Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Why? Just because someone casts Windows in a favorable light, they automatically lose their objectivity?
...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?
Sounds pretty objective to me. The author's point is simply that the price seems out of whack with reality, and objectively that is absolutely correct. SCO needs to make a strong case as to what you're getting for the extra money when compared to Windows, Solaris, Linux (Enterprise Linux, with paid support), or any other OS you might choose. Nothing I've heard from SCO or seen for myself leads me to believe the price is justified compared to the competition. The support isn't significantly better. The reliability isn't significantly better. The number of available applications is much worse. Etc. And then you have the whole "will this company be around in a couple years" problem with SCO. Even ignoring the lawsuit fiascos, they've had a number of other business-related problems as of late (with Baystar, etc) that would pretty much ensure I'd never choose an SCO solution for a new project, even if it were cheaper instead of more
From reading the comment, I'm not so sure
So, exactly which part of "more expensive" and "fewer drivers" are not 100% quantifiable and objectively measured criteria? This is the measure of an objective interviewer, rather than comments like "The install process was confusing" and "The GUI sucked!"
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
You're watching too much FoxNews. "Objective" doesn't mean "slavish devotion to the subject". It means "without self-selecting bias regarding the subject". The human capacity for the true "objectivity" usually attributed to journalists and scientists is possible only perhaps in machines, or more likely in objects untouched by humans. But who wants to hear what they think?
--
make install -not war
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
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.
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.
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.