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SCO to Unix developers, We want you back
NoGuffCheck writes "CRN is reporting that Darl McBride is looking to get Unix developers back onboard with cash incentives for completing training in SCO's new mobile application kit; EdgeBuilder. It doesn't stop there; there's a 12-cylinder BMW or $100,000 dollars for the development of the best wireless application."
* All developers are required to pay their $699 SCO licensing fees at the door.
BWA HA HAHA
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
This is such a waste of their time. Do they really think anyone is going to take them seriously? Sure, a few misguided folks might, but, as far as I know, SCO's reputation is now squat in the tech industry. Besides, the incentives SCO offers probably won't be enough to pay off the lawsuits that SCO will file against you before you've finished your app.
Perhaps they should create a contest for "most creative way to destroy SCO" or something like that instead. It'd be much more fun. (Although seeing who actually enters this contest might be interesting.)
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
"developer, developers, developers..."
use the Ballmer mantra, Darl. you have to sweat like a pig to convince your audience...
I don't feel like it...
"SCO has gone through some rocky times. It's been a real roller coast ride the last few years," McBride said. But SCO is now focused on making mobile business transactions easier to implement. Ring tones for cell phones has become a $1 billion market, McBride noted.
So they go from something meaningful to Ring Tones? That's one crazy roller coaster.
CLICK HERE and win a FREE IPOD!!!!!!!!111
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
You can almost buy the company with that nowadays can't you?
Bite me!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
A pox on any and all who would sign on to duh-arl's 2-bit shakedown fart of a company.
Go fuck yourself.
No, it's a clone of Unix, and it is no longer designed only for Intel chips. It was originally designed just for the 386, but now runs on anything, including your toaster.
What the hell is a "biztone"?! Is it some sort of ringtone for your cell phone where instead of ringing it goes, "Yeah, um, about those TPS reports..."?
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
It is inevitable that there will be a shareholder lawsuit as SCO makes its final circles around the drain before bankruptcy or liquidation. Darth Darl needs to make it look like he made his best effort at keeping the company afloat to have a chance of keeping all of his money.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
This is why their former customers are not going to be future customers, unless they're badly locked in on some 3rd party software. And non-customers will never become customers. Who wants to do business with somebody who'll sue you for moving to a competitor's product? It's like getting divorced from a gold-digger.
This is not my sandwich.
You need more cylinders to pull the extra dead weight
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Sounds like a versio of the prisoners dilemma http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma /
Except in theis case it's developers avoiding working for SCO. But the less who do, the better the chances for someone else to get the prize. So there's an incentive to break ranks. Maybe be the one and only developer.
Think of it as a lottery with your integrity against winning a fast car.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Hmmm... on a completely cough random topic, I think I might switch from MySQL to Postgres.
HP, I could care less about (their computers are cheap, and their calculators are nothing like they used to be), but I thought that MySQL had a decent set of morals. The fact that they could maintain enterprise support while still offering an open-source version is an indication of that. (Although I believe some of the MySQL products are available only to enterprise customers, which is evil.)
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
100,000 dollars would certainly be nice, but I think the potential loss of my immortal soul is the dealbreaker for me.
You gotta give 'em credit. It looks like SCO is finally trying to produce something more substantial than subpoenas.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Those darn CRN folks, always leaving parts of the quotes out. Here's a reprint, I put Darl's original comments missing from the report in '[]'.
/dev/null.
"During the last 25 years, SCO has been committed to [destroying the reputability of] the Unix platform and continues to reaffirm its commitment [to make fools of ourselves while the rest of the world actually accomplishes something useful]," Darl McBride, SCO president, said in a teleconference Tuesday morning.
I applaud him for finally admitting what his company has been doing. Of course, he can shove his BMWs up his
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
It's not 1994 anymore. Nobody uses UnixWare or OpenServer. Those that do, probably want out as fast as possible. Your products are obsolete: Your hardware support sucks. Standards implementation sucks. Didn't you just get USB support in UnixWare a couple of years ago? Nobody is even worrying about whether or not their software will compile on your operating systems these days. You've alienated the entire Unix market systematically.
