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SCO CEO Calls Red Hat a Fraud
James Morris
writes "A story at Newswire reports that SCO CEO Doug Michels considers Red Hat selling Linux to be 'a Fraud' because it was developed
freely. Sounds like he forgot his medication again. "
I suppose it's an interesting point-but I think the angle
SCO takes is a probably a wee bit different.
It's a requirement when you are in an industry, such as the health care industry where the primary applications are only supported on SCO, or AIX. I've asked for a Linux version and the guy I talked to laughably told me SCO was better at enterprise application than linux. "It can handle more throughput." Well maybe, I'm not sure, but it sounded like BS to me. I just want a test server to see if IBCS might work. The support for the software we use sucks anyways.
I suppose in his mind selling CRAPPY operating system like SCO for a lot of money is, somehow, not a fraud?!
How can the Unix community trust SCO? Bill Gates used to own it; even he's smart enought to have dumped it! They were just money grubbing evil folks who had a chance to WIN BIG! Instead they charged extra (and too much at that) for every little feature or utility. SCO, R.I.P. !!!
Viva Linux !!! Viva free/cheap/open !!!
Let's face it folks if RedHat were to sell Linux for it's propper value, I don't think any of us would be able to afford it (like SCO for instance :). They only thing they seem to charge for are the istallation-media and the support.
:)
RH is not selling Linux, they provide a service! Or would you prefer to download, build, install and configure all the individual packages by yourself?? (without the easy istallation manual
This guy makes it sound like RH is ripping people off, but he conveniantly forgets to mention that RH itself is contributing a lot to the OSS community. And as far as I can see they invest most of their income back in the development of a better Linux, something that bennefits us all!
The greatest thing 'bout Linux is that you don't have to pay a certain Bill.
Most of what COL has over RH or Suse now is primarily a matter of the bundling of a commercial re-partitioner. Caldera has had quite awhile to bridge this gap and it doesn't even appear to have leapfrogged that much.
SCO-UNIX was sold by Microsoft in 1994, i believe. If I'm wrong I know I'll be corrected. Anyway, they are biast and when they come out against linux and their comments should be taken at the weight of a grain of salt.
-Guido
No, COL has 100% GUI installation and no other distribution has this. COL messages even show up in a graphical window.
1) Doug Michels is a fat slob.
2) Is SCO selling Unix a fraud? They've never developed a Unix operating system themselves either!
3) It never fails to amaze me that SCO is still in business.
4) My girlfriend who used to work for SCO says they used to keep their dope in the freezer of the company refrigerator. This explains a lot.
5) I was turned down for a job at SCO, mostly because I showed up for the interview in a 3 piece suit. Never mind my programming skills, I obviously wouldn't fit in if I didn't go to an interview looking like a hippie.
6) Does the phrase "sour grapes" mean anything to you, Doug?
well, I think the kernel is based on BSD (what isn't...) so its all the other stuff that sucks hiny, like peripheral drivers and crap.
Sort of. Xenix, SCO's first unix product, was orginally developed by Microsoft. It sucked and was massively overpriced, but sold a lot of copies 'cause it ran on PCs.
For the CEO to have a valid point, SCO would have to fully renounce ALL open source contributions to its OS. For example: this would mean that all bug reports from users would have to be tossed (or the submitters compensated), as obviously patching bugs is a significant contribution.
I've been predicting they would be gone in 2 years for the last 15 yesrs... so far they've proved me wrong. Hopefully, Linux world domination will sound the death knell for Larry and Doug's bogus adventure. (Why doesn't Larry Michels run the company anymore? He was kicked out following charges of sexual harrassment. To quote my girlfriend who worked there: "He slobbered over all the women.") Never have I met a company more deserving of failure.
No, it just ignores them.
I then took a look at that link and got another chuckle. To quote:
Besides the obvious "not getting it"... maybe what we have here isn't FUD. It's simply public relations incompetance.
No, he's not having a bad day. He's always like this. Face it, he's just a moron!
Naw. M$ has a much slicker PR machine than this.
