Linux(tm) kernel, but it can run on HURD and NetBSD kernels as well. In fact, the first thing that many admins do when they install the Solaris OS is to install much of the GNU OS right on top of it.
There are a lot of interesting observations in the review, including:
from article (gasp!):
There was a Linux personality module, but that has been withdrawn for now, pending the resolution of legal issues.
IBM haven't stopped rolling out Linux kit.. Nor have HP.. Linux development continues as it ever did.
so the only effect of SCO's desperate litigation is to crippple their own software.. Shareholders must love that..
5. It will have ever-diminishing numbers of commercial software apps supported on it due to all the "bad will" of SCO perceived by the ISVs who used to develop for the platform.
1. I also liked Xenix better than the rest, though that's called "Damning with faint praise."
2. SCO's Unixware didn't do the "System V thing" as well as System V running on a '286 (Microport) or a '386 (Microport or AT&T), and it sure wasn't anywhere near as good as System V running on a 3B2.
3. MMDF sucks bigtime.
4. Porting things to UNIXware was a pain.
5. Device drivers for UNIXware were a bigger pain (driver for a TI34010 based closely coupled coprocessor imaging device). Worse even than AIX.
6. Agreed about early Xenix being OK. Except for the C compiler. Guess where that came from.
Unisys used to ship a 64-way server with a custom version of UnixWare installed.
I imagine that 8 CPUs is listed only because thats the highest level that commodity x86 parts support without getting into custom hardware/software.
If for no other reason than to "know your enemy" a good "technical" review of their product speaks more than any press on either sides of the lawsuits can for the company in the long run
This is a good point -- there's been tons of FUD spred against UnixWare from the Linux community since the lawsuit started. (Even ESR, the "Unix Historian", didn't know the difference between UnixWare and OpenServer.) Knowing 'objectively' that the product is marginally competant, but limited, is more damning than the flamage.
... you buy it, and later SCO sues you!
The Tlog - a technology blog
The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing...
The Quick Facts PDF off the linked product page says up to 32 cpus
For a product with elastic demand, quantity responds sharply to price changes. In this case, a producer maximizes revenue by lowering the price to draw in more buyers.
Inelastic demand, on the other hand, keeps the quantity more or less the same at different price levels. It often occurs when customers are locked into a product. Here, the producer wants to fleece the customers by raising the price.
A single demand curve will typically have an inelastic segment at low prices and an elastic segment at high prices. A monopoly with negligible marginal cost, such as the publisher of a copyrighted work, will want to produce somewhere around the unit elastic point, where quantity demanded is inversely proportional to price.
You even get a do it yourself court deposition kit, included with the newly added litigation pack!
Just input your credit card numbers and it will automatically settle any lawsuits for you without even bothering you with the details of the settlement!
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
We use Unixware 7 at work. It was the system recommended by a specific software vendor at the time (and that is the only application we run on the box).
/etc configure what services, this entire area of development is missing. Again, refer to points 1 and 2 and see what a nightmare this could potentially be.
We have been trying to identify the best migration plan for the following reasons:
- SCO's lack of hardware makes upgrading a nightmare of its own. With Windows and Linux, I can buy virtually anything (server hardware, that is) and expect it to "just work".
- The fact that SCO is at least at serious risk of collapse in the foreseeable future means that we now need to keep a copy of the hardware compatibility list and Unixware installation media in case of catastrophe (see point 1 and now imagine no tech support). This is a non-concern with any other reasonable alternative.
- Documentation sucks. From man pages either being non-existent or missing critical information such as what files in
- Related to the last point, Unixware expects you to use the scoadmin tool to do everything, including configure network cards. The location of even a basic ifconfig file is well hidden. To make this matter worse, scoadmin is non-intuitive to maneuver and also does not support termcap/terminfo -- you must use an ANSI terminal or the display will be garbled. Our vendor provides a custom telnet application to ensure you are always in ANSI.
- No support of PAM. We would like to simply integrate our logins with our Windows domain controller. Not possible with Unixware.