You're DEAD. Get over it. File chapter 11 and liquidate those assets already.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
and they can't wait for their apps to make the move to Linux. One customer - and this is an end user - is talking openly about the "end of SCO". Another moved to an application running on an IBM i5 (the modern version of the AS400). If there is any cost involved to an upgrade or a fix, SCO customers often just move on to another platform. There is now an entire mini-industry involved in converting data on SCO servers to some other server.
Besides, even the latest versions of SCO/unix seriously suck. We swapped out a tape drive in one and it took days to get it running and required lots of phone time. Until I started on this project I had forgotten how difficult Linux was in 1993; that's where SCO is now.
Plus no bash shell. No up-arrow command scrolling. Arggh!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
"Roller coast ride" implies movement both up and down. So I don't think that the term applies to SCO. "Falling like a rock" is the term I had in mind.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Now that the stock price is in free fall, He needs to have something to show that he and his cronies were not out to use SCO stock "Boiler Room" style (http://imdb.com/title/tt0181984/) when the stockholders sue. This way, he'll be able to say: "We tried to make a go at it and nobody wanted to develop for our platform...".
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
... Darl McBride is looking to get Unix developers back onboard with cash incentives...
Wow. When you have to pay a community reknowned for volunteerism and hacker fascination, that's just profoundly sad.
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
The winner of the bmw may notice that no matter how many times he washes it... it just won't come clean.
I was kinda hoping they'd offer SCO Linux Licenses as the top prize. On the other hand, with $100K, you can buy 143 of them, at $699.00 each!!!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
HP, I could care less about (their computers are cheap, and their calculators are nothing like they used to be), but I thought that MySQL had a decent set of morals. The fact that they could maintain enterprise support while still offering an open-source version is an indication of that.
I'm confused by this post. I just have to ask you to clarify...
Are you saying that MySQL is immoral/evil because they *gasp* charge for some things they invest time and money to develop, or is my sarcasm meter broken?
No, I think he means mysql is evil because they are sponsoring SCO's disgusting attempt to buy their way out of the history books and back into mainstream corporate and technology circles. I happen to agree...MySQL is more evil than companies like HP et.al. for the very reason he cited: they are in the free software community, they know the issues, and they certainly cannot be ignorant of how Darl McBride and SCO tried to steal GNU/Linux from its creators (yes, steal, because if McBride et.al. had succeeded in their fraud, the creators of the Linux kernel, and perhaps the wider GNU community, would have been denied the right to legally use their own creations), and they've chosen to sponsor this despite that knowledge. At least a big company like HP may not have followed this (all the SCO bruhaha could be beneath their radar).
I agree that sponsoring an evil knowing its full implications is an act of greater maliciousness than sponsoring an evil in ignorance of its full implications, and MySQL certainly appears to fall in the former category.
It's a pity...I actually like their product. Time to give postgres a gander I suppose.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I was almost intrigued enough to head over to SCO's site just to see what "biztones" are, but then I realized I don't have all afternoon to scrub my browser clean.
Dear SCO:
We don't like you. You don't play well with the other children on the playground. We think you're mean and we're not going to let you play dodgeball with us at recess.
Besides that, your products are pretty awful. The only redeeming quality of Caldera Linux was that it was based on RedHat. That made it really easy to completely dump your distribution and go to RedHat when you guys got out of the Linux game. Your OpenServer product is the the most god awful piece of crap ever sold. It's so painful to work on that I'd rather just gouge out my eyes with a spoon.
Please just go away.
----- obSig
hmmm any others?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I suppose I could develop an app on either my Red Hat or Suse boxes, then port it over to SCO. But you know, I'll just bet I'd have to pay about $700 for that "privilege."
Then I'd submit it... I'll bet buried in the "contest" rules somewhere is a clause about their getting rights to use or expand on any or all submissions. So my IP would essentially become theirs.
The only even remotely "up" side of this is that I'll bet my app would stand a fair chance of winning just 'cause there'll be so few entries.