I was working for oracle, porting SQL*Net to SCO Xenix. I only had one copy of XenixNet, so I installed it on two different machines. Big mistake! When XenixNet detected another copy with the same serial number, it just halted the OS. No syncs, no writing modified inodes back to disk, no graceful shutdown, no warning. In other words, their motto was "Well, if you pirate our software, we'll corrupt your file system!" Never mind the fact that you're a paying customer who shelled out at least a thousand of dollar for the single copy. Never mind the fact that it could have been an honest mistake. Bah! SCO deserves to die, and no amount of whining by the Michels' will postpone it's death a single minute.
So, Mr. Michels not only doesn't know the meaning of the word "fraud", he also apparently doesn't know the meaning of the GPL. Of course, I suspect that there are a lot of words that Mr. Michels doesn't know the meaning of!
... to take a break from Micros~1 bashing to bash another company that even more arrogant, ship even worse products, and has much, much less reason to justify their arrogance. SCO is going bye-bye, and soon! Say "B-bye" Doug! Give my regards to Larry!
why not run the GNOME and KDE panels simultaneously for maximum confusion? :)
I don't suppose I'll be installing Caldera any time soon over a serial line on my Sparc without a frame buffer...
So Michels considers Red Hat a fraud, does he?
:-). Or *BSD :-). Hmmm... just about
As someone with *extensive* past experience with SCO products and support,
in my opinion Michels ought to be looking to put his own house in order
before going about disparaging his competitors.
YMMV, but SCO products and services have been, other than Microsoft's and
Lotus', absolutely the worst I've ever had the misfortune of having to
deal with. We replaced our previously-SCO mission-critical servers a
*long* time ago. And I would never in a million years consider using SCO
again.
Though I *would* consider Linux
anything other than SCO--come to think of it!
There should be an expert install option that lets you pass on the GUI. Although, I do not know if there is a Sparq release.
I have NEVER paid for slackware (though I will be sending a donation to Patric soon). If slackware is only for training, why do I have a full elementary school computer lab running slackware 3.6. This summer we are going to rebuild with slackware 4.0, KDE, etc. We are using StarOffice (school license, first to be purchased in the US), and it is running very well. We have had the normal bumps when you replace a lab full of Mac LCs with new systems, but nothing that is really linux specific. A lot of teachers refuse to use anything other than claris works, etc.
not an AC, just don't want to leave anything on this college computer system...
SCO was never an "offshoot" of Microsoft. They bought Xenix from Microsoft many years ago, and, as part of the contract, paid royalties to Microsoft. Once they were able to prove that none of the code in the recent versions of their product were derived from that which they had received from Microsoft, they were able to stop paying royalties.
MS FUD? You really are clueless, or a paranoid schizophrenic.
They have the kernel author blessing, but they also have the founder of some of the most importants of the other parts of the OS blessing(RMS) and they have the license blessing. They have my blessing too but wouldn't count if it was only me, THEY HAVE THE COMMUNITY BLESSING.
Their product may not be perfect but they are good products at a very good price/quality ratio and they are no vampire, they contribute back to the community.
that is so much bullshit, but it's 2.1. in any case no unix svr4 i came across lacked man pages. perhaps you forgot to install them...
i just installed the for-free distribution of uw 7.0. more manual pages that you can shake a stick at. it took 15 minutes for the html files to install... ie untarring. the os is quite interesting in concept.
the truth is that m$ has a shareholding in sco. part of att usl unix was licensed from microsoft. that was the xenix part (yup microsoft has owned and sold a unix). the result was that the xenix compatibility layer license forced a royalty payment whenever svr was sold on an x86 platform. that has now stopped.
"the ibm server". jeez. what sort of entity is that.
please, if you cannot post something more than fud, don't post at all.
i expect sco will be around in a few years time. the reason actually is that linux, as an o/s kernel, is not so hot. it might get better, but other products are there now, and have certainly a critial engineering support mass. unixware is known to scale (svr unix has been ported onto S370 class systems by both ibm and amdahl)
the unix on intel market has actually been quite wide for many years. whilst sco is undoubtedly the leader, i was using interactive 3 and svr4.0 back in 1991... intersting that both platforms are still available eh?
I would certainly agree about the SCO bashing.
It is deserved.
I haven't ever posted so I guess the "coward" status is deserved.
The one point that I haven't seen, is that all Open Source is today's revolution, but SCO is just as much of a fraud. Much of the software that is used in SCO is based on software that is in the public domain. Sendmail is one component that comes to mind, but I'm sure there are many others.
