They Make Stuff? SCO's OpenServer 6 Reviewed

turnitover writes "And here I thought their revenue was all based on projected lawsuit returns. But no, The SCO Group actually has turned out something that does something -- or does it? In any case, looks like eWEEK has reviewed OpenServer 6. From the review: though the company 'seems like an unlikely outlet for open-source software, the company has extended OpenServer with updated versions of Samba, Perl, PHP and other key components.'"

Comments

Sheesh

[gbulmash]

Aside from the legal questions regarding SCO trying to claim the GPL isn't viable in court, then releasing a product where they benefit from the GPL, TFA makes a good point... this is only really useful if you're upgrading from a previous SCO install. It's not really competitive with Linux in a head to head.

I guess that leads to SCO's demonstrated philosophy... "If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em."

SCO: Inferior products beefed up via a license we claim is invalid.

- G

Is SCO getting bored of ludicrous lawsuits?

[bigwavejas]

"...from a company that seems to have squandered all of its money ... and now seems to play the U.S. legal system like a lottery..." Linus Torvalds. This is just a weak attempt from them, trying to justify their existence. I personally hope it fails badly.

File size - business perspective

[Red Flayer]

Working with large files was somewhat confusing, however. To work in OpenServer 6 with files larger than 2GB, we had to use a separate set of Unix applications modified by SCO to work with large files... For applications compiled for OpenServer 5x, the support for larger files in Version 6 may require a recompile or an entirely new version of the application.

Seems broken to me. 2GB is large, but not large enough to be rare. I, for one, would not run an implementation possibly requiring application rewrites, especially when the future of SCO doesn't look promising.

If I'm going to spend the cash on a shaky, possibly very expenseive (for rewrites) upgrade, I'd rather implement a new system -- one that I have more confidence in.

You won't catch me upgrading

[stevey]

I've got a couple of SCO boxes, running old, but essential, console applications written in Microfocus Cobol.

For the past few months I've been looking at replacing them with Linux machines - there's no way I'd be looking at upgrading the SCO OS.

Whilst SCO OpenServer 5.0 isn't amazing it has been reasonably stable. The tools available are all outdated, and reasonably cryptic. Augmenting them with the addition of lots of GNU stuff from Skunkworks makes using the machines bearable - but many things just aren't available. (eg. Working legato backup clients.)

The biggest problem with SCO installations I have, in remote offices, is the lack of hardware support. Many many common, or cheap, pieces of hardware just aren't supported.

Since Microfocus Cobol runtimes exist, or used to exist, for Linux I'm thinking the pragmatic thing to do is just migrate. It won't be free, but it will ease support in the future - both in terms of hardware support and general reliability.

Sometimes I've come into work to find a SCO kernel panic with no obvious explaination. They also degrade significantly under load, despite best efforts at tuning. (However this could be the hardware, or the application itself - hard to tell).

I find it hard to believe the SCO will attract significant new customers - perhaps some customers will upgrade to keep their vertical applications, or sourceless code, running. But they've managed to either alienate or upset their clueful client-base.

SCO doesn't really have a future right now, as far as I'm concerned.

Is this even legal???

[codergeek42]

Section 4 of the GNU General Public License states (emphasis added):

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

So since SCO have questionably violated the GPL with the Linux kernel, aren't they not allowed to distribute the GPL-licensed components like KDE and MySQL with their product?

Are they allowed to include those components?

[hazee]

My memory may be going, but I seem to dimly recall that after this whole SCO fiasco erupted, a number of open-source projects put terms in their licenses that explicity forbid SCO from including them into any future SCO offerings.

Anyone else recall this? If so, wouldn't it be fun if it turns out that SCO's latest offering is illegally incorporating code it has no right to...

Sue SCO?

[owlstead]

SCO does not have any rights to use GPL if they think it is unconstitutional. Therefore, they are using software *without* a valid license. Maybe a mayor software developer (such as Samba group) should sue SCO for using their GPL'ed software. Of course, we should (even as small time programmers) should send ceise or desist letters to their mayor clients. Lets see how they handle *that*.

Imagine a chat with SCO Sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine this conversation:

Customer: I'm thinking about licensing OpenServer 6. Can you tell me more about it?

SCO Sales: Babble.

Customer: So that includes MySQL, Samba, etc.?

SCO Sales: Yes.

Customer: Those things weren't written by SCO, were they?

SCO Sales: No. They are open source.

Customer: Are they distributed under the GPL?

SCO Sales: Yes.

Customer: I heard somewhere that the GPL is invalid. I think there was some guy named Darl McBride saying that.

SCO Sales: Don't worry about that.

Customer: No, I'm really concerned. What if the owner of MySQL, Samba, etc. comes after me and says that I don't have a license for their intellectual property? What if they want to charge me a licensing fee (say $699)? Will SCO indemnify me?...