The very recent adoption of open source tools is actually the best thing they've done. In the version we have installed, SCO included VisionFS which provides SMB shares but is just not the same quality as Samba. More recent versions have dropped VisionFS and added more open source tools.
That's a quick review off the top of my head from somebody who uses it every day and looks forward to the day that we can be done with it.
"Hmm, never heard of NeTraverse Merge... who develops it?"
Netraverse, of course. The Win4Lin people. Actually, Win4Lin and Merge are basically the same product.
"How does it compare with WINE?"
From a technical standpoint, we're talking apples and oranges. Wine is a project to independently implement a runtime environment that will be binary-compatible with Microsoft Windows. Win4Lin is an i386 virtualization tool tailored to run Microsoft Windows in a VM (virtual machine) on i386-based *nix.
From a practical standpoint, both are useful. Wine is, of course, free, while Win4Lin is a commercial product. Wine does not require any Microsoft software; Win4Lin requires you to provide MS Windows (to install and run in the VM). Wine is trying to chase Microsoft's moving target; Win4Lin lets you run the real thing. Wine uses less resources. Win4Lin is far more compatible -- it works with most any non-multimedia application flawlessly.
I use both. Win4Lin is extremely useful; it lets me run "the real thing" in a VM ("Windows in a window"), but with significantly better performance then VMware (doubtless because Win4Lin is tuned to just run Windows, while VMware is a full-blown, general-purpose VM). Wine yields better performance for applications which work with Wine. Win4Lin means no Wine compatability headaches; just install and run like a "real" 'doze box.
FWIW, IMO, YMMV, HTH, HAND, etc.
Here's the history behind Win4Lin/Netraverse, from my files:
It appears the company which originally developed the Merge software was "Locus Computing Corporation". They marketed a product called "DOS/Merge", which is the ancestor to the Win4Lin that we all know and love. DOS/Merge was later called "386/Merge" when 386 protected mode support was added.
At some point, a company called "Platinum" bought Locus. They apparently integrated Merge with other components into product lines called "PC-Enterprise" and "PC-Interface".
The Merge product was licensed to several other companies, including SCO, Sun, and HP. Sun and SCO both have commercial Unix products that run on Intel hardware; they offer "SCO Merge" and "Sun Merge" as layered products for their Unixes. (SCO, of course, later sold major assets (including their name) to Caldera, and Caldera then changed their name to SCO.)
At some point, a company called "DASCOM" bought the rights to Merge from Platinum. (Shortly thereafter, Platinum was bought by Computer Associates (CA), and fell off the Earth.) DASCOM was later bought by IBM. IBM was not interested in Merge, and spun the Merge group off as "TreLOS". TreLOS later merged with Lastfoot.com, and became "NeTraverse".
So:
Locus -> Platinum -> DASCOM -> IBM -> TreLOS + Lastfoot -> NeTraverse
DOS/Merge -> 386/Merge -> PC-Enterprise & PC-Interface -> Win4Lin
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"Win4Lin was basically the same thing OS/2 used to run Windows 3.1 applications."
..."
:-(
Not quite. IBM and Microsoft of course had access to the Windows source code, so they basically built a version of Windows that ran as an application under OS/2. At least, that was how my "blue spine" version of OS/2 Warp worked. I never used the "red spine" flavor, so that might do things differently.
Win4Lin, on the other hand, is a third-party VM. It boots and runs the "regular" Microsoft Windows, much like you do on a real machine.
"It actually ran a patched version Windows next to Linux."
Win4Lin does not really patch Windows. They do provide drivers for their virtual hardware, but that's not the same thing. They also offer an optional Winsock replacement for single-IP-address network access. I suppose you could call that a patch, but as I said, it is optional. I run Win4Lin using their virtual network card instead, which gets its own IP address on the LAN.
"It required kernel patches to Linux, too
Yes. One patch to the kernel network interface (for the above mentioned network trickery), another to the scheduler to make it friendly to their VM technology. The scheduler patch is quite small and, as I understand it, fairly unobtrusive. I know that some distributions (e.g., Mandrake) even ship their kernels pre-patched for Win4Lin.