SCO may be trying to stand on the leg that we've had our software so long, it is different, but it isn't. They didn't invent Unix. Essentially they paid for rights to source code from AT&T a long time ago. That is the only difference.
I see the Open Source movement as revolutionary because it allows "user" input to feed back into source improvements that refine the product. Just because it threatens SCO's business model, they use FUD to call it a fraud. Time will tell which is better, and I don't think much time will really be needed.
And I haven't even touched the "quality" of SCO software.
I'm a new RH luser and installing this and that and decided to take a look at Enlightenment, and then um... OK this is interesting but I want Afterstep back.... OK um... where is the "Exit -> Switch to... ->" Option???? AAAAAAAGH!!!
I was able to get back to Afterstep by deleting a file that pointed to Enlightenment, but it would have been a good thing to have the option visible. The main thing I didn't light about Enlightmentment was it didn't have any text to go with the icons. It was like working with "Smarticons" which I don't like....
btw, is there a FVWM window manager that looks/feels more like FVWM on Solaris than is tweaked to look like Windoze?
They sell a CD containing tarball packages of bash, gcc, make, etc and have it freely available for download. Exactly like RedHat. Kind of hypocritical when you think about it.
http://www.sco.com/offers/freeSKW98.html
I like to believe that when I buy a distribution that some of that money goes to the community... RedHat donated money/resources to GNOME, I don't think you meant stock-market-type-of-investment, but that is how what you said can be mistaken to mean. If it was that way, then GNOME would only be made to work on RedHat, and obviously it is not that way, so it sounds more like an donation.
It makes RedHat seem like it wants to be part of the community, to contribute to the growth of it. I don't know what other distributions could possibly do that, or say that they have? Tell me if you have and tell me if you think the other company you mentioned would do it.
Oh and for that reason I buy RedHat and I don't think I will ever buy distributions that don't donate...
I never understood why people rip RedHat for charging. Doesn't anyone realize that it is free for download? Uou pay for the cd, the manual and the support dammit!
1. that is only for the client option
2. even there, lesstif might do
You can be a UNIX branded server, without even
needing X.
When you think about the cost of a single CD (even in only a 2000 count turn) for them (about $.30 if that), and what they charge us (about $50)....the guy has a point. RedHat doesn't contribute THAT much back to the commmunity. In normal commercial products, the distributor has to pay the developers, which is not the case in this situation.
I myself looked into the cost to create CDs simply by looking online. The time it takes to create the distrubtion is NIL compared to the net earnings. Chargin $10 per CD I found I could make something around $9000. I lost my figures, but it was somewere around that....and that is for a shrinkwrapped CD inside the jewelcase with proffesionally printed booklets and traycards which I guess at the price...the turn costs $630 and I figured $1000. At any rate, that gives me quite a profit doesn't it...900% turnover.
Course with a larger turn that figure would rise geometrically. That was for 1 1000 count turn, and as anyone who has produced CDs knows,...the larger the turn, the cheaper the CD.
So, since RedHat charges $50 per CD, multiply that figure by 5 and you will have about 1/1000th of what they make....I'm sure their turns are quite large, they may even do it themselves. And I doubt they would bother with as few as 1000.
So, how much of that makes it back to the community? About 20%? It is possible it is that high but I doubt it.
Hello? *Knock* *Knock* Anyone home?
Red Hat does NOT charge $50.00 for simply a CD-ROM. The last retail blue box I bought from Red Hat came with a nice, slick 200+ pages Installation Guide as well as various introductory chapters.
And it also came with three CD-ROMs, not just one.
On top of that, if you buy the Retail box, you get X number of days of free technical support from Red Hat directly (I think it is either 60 or 90 days).
And you also mentioned that the distributor (ie. Red Hat) has to pay the developers. Well, the clue phone is ringing... David S. Miller and Alan Cox are two of the core Linux kernel developers who work/consult for Red Hat on various things from security to being paid to work on kernel development.
They are directly and indirectly supporting Linux on so many fronts now, it is scary! Think twice before dissing Red Hat people.
Which distributor doesn't? Pat from slackware may or may not, but he is not the distributor of the product, WalnutCreek is and they do contribute. Debian does, SuSE does a lot by creating new XServers and other such stuff. Mandrake and Stampede are pretty new, and creating a business doesn't allow you to contribute a great deal immediately....