On second thought, maybe I'll just go buy $695 worth of lottery tickets and a six pack...
--- Just another Code-Monkey
It's actually a BMW M5, which has got a V10 engine. The article summary is wrong.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
It's a pity...I actually like their product. Time to give postgres a gander I suppose.
Voting with your wallet, eh?
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Step 1: drop silly lawsuits
Step 2: apologize
Step 3: Entire executive team and anyone else who supported the lawsuits resign and disgourge yourself from any lawsuit-related profits, such as profits from short-selling.
Do that, and I'll consider helping them out. Until then, they are blackballed.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Can somebody who has actually used either UnixWare or OpenServer say if they have any redeeming qualities at all? From what I've read, they are actually the least capable of the modern unixes or unix-clones, even on x86(except perhaps for minix - which was just a teaching project anyway). Is there any reason why anybody would choose UnixWare or OpenServer for a new deployment?
It sounds like they think they have is a niffty middle-ware stack for cellphones and they want to use that as a hook for selling their Unix stuff. But if their middle-ware stack is so niffty that it would attract developers, why not port it to other systems to widen the audience and build a new business on that? That was the strategy taken by 'old SCO' aka Tarantella before they unloaded unix on Caldera.
Can anybody comment (intelligently) on their middleware?
OpenServer (at least v5.0.5 which I have) is weird. It's better documented than Linux is and can ever hope to be - the docs are more consistent, more accurate, more complete, and better written. It's also incredibly stable in most ways - but with a few REALLY annoying quirks. As it's also stable in the same way a fossil is (What, buy and upgrade? Get bent), that's frustrating. It also has some incredibly annoying limitations, a set of developer tools so bad they boggle the mind (and the alternatives aren't great either - haven't got Skunkware's gcc WORKING yet), and some basic services we're used to just being there ... well ... aren't. Oh, and printing on SCO is one of the worst messes I've ever had the misfortune to work with - it makes Linux printing look like heaven, and it's pretty awful too. If you now feel the need to scour your eyes with steel wool, you're not alone.
... and there's always Solaris as an alternative.
... but with a free Solaris, they're just doomed. RHEL and so on help a fair bit with regards to stability in Linux too - something which also doesn't help SCO in the slightest.
I maintain an OpenServer box for work only because of a legacy app that requires it. Well, strictly, the app requires Microsoft Xenix to run - it's from 1983 (!!) - but SCO OpenServer's XENIX kernel personality does the trick with a few quirks. OpenServer at least supports PCI, >16MB RAM, and >512MB disks, unlike XENIX. (OpenServer 5.0.5 actually supports up to 2TB disks/arrays, >137GB ATA disks, etc. Not bad for an OS from 1995). If it weren't for that need - which Linux can't satisfy even with the defunct ibcs project - I'd be rid of OpenServer in an instant. Linux 2.6 isn't as stable as I'd like, but that's worth it
I can't imagine anybody buying OpenServer now. Its only purpose is legacy support. Unixware doesn't even have that. Before Sun released Solaris for free, they had a tiny sliver of hope from people who need more stability than Linux provides
Even if their technology wasn't obsolete crap, who on earth would buy from a company that sues its own customers? Oh, wait, I use Microsoft software at work and I'm well aware of its involvement in the BSA & BSAA so that's no argument at all... but the obsolete crap point holds.
It's Shrewsbury, actually. Although I doubt there's anyone there anymore to get offended. I don't know what's in Digital's old building, but they're long gone from that area, as are most of the old Boston-based minicomputer companies. (Data General, Prime...so many others.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
iirc, it was SCO who paid mysql money for them to support SCO users, not the other way around.
Right. I went back and read TFA, and Mysql is NOT sponsoring this. Neither is HP. They are offering Mysql and HP "training," and smearing those company's names in the eyes of those who don't read carefully enough (the poster I replied to, and myself to name two).