"... it was doing some very low-level trickery to basically make Windows and Linux run in the same memory space."
Not really the same memory space. My understanding is limited, but as I understand it, Linux is already giving each process a virtual memory space to run in. The patches enable Netraverse to give their VM a task and memory segment under Linux.
"I forget if it was 3.1 or 9x, though. I'm thinking 9x, but could be wrong."
Win4Lin can run MS-DOS, or MS-Windows 95, 98, or ME. Netraverse is currently working to enable Windows 2000/XP as well. No time frame yet.
More info here: http://www.netraverse.com.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There is sort of something like this out there. The Apache License 2.0, section 3:
3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Yeah, I know, this only covers patent litigation and not copyright litigation, but it's a start.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
> The new 7.1.4 version adds a number of new
> capabilities to UnixWare, including the common
> Unix printing system (CUPS)
Ugh! Why settle CRA^h^hUPS when you can have LPRng...
What made strong impressions on me was events line:
client has 10 xenix boxes. Client gets some network cards because they FINALLY want them to talk to each other. So they spent several hundred $$$/machine for cards, a bunch of Coax and 10 copies of Xenix TCP/IP software. I got to install.
I spend the day working on the boxes, I'd pull the software, install, do the licensing, leave the license card. A little waiting for machines, so I run wires, and it's getting done.
Oh, but the machines (all?) spew an "alert" that there is a duplicate key in use.
Somewhere, I put the same key in twice.
We call SCO. We get told (on Mon) that someone will "call you back before Thursday."
Uh... no. surrounded by shrink wrap and a someone upset client...
No love. I have to uninstall everything, reinstall. Another several hours.
Next day, things network! Woo hoo! but...
They login by project name. But they can't RCP. or rlogin. We put on passwords (isolated network in a secure room, no passwords). Kinda a PITA.
Oh, project "pacific1" won't rsh/rlogin still. Nor a couple others. Still waiting for the "brand new customer" + VAR support call back.
The CAD support people come through (ArrisCAD rules!). Seems "8 letter login names won't work. We know, it's stupid; we agree. Oh, and you can't extract the TCP software license key," so if I keep waiting for support, they'll tell me to do what I did.
-----
This sort of action was repeated over and over. When, later, UnixWare (1992ish) was foisten on me, the hole bad hack of YP and mounting NFS and every painful step just burned into my brain more and more that this was a Unix half owned by Microsoft and its sole purpose was to make people like DOS and Windows 3.0
As soon as BSDI could run SCO binaries, I called the remaining (former clients) who still were stuck with SCO for some software lockin.
I will maintain that the ONLY reason SCO classic sold stuff through the late 80s was because of software that only ran on it. And those people got locked in because it was the only unix that could run on a 286 back in the day.
Move forward and the way to make money from SCO is to "pump and dump" - lawsuits about non-existent intellectual IP and the price goes up enough to sell a bunch of stock and pocket some cabbage.
Sure, the JFS that IBM brought from OS/2 came from SCO. Right, I'll get on that. And the rest of the rot.
Bad company that became obsolete (not EVERYBODY stopped innovating, mr sco) and got bought by a genius from Novell (remember when Novell I ruled the world doing the equiv of a stateful NFS and lpr for $10,000).
Evil company; costly yet mediocre software.
They aren't producing anything.
i mean come on.. it's year old software in a today package.. bu-bye sco...
The company I work for supports Solaris, Unixware, Windows and AIX.
We will be dropping Unixware at the end of next month. We will be supporting Linux from that point on. Even our SCO account manager stopped calling about 12 months ago.
I personally quite liked Unixware. It was a strange OS, but it was another UNIX and something to play with.
No-one ever kept their job by buying SCO.
Did you READ the article?
/.
It's written by an "independant reviewer" because Newsforge didn't trust anyone on staff to qualify as unbiased.
Did you THINK about what this "independant reviewer" is going to do when asked to write a review for a client that he knows is bias?
He knows if he writes good things the client isn't going to publish the review and he isn't going to get his name linked on
Bzzt.