So, name a distribution that does NOT contribute money back to the community. RedHat is not anyone special and I haven't seen them contribute enough back to make me think they give any more then the others. They run a couple of servers like freshmeat, and have contributed the GNOME which is their product...OOOOHHHH we should all thank them now shouldn't we.
Like I said...they make more off of us then they give back 10 fold or higher. I like the fact that they have highered a few developers, but I can't say I like much of anything they have turned out once working for redhat either.
They also make money from Linux in other areas, like their crappy ceriticate program which was what, $4000 for a 2 day course?
Coherent gets that honour. It was a $99 UNIX
clone that was a bit like version 7. Linux
quickly killed it.
Hello? *Knock* *Knock* Anyone home?
No.
Red Hat does NOT charge $50.00 for simply a CD-ROM. The last retail blue box I bought from Red Hat came with a
nice, slick 200+ pages Installation Guide as well as various introductory chapters.
hmmm...don't know the cost of printing, but I am sure it is not that much for what you got.
And it also came with three CD-ROMs, not just one.
Oooohhh...so they paid a dime instead of 3 cents.
On top of that, if you buy the Retail box, you get X number of days of free technical support from Red Hat directly (I
think it is either 60 or 90 days).
And last I heard it was a joke.
And you also mentioned that the distributor (ie. Red Hat) has to pay the developers. Well, the clue phone is ringing...
David S. Miller and Alan Cox are two of the core Linux kernel developers who work/consult for Red Hat on various
things from security to being paid to work on kernel development.
So, how many other people are working on Linux right now? How many of THEM is RedHat paying? Sure, its nice that those 2 are getting paid to work on linux, its like the least they could do don't you think? How many millions have they made so far?
They are directly and indirectly supporting Linux on so many fronts now, it is scary! Think twice before dissing Red Hat
people.
I still say %20 or less...they are making more then anyone else, maybe the give a little more I don't know that though. Course I am affected by very little of what they contribute because I don't use RedHat. I could be wrong about the amount they actually give but show me some more of what they do and I will be corrected. I know of only 1 more developer who is working for them, rasterman.
I never used sco so I dont know how good it is but why are you bashing a ms competitor that does nothing but give ms a headache with NT. I know its not alot but its better then having sco not exist and giving all the sco customers to ms land. Sco is a unix right? I never hear people bash novell here even though netware isn't a real unix or a real shitty one. Someone please enlighten me here. Sco is a unix so it can't suck that much or is their a corperate side you all don't like.
Back in '93/'94 I was working at a site with 3 SCO servers, and in my spare time I managed to get nethack working on it after a few days of fiddling with some downloaded source. Funny thing was, I had to patch up things in the code even though there was already some ifdef SCO type stuff in there. The patches were little, annoying stuff that was probably just due to it being a bastard child of BSD and SysV.
-- reminiscing about the 'good old days'.. HA!!!
Yep! Thats it! Redhat should give me a CD, BOOK, and email support FOR free!! Yippie!
Sit down at a SCO OpenServer box some time and
try to do anything. You will find:
Arrow keys may not work.
The delete and/or backspace key may not work.
(so command line editing sucks)
There is no 'less' command.
There is no 'more' command.
There is no 'most' command.
You must use vi. Emacs is not included.
You can not do 'ps aux' or 'ps axl'.
These simply do not work.
The compiler is not included.
Oh, BTW, performance is awful too. This is a
product that can cost thousands of dollars.
What a deal!
You just answered that when you said...
My reference was to Corel and Caldera not having seen anything from them, and I was asking what other distributions have donated, I was only aware of RedHat, I was definetly not asking you to be sarcastic.
I'm not sure but I think Enlightment was created by RedHat labs, I believe its the default window manager to GNOME and it seems to be really cool, but that is called an opinion in case you don't know.
I had no idea about their courses. $4000 for 2 days doesn't sound good, especially if someone else has a better course for a lower price, but then again I am unaware of that, in some ways could careless. Actually, I've read about a few other companies who are going to start certificat programs, more then likely to capitalize on it, but none of them talked of price, and its for engineers and for distributions.
I hope you chill out... After all if you read the fine text you will notice I said....
I don't think I will ever buy distributions that don't donate.
I didn't say Debian or SuSE, or anything in particular. So turn down the burners, before someone gets hurt.