I stand corrected: Again, MYSQL and HP are NOT Sponsors of SCO's laughable ploy, and probably have nothing whatsoever (or as little as possible) to do with SCO.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
One could also say that MySQL is supporting their customers who may not have a choice of platform. If I understand correctly, MySQL was supported on SCO and than it wasn't for a time and now it is. I doubt all administrators of SCO systems drink the Kool-Aid SCO offers and would love to switch platforms but cannot due to money, personel, or software that would need to be ported. Sometimes transitions start in phases and running MySQL on SCO might be the start (or an intermediate step) of proving that the existing system can be moved to another platform. I applaud MySQL AB for sticking by customers who are in a less than appealing situation. Someday those administrators or DBAs may find themselves in different jobs and they will probably be more likely to choose MySQL AB products if those products aren't already in place. Additionally if these people choose MySQL sometime back, having the support from MySQL must have been a relief for a number of reasons.
I don't believe users should have to suffer for someone elses mistakes but the big point here, to me, is that MySQL AB is supporting its users and isn't that what we want from any company or source of our choice of tools?
two re-hired SCO developers telnet to the SCO server after a night in the basement.
/bin/wall to echo your chat to all the terminals.
arroot: so...
SCOdev: what?
arroot: how 'bout scheduling a grep job to see if there is any SCO IP in Linux?
SCOdev: are you crazy? what if the server is logging and the resource throttle triggers an alarm to the CEO?
arroot: but I love you so much.
SCOdev: it's too risky.
arroot: pleeeeease?
*login*
IBMdev: SEC said it's "ok" to give the AIX repository a grep job, or SEC will come down to perform a grep job, or I can do it. But for Gates' sakes don't use
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
I still have SCO on 5 1/4" disks. Now if I can only find my 5 1/4" drive...
of the SCO conference... see http://www.caldera.com/2006forum/index_flash.html and click on 'Sponsors'. So at the very least, MySQL AB is sponsoring SCO's conference
Quote from TFA:
> To draw Unix developers back into its embrace, SCO is offering cash incentives for
> developers to attend its upcoming user group conference in Las Vegas in August.
Quote from promotional materials for the above user group conference:
> SCO and MySQL AB have teamed to create the ideal applications platform SMB and
> replicated/branch enterprise computing environments. With SCO and MySQL, you gain the
> competitive advantages offered by both open standards and open source.
MySQL AB is listed as a 'Gold' sponsor and the preceding is the copy for that placement.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Darl -
Hi, its Paul. You don't remember me because you weren't associated with SCO at the time, but I was an SCO developer and beta tester 'back in the day'. I ran a public access SCO UNIX system in Philadelphia. I (helped) run the UNIX SIG on CompuServe and converted a bunch of applications so they ran on SCO platforms. On the commercial side, SCO UNIX ran construction management and engineering procurement software for a $500MM project (it no longer runs on SCO).
Not any more, Darl. That ship has sailed. I'm a 50 year old, bald, bearded engineer and I'm mad as hell at you Darl. I will do anything in my power to make sure you fail. I grep'ed through old source code just to find prior art (and I still have source from 1984).
I'm not alone Darl. We are the decision makers now. Money and cars don't cut it. Your goin' down, Darl, and the harder the better.
Your pal,
Paul
I just don't get the whole BMW/MB thing. They still look like cars my grandfather would drive.
I won't post the link, because SCO shouldn't boast "users" because of this, however.....
.Net and Java development platforms, having developed on those platforms. You must be able to demonstrate proficiency with these platform languages and may be asked to submit an example of Java application you or your company has developed."
Some nice items:
"You must be a qualified developer with the
So, they can say you are not qualified because they have given no criteria about what is or what is not qualified.
You need this much machine:
"a. Memory 768MB, HIGHLY recommend 1GB plus
b. Windows XP Pro or Windows 2003 server (Windows XP Home will not work)
c. Processor speed - faster the better, at minimum should be Pentium (P4 class) 1.8 - 2.0GHz plus.
d. If firewall software is installed, it must be configurable.
e. Need to be able to disable anti virus software"
This would require having Windows XP Pro or 2K3 Server, no thanks.
It would cost more than $1000 to get to vegas, stay at a hotel, make sure you have the software & hardware needed.
So, $1000? Not worth it.