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Sun to Acquire Tarantella
SunFan writes "Sun announced that they will acquire Tarantella Inc., who were the original SCO before selling their operating system to Caldera. Another write-up with more historical detail is at SunHELP. Apparently, Sun is after the Secure Global Desktop products, which might fit into their SunRay strategy."
I remember the Santa Creuz Group, they were good people, before they sold themselves to the devil and became known as S.C.O.
Sigh, will there ever be an end to SCO's wraith?
The original SCO (decent guys) are now called Tarantella, which are apparently being bought by sun.
The evil people used to be Caldera. They bought the SCO *name* and tarnished it.
Haven't you been paying attention? The original SCO never sold their souls, they just sold their name.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You have to imagine that they are after intellectual property beyond what is on the surface. Could it be that Caldera didn't get all of the rights that SCO thought they did?
Band Names
Taranchula!
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Sun announced plans to acquire Tarantella, Inc., a leading provider of secure application access software based in Santa Cruz, CA. [...] Sun plans to use Tarantella technology to provide customers with a higher level of secure mobile access to data and applications.
As part of the agreement, Sun will acquire the Secure Global Desktop family of products, which enables organizations to access and manage information, data, and applications across virtually all devices, networks, and platforms [...]
The software employs a flexible and secure three-tier architecture deployed on Solaris OS or Linux. Secure Global Desktop enables applications to be displayed using native protocols without the need for specialized software - a Web browser and Java technology is all that's necessary on the client device or application server.[...]
Most importantly, the software will enable you to present a variety of applications on Sun Ray thin clients -- including those written to Microsoft Windows.
Jonathan Schwartz comments at Acquistions Accelerate Microsoft Interoperability
Tarentella is here
davecb@spamcop.net
Nuff said..
They are going to mate with SUN and then bite its head off.
oh wait, they are not really spider people are they.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Evil SCO and Tarantella (i.e. what was left of the old, non-evil SCO) parted ways some time ago. Tarantella was the one thing I had hoped (at that time I was sysadmin in an all OSR 5.0.4 environment) would bring SCO back into the market in strength. It was a good product back then. After all the nonsense started, I lost track. But I wish those guys all the best.
So we don't spell it "acquire", anymore? :P
What Caldera did to SCO's good name is an active process:
They shit and pissed all over it; folded, spindled, and mutilated it; set fire to it; now they're blaming Groklaw for it.
I ain't holding my breath.
If I remember correctly, Caldera bought out the UNIX part of SCO, but there was a line called Non-Stop which became Tarentella.
I seem to remember Compaq pushing Non-stop for data centers. It was reputed to be good for failover/redundancy (Think Vinca, no Legato, no EMC Co-standby server for windows) on Alpha/UNIX.
And when they said NON-STOP, They meant it! We are talking about true five-nines uptime. (I remember some surveys where this was reported, although I doubted that so many actually used the product)
One caveat, this was a while ago, and systems not in my league.
Another write-up with more historical detail is at SunHELP.
Wow. I had to read that again, for a second, i thought it said "Another write-up with more hysterical detail is at SunHELP".
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
Sun joined with Microsoft to provide enough funding to new SCO to get them through their attack/lawsuit on IBM/World last year.
Now they're buying old SCO. Maybe they think they can hand some more documentation over to new SCO to further their case. Or not.
Whatever the case is, I find it interesting (ironic?) that they have funded or are buying out a) the assets of old SCO, and b) the shell of old SCO (both ends of the asset sale, not meant as disparaging, they do enough of it on their own, they don't need my help).
Anyone else find this interesting or ironic?