It totally depends on how many CDs they order, the more they order the less it costs them. If linux sells real well then the can get CDs cheaper, if it doesn't meet their minimum they pay a little extra. But he was right, the single CD version is like 8 bucks, I've seen other distributions sell for 16 bucks, of course that is if you actually care to even buy a distribution which is entirely optionaly.
I don't know for sure but these guys might also be on the pay roll....
http://www.labs.redhat.com/who.shtml
There should be an expert install option that lets you pass on the GUI
Actually i think there already is..
"SCO itself continues to do well out of the Unix business. In its second quarter results, announced today, it reported a profit of $US3 million on revenues of $US55 million. "
No wonder they're so pissed off and jealous - they're not doing well at all for a multi-national corporation. there are human beings that make that amount per quarter in our industry and are comparatively speaking minor players.
Hmm, didnt you put out excatly the same reply on one of the two other redhat news yesterday ?
:)
What are out after ?
bashing Gnome ?
hmm, weird...
I'll stick to Gnome, Redhat did the abosulutly right choice when they started to help the project iut last year. That shows that ther CARE about GPL.
Thats just me
No, then they would have to offer REAL support, and be NICE to their customers, in order to compete... two things I've never seen from SCO. Remember, this is the same company whose CEO (Larry Michels) got booted out for sexual harrasment. Are these really the people you wanna buy YOUR Linux distro from?
haha dont get me started. Last time I checked for scsi board prices they started at 700$ and the good ones were over a 1,000 and the benchamrks that zdnet all show them performing about the same and sometimes slower then their ide counterparts. It will be a cold day in hell before I ever switch eide and I heard the linux kernel is a pain in the ass to configure with scsi stuff.
As someone who has worked with Linux for about 6 years and with SCO for about 3 in a commercial environment. I may have some input to offer.
:)
>Arrow keys may not work.
>The delete and/or backspace key may not work.
>(so command line editing sucks)
Sounds like you don't understand the shell. It isn't BASH, although you can run a ported BASH on SCO. stty erase '^H' and stty -echoe perhaps? SCO has it's own implementation of the Bourne shell, so what, so does BSD.. so does Solaris/SunOS.
>There is no 'less' command.
>There is no 'more' command.
>There is no 'most' command.
Good lord.. ever heard of porting something? There
is a more command under SCO and 'less' is available as source and compiled binaries for SCO with SkunkWare. To scroll up with more, try typing
a minus sign, less's main feature is scrollback.
>You must use vi. Emacs is not included.
"must?" Unix people never MUST do anything
I run joe under SCO and it works a treat. What's wrong with vi anyway, it's a kick-arse editor if you know how to use it. Emacs is available, although I've rarely found the need to inflict Emacs on myself.
>You can not do 'ps aux' or 'ps axl'. >These simply do not work.
LOL. Sorry.. welcome to SYSTEM V. This is not BSD and it's not Linux, it came before both. Try ps -eauf instead. I would suggest MAN ps. This is the reason your commands are not universal.
Unix implementations vary, get used to it, it's the only way to survive when you're working in an environment with differing varieties of Unix.
>The compiler is not included.
Yes, admittedly a bit of a problem, but a development kit is available for the cost of a CD and shipping I believe. SCO's downfall in the compiler/development area is they are a commercial Unix, and can't disclose all their O/S source, particularly kernel stuff. That would be industrial suicide.
>Oh, BTW, performance is awful too. >This is a product that can cost >thousands of dollars.
>What a deal!
Big call there. SCO's performance on my machine is
excellent, the bonus of compiling new kernels in
about a minute is also pretty attractive stuff.
I remember loading SCO onto a machine with RAID 0 hardware striping, a dual pentium Pro 200Mhz with full SMP support and 256meg ram. That thing performed like no tommorow. Speed is in the eye of the beholder.
You may need to update boot time loadable device drivers (BTLDs) to get the grunt from your hardware under SCO. Linux is always at the leading edge of performance sometimes at the price of total hardware driver stability.
That's the thing about SCO Unix I am most impressed with. Once you install it properly, it will run without a hiccup (apply your patches). It also has a fantastic packaging system/patch management system. As a commercial Unix it's about as good as we could expect.
I am however a big Linux fan at the end of the day, it's basically free if you know how to get it. It's high-performance, out performs most UN*X out there, has great hardware support nowadays. Still