The open edition of Xandros allows you to trial Netraverse's virtual machine.
:-) ) and it works fine.
I have been running W98 (with latest patches), I use MS IE 6.0 and Suns Java VM latest version (need all this for work, I would not do that of my own volition) in my computer at home with Xandros and it works quite well. I added Apple's application for multimedia (sorry, I forgot its name, the famous one
If you need to use Windows occasionally this is an excellent solution (I believe they only support W98 at the moment).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Okay, but except for fewer applications, greater expense, no drivers, and no support for state of the art 64-bit processors UnixWare is good stuff. I think.
I saw that the new Unixware includes Samba 3. Didn't the Samba crew forbid them to include it in their OS?
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
> Unisys used to ship a 64-way server with a custom version of UnixWare installed.
Up to 32 (ES7000)
> I imagine that 8 CPUs is listed only because thats the highest level that commodity x86 parts support without getting into custom hardware/software.
Well, 8 CPUs is also the practial scalability limit. Back when I was still at Scaldera (around 2002) Unisys wanted us to get Unixware to scale (on certain commerical workloads, that is) up to 32CPUs, but there simply wasn't enough manpower left to actually do any significant scalability work.
The clueless, pointless SCO baiting in this thread is depressing. You all hate them, but I don't think many of you know why. You gobble up propaganda and follow the flock like children. I'm so sick of uninformed narrow mindedness and sad fanboys that I rarely look at the discussions following Linux stories any more. How many ways are there to say "linux r0x0rs SCO is teh SUX!!!!". Don't you think we've got the message by now?
Yes, this is flamebait, but there are plenty of people round here who deserve flaming. Say something interesting or say nothing at all. We know the party line. We don't need you to trot it out again and underline it with a Monty Python quote.
Aha. They must have added that obscene level of licence abuse between the last version of Xenix I used and the first version of SCO Open Desktop, because our Xenix didn't have anything like that in it.
Come to think of it, it was still labelled "Microsoft Xenix".
So perhaps in this case Microsoft is actually innocent: the evil came in after it left their bailiwick.
I am not so sure that their clustering software was done by SCO, it sounds like it may be Veritas HA cluster software.
A Single Server License costs $2,999 (per node). Assuming that you want a two node cluster, you will be required to purchase 2 licenses. SCO has bundles available.
UnixWare treats a Hyperthreaded processor as a single processor, an advantage for applications with multi-processor licensing
It's probably been done by other systems too, but it still speaks to an emergent solution to a problem that's growing more important every da
The review is missing in one important regard. They say what is avaliable and do on, but htere are no benchmarks. So we don't know if the expensive UNIXware server will outperform the cheaper options on the same hardware (reducing the effective cost) or underperform by comparison. How well does it scale? Will it hold up under heavy load or just become dog slow.
There are plenty of benchmarks out there for testing things like web serving speed, socket generation speed, filesystem benchmarks, NFS benchmarks etc, but we see none of these.
It would be interesting to see Linux, *BSD, Solaris/Intel and UnixWare compared on merits other than whether it has a GUI config tool.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Kroger has used SCO OpenServer 5 since at least 1999. With at least 1,000 stores using openserver 5 for the "computer assisted ordering", I wonder what the upgrade path will be. Of course, I wouldn't mind taking home one of those 4 power supply, dual motherboard (with dual P-Pro 200 procs) and installing *nix on it. :)
http://dont.spam.me.anymore.com
No.
Harkens back to arguably one of McBride's likely favourite lawyers and a "famous quote" of his:
"Chewbacca is a wookie from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that; that does not make sense. Why would a wookie, an 8 foot tall wookie, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall ewoks? That does not make sense! But more importantly, you have to ask yourself, 'what does that have to do with this case?' Nothing. Ladies and Gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case. It does not make sense!" - Johnny Cochran in his Chewbacca defense
Thanks be unto Trey and Matt
One thing to keep in mind is that UnixWare and Veritas are two peas from the same AT&T pod, so it shouldn't be a shock that SCO relies on Veritas for certain stuff.