This is one of several reasons why the people who have been following the whole SCO/IBM thing are so pissed at both Sun and Microsoft.
forget all this nonsence about unix rights. Its not about that. The Secure Global Desktop system is something we've had in production at my workplace for a few years now, and its a great system, similar to VNC, but on a much higher level. I've tested it on sunrays with sun IT execs and they were througoughly impressed. The acquisition therefore comes as no surprise. SGD is also much cheaper than Citrix and is rapidly expanding. In my console, which i run on gentoo, i have very quick access to win2003, the SGD management console, Gnome, KDE, and many other apps. I think this is much more valuable than some never ending court battle creating bad PR. Sun aint after that.
Tarantella has done a great job of moving people to Citrix Metaframe for Unix. It's no wonder their product never grew.
- Server upgrades that made obsolete client connection software flashed into thin clients. We had thousands of dollars of thin clients stop working because they changed the way their server piece worked. The ICA protocol is backwards compatible.
- "Deploy In Any Browser", well unless that browser wasn't Internet Explorer running with a certain version of Java. Other browsers and browsers on other operating systems never worked correctly and would lock up all the time.
No loss that this company was absorbed.
Does this mean Sun is kickin' it old SCO?
You have to, I think, see these things from the point of view of senior management, which is basically along the lines of "who can we screw before they screw us and for how much".
Sun basically survive - or hope to survive - by holding the balance of power between IBM and Microsoft. They use OOo to extract funds from Microsoft. They variously threaten to open Java completely (to threaten Microsoft), and to try to rein it in (to threaten IBM).
In the long run, Sun is dead unless they find a good way to jump onto the Open Source bandwagon. By this I mean finding a way to create a community of open source teams that build essential technology that then sells Sun services. As IBM does. So far, not a lot of this is happening at Sun.
Sun fears Linux, of course, but it still has a chance to open Solaris and get the game going in its favour.
I doubt this deal has anything to do with SCO. But it probably does have something to do with leverage against either IBM or Microsoft. The problem is, I can't make head or tail of the Tarantella web site. What do these people actually make?
My blog
I see they fixed it... and then had to use the word again in another story just to say "Hey, I can spell!"
:)
hehe
I think you missed the joke ;-)
If you're going to bash Sun, at least do it properly.
Sun Microsystems are the people responsible for OpenOffice.org. Recently I acquired an AMD 64-bit workstation. I have been trying to get OpenOffice.org to compile on this thing.
It ain't having it. Not even the CVS version I checked out.
I know all about the "32-bit chroot" way of doing it. It's an ugly solution, like teaching a cat to bark. I've paid for a 64-bit processor, for crying out loud -- and I'm damned if I'm going to have it run on half its cylinders.
But OpenOffice.org keeps coming up with compile errors.
Properly-written code should not care about what processor it is running on. It's wrong from a portability point of view to assume that a particular data type can be substituted for another data type just because, on one system, they happen to have the same bit size. Yet that seems to be at the very root of the issue here. I edited file after file, lost track of where I was at, and finally gave up. Meanwhile, I've come to love KOffice.
Bear in mind that this is Sun's OpenOffice.org, a piece of code they dare show us the internals of.
Now think. Sun also sell proprietary, closed-source stuff, which they don't have to worry about other people seeing. Stuff like Solaris and Java.
If OpenOffice.org is so sloppily written that it won't compile on a 64-bit system without more mods than I was prepared to make, and that's what they deign to let us look at -- then what sort of state is the code in that they won't let us see?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
And now everyone who pointed out that the supposed "editors" can't spell for shit are getting modded down as "offtopic" and "troll"
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Anyone have any idea why one would shell out the $$$ for TTA?
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I'm old. :(
This is one of several reasons why the people who have been following the whole SCO/IBM thing are so pissed at both Sun and Microsoft
Certainly Microsoft generous contribution is something to be pissed of about, but for Sun I would have called the SCO license an evil nesescity.
If they hadn't purchased the license, how many people would of chosen Microsoft Windows Servers over Solaris due to uncertainty about the SCO v IBM case?
I am certainly looking forward to either SCO going bankrupt, or the courts finding in IBM's favour and actually have the GPL stand up in the US courts (even though I'm Australian), and Sun license money is certainly funding SCO's side, but I hold no grudge against Sun for that.
