Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sun to Acquire Tarantella

Posted by samzenpus on from the buy-it-all dept.

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."

9 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. wtf???? by multipartmixed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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()?
  2. SCO is always up to something by Evets · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:SCO is always up to something by jschrod · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Can you please explain how Sun is a "predecessor-in-interest to SCO/Caldera"?

      They bought perpetual rights to Unix from SCO/Caldera, but did not buy the company.

      And if you thing that OO.o is the only Open Source activity that Sun funds, open your eyes. GNOME, SunSITEs, just to name the most prominent. That Schwarz is a jerk when it comes to GPL is no argument for an anti-OSS gesture, many BSD folks are likewise. It's not that we haven't our own heated flamewars on licenses and how free they are. If you don't believe me, subscribe to debian-legal...

      And, in case my `prejudice' matters: I'm no Sun employee. I neither use OO.o nor GNOME; LaTeX and fvwm is just fine for me. I do use Solaris systems, but only in mission-critical HA environments. OSS is not of much interest there, yet, sadly.

      --

      Joachim

      People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]

    2. Re:SCO is always up to something by ratsg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sun didn't give money to SCO to fight linux. Sun gave money to SCO for rights to allow the open sourcing of Solaris.

  3. Gratuitous Strong Bad by dsginter · · Score: 4, Funny

    Band Names

    Taranchula!

    --
    More
  4. Slashdot to Acquire Dictionary by EmagGeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nuff said..

  5. Re:Sun SCO License by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Informative
    They already bought one from the Scumsucking Crackhead Organization: http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1024633.html
    A previously secret licensee of SCO Group's Unix intellectual property has revealed its identity: Unix leader Sun Microsystems.

    SCO's Unix licensing plan got a major boost of publicity in May when Microsoft announced its decision to license Unix from SCO, but Sun actually was the first company to sign on. SCO and Sun confirmed the licensing deal on Wednesday.
    The pact, signed earlier this year, expanded the rights Sun acquired in 1994 to use Unix in its Solaris operating system. But there's more to the relationship: SCO also granted Sun a warrant to buy as many as 210,000 shares of SCO stock at $1.83 per share as part of the licensing deal, according to a regulatory document filed Tuesday.
    Sun and Microsoft gave enough money for SCO to survive while it ramped up its own FUD campaign ... this also gave it time and enough "street cred" to arrange, with the help of a senior VP at Microsoft, for the PIPE deal that gave SCO an additional $50 million. If it weren't for these 3 deals, SCO would be a caldera (a smoking crater).

    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.

  6. good move by garvald · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:New SCO, old SCO, what's the diff? by CapeBretonBarbarian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Amen. It amazes me how so many people see conspiracies when there is a simple explanation right there in the open. Sun needed to ensure that they were in the clear with their Solaris-Unix license.

    As for the Tantella acquisition, that's clearly to get Tarantella's Citrix like software in a bid to drive down the cost of delivering legacy windows applications on the SunRay platform. No conspiracy here. Just a good business decision with no hidden agendas.