I'd call Sun one of the good guys, just look at OpenOffice.org (even with its dependence on the free-as-in-beer Sun JRE).
"It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix
You bought an Opteron workstation. You want to run it with a 64-bit OS? So run Solaris 10. You shouldn't need to compile OpenOffice.org just download the darned binaries. Solaris 10 runs 32- and 64-bit binaries side by side, seamlessly, flawlessly and with no performance penalty.
Stick Men
Well, *real* journalists would publicly document the error and that it was fixed. Slashdot editors simply fix the error and never acknowledge that it was made... because we all know they are not *real* journalists.. just wannabes :)
http://www.computerweekly.com/Article123348.htm
In otherwords, Sun, seeking to move into SCO's market space (x86), bought their crown jewels (drivers) for peanuts. There's no evidence that Sun was even aware of SCO's FUD campaign, much less that they tried to fund it.
I've paid for a 64-bit processor, for crying out loud -- and I'm damned if I'm going to have it run on half its cylinders.
Tell me about it.
I've been begging for a 64bit office suite for years so that I could overcome the 4 gig of memory limit for my letters and spreadsheets.
Afterall, a majority of 32bit apps on 64bit machines actually run faster, but if you are still suffering from the limits of a 32bit office app, by all means compile it for 64bit.
The old SCO absolutely, positively despised Linux. Linux was a competitor, and the old SCO did everything they could against it. FUD, legal threats and dirty tricks were standard operating proceedure for the old SCO against any and all competitors.
For a sample of their mindset and FUD there's this interview: http://www.computerworld.com/news/1999/story/0,112 80,35431,00.html
Here are some excerpts from the CEO of SCO then, Doug Michels.
"Linux didn't break any new ground."
"So now we've got some punk young kids who've taken and engineered pieces around the Unix [kernel]. "
"As far as I'm concerned, [Linux} is free R&D [for us]".
In a different interview, Michels claimed he was going to steal everything they needed from Linux and put it into UNIX.
So, yes, the old SCO was very evil, and very hostile against Linux.
So it's fitting that Sun is aquiring the old SCO. Sun is no friend to Open Source, and has helped fund the current lawsuit against IBM. In fact, I'd say that it's fitting that two companies which hate Open Source are teaming up more closely.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
I know! I am still waiting for a 64-bit version of Solitaire so I can play TWICE AS FAST!!!
Sun already have the necessary remote display technologies. See http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/124007Z6UVR8.xht ml
This acquisition was done because Tarantella have some number of Sun customers, and Sun had been recommending Tarantella. Tarantella would be bankrupt within a few months and that would seriously embarass Sun with those customers. This way Sun doesn't piss off or lose those customers. (While the deal is closing Sun will be paying life support to Tarantella.)
The management at Tarantella has always been pretty poor. In late 2003, a new executive team bought their way in. (Look up Frank Wilde). They specialise in flipping companies, making sure that they give themselves very generous golden parachutes (options that turn into shares on buys, change of control payments, various bonuses etc). This was no exception, except the company was about to go down the toilet. Who knows what they managed to convince Sun with, and quite why Sun is happy to be spending so much money paying off mangement I don't know.
Additionally this deal requires shareholder approval. There are many murmors of people voting no, and others of stripping the self serving management team of their very generous compensation and offering the company to others. It isn't over till the fat lady sings!
That got a chuckle. hah!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Sorry to be a pedant, but I had to say it.
I was running OpenOffice on a 64 bit SPARC system years ago. I suspect you're having other problems.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I think it was in about '98 or '99 when Scott McNealy was discussing a vision Sun has had for a long time. The vision being that in the future won't by pc's, they'll buy applications/services. You'll pay a monthly sum and receive a basic bit of hardware, this is where the SunRays are important, and depending on what package you're paying for you'll get access to different applications.
/. readers even have off site backups.
For the basic home user this would be a great benefit - no more problems with broken hardware - if it breaks they'll send you a new one, plug it in and your back up and running. No more problems with installing software - it's all on the servers at the ISP, decide you want to use OOo? Just upgrade your package with the ISP. And of course no more hassle with adware etc as the ISP will be taking care of that side aswell. Not to mention data loss - as the date would be stored at the ISP it'll always be there... I doubt if most of us
For the power users like us (well most of us!) it wouldn't be too good - no choice in OS, hardware yadda yadda yadda... and I'm sure storing all your illegal downloads at your ISP would worry most of you! (I don't have anything illegal on my comp - honest guv).
So, back to the article, this could be another step closer to this vision - with broadband speeds increasing all the time we're approaching the possiblity of using SunRays over the net. Having a solid security system in place that people can trust, especially in an age where we receive security alerts every few minutes for certain big software giants, added the ease of the system as mentioned above are we seeing this vision becoming reality?
Haydn.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
How soon people forget.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
You are aware that the OO.o codebase was mostly written and maintained by another company (StarDivision) over several years before Sun bought it and opened it aren't you?
DCMonkey
if you think sun had some ulterior motive to destroy linux by backing SCO's bid to do so, you're just blowing smoke up the rest of /.'s ass. if you want to take the simplistic approach where SCO is evil and therefore anyone who deals with SCO is evil also, go ahead though, but you're just guessing.
also, sun's deal with SCO in the past has NOTHING to do with their aquisition of tarantella. tarantella has nothing to do with operating systems.
oh yes, you are making a lot of perfectly VALID (--- sarcasm) assumption. because OO has trouble with 64 bit processors, therefore, all sun code and products suck. well done indeed.
Was OpenOffice itself 64-bit?
Check if you think it was.
(Not that that would be any faster on sparc64 vs sparc32)
Welcome to the trouble that is 64-bit OpenOffice.
I've still yet to see an alpha build of OpenOffice, or any other 64-bit arch.
Sun bought StarOffice, so it's not entirely their fault, however, the fact that it still doesn't properly build is a problem.
However, the fact that it still doesn't work is a blemish on StarDivision, Sun and those working on OpenOffice.
It's the Netscape situation all over, the code is simply not up to par, and it's no suprise that things break. (Anyone remember how long Mozilla took to actually become usable again, due to needing to rewrite, or have it become worse? OOo is better, but it's still not great.)
According to what I've heard, it should be fixed in OO 2. Which would be nice, if it happens.
Dude! You are so right. Why, if OO would just run as a 64bit app, you're sure to type TWICE AS FAST!
History Lesson:
Back in 1987 Doug Michaels and crew chose to build a unix variant based upon two computers. One was the Apple Lisa and the other was the IBM Intel based PC (one for two isn't bad).
Doug was from UC Santa Cruz and many of the early coders were as well. The atmosphere was typical Santa Cruz laid back, including a hot tub for the developers. The company name of The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) made perfect sense.
With the death (although it never really lived) of the Lisa, SCO's full focus became UNIX on Intel (Xenix was the early incarnation). Remember back in the late 80's/early 90's the competition was HP/HPUX, IBM/AIX, SUN/Solaris, etc. and for the most part, you purchased their very expensive hardware to run their OS on. SCO's proposition was that Intel hardware was cheap and SCO's OS wasn't that expensive either. On the other side, you had Microsoft with very early versions of NT, which we know were incredibly unstable and not something you would bet your business on. Yes, there was Solaris x86, but at that time, Sun did not fully back the version and it disappeared for a while, remember, they make their money on hardware and support.
SCO tried to compete with Microsoft on the desktop by writing SCO OpenDesktop. The interface was very X11, they had an early version of the Mosaic browser. However, in addition to competing with Microsoft, they also worked with Microsoft. SCO could interoperate with Microsoft quite well. They could read DOS files, connect to MS machines and play nice. That is part of the reason why Microsoft was an early investor in SCO (business makes strange bedfellows).
The real vaule proposition came into play with the replicated sites. So companies like Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Eckerds, Rite-Aid, AutoZone, etc. who had thousands of remote stores would purchase inexpensive Intel boxes to put in to each store and run SCO to manage the business and communicate back to corporate headquarters.
SCO went public in the Mid-90's and (looking back on it) went on a buying spree. They wanted to move into the enterprise space. This meant adding more robustness (clustering) and scalability. For this then went to Novell who had purchased the rights to AT&T/Bell Lab's version of UNIX from Bell Labs. SCO made an offer to purchase those rights and technology (yes, Novell kept some of the rights too, but that is another discussion). SCO took the code and built, almost from the ground up, the Unixware line, starting with Unixware 7.0 that was an enterprise quality OS, clustering and all.
Around the same time they purchased a company out of England which had built the base code that is now called Tarantella. Tarantella was a middle-tier application broker. In that I mean it was responsible for connecting to a wide array of legacy applications and servers and present the information/display to the top tier browser. We see it a lot now, but it was a fresh idea back then with the advent of the web. Anyone with a web browser could connect to a myriad of new and legacy servers and services. There is a lot more to it than that, but that is the gist. It was a continuation of the play in the enterprise space. Fortune 500 companies had old mainframes and legacy applications and Tarantella allowed you to "port"/access the applications to the web world quickly while you worked on rewriting the applications for real.
This was an actual application and not tied to the OS in any way.
That was the upside and heyday of SCO, now for the fall.
Linus Torvil started to work on a version of UNIX that would run on Intel. He used the open source methodology. It took some time, but it grew and grew. The value proposition of SCO took a hit. As Linux rose, SCO started to falter. Not just because of Linux, but certainly a strong factor.
In the late 90's SCO couldn't hang on much longer in its form. They sold the OS side to Caldera and kept the application side, which consisted solely of Tarantella. Not long
Tarantella is immensili more customizable, you can lunch applications from any platform in yout Tarantella desktop and you would never know they are programs running on top of different architectures.
VNC is great but it does not have the same level of customization.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sun's bought their UNIX rights before Novell sold UNIX to SCO. The more recent purchase was of SCO UNIX driver code for PC peripherals (NICs, HBAs, etc.) to port to Solaris x86, rather than create their own.
I was going to mod you down, but I think I'll reply instead since nobody seems to have responded to your errors.
Properly-written code should not care about what processor it is running on. It's wrong from a portability point of view to assume that a particular data type can be substituted for another data type just because, on one system, they happen to have the same bit size. Yet that seems to be at the very root of the issue here. I edited file after file, lost track of where I was at, and finally gave up.
I do not think you will see OOo 1.1 compiling in 64bits any time soon from what I have heard. Though, there are several people porting the development branch to 64bit arches like x86-64.
I don't defend proprietary software often, but you will see many open source projects where their code didn't/doesn't compile 64 bits. And the ones that do compile there regularly break 64bit arches from checkins that haven't been tested there. Mozilla is one such code base, and you will find more if you look.
Open source projects will work on whatever arches they have developers using the software. If you don't have developers on 64bit arches, then most likely there will be compile errors for those arches.
Now think. Sun also sell proprietary, closed-source stuff, which they don't have to worry about other people seeing. Stuff like Solaris and Java. If OpenOffice.org is so sloppily written that it won't compile on a 64-bit system without more mods than I was prepared to make, and that's what they deign to let us look at -- then what sort of state is the code in that they won't let us see?
If you are part of the JCP you can see the source, and participate also. I don't know if others can see the source though. Reminds me of "Shared Source" from you know who...
But, the code quality in OOo shouldn't be blamed on Sun since they bought the company that created Star Office and Open sourced it!
We will be able to judge the code quality Sun produces when they finally release the code to Solaris. That will be interesting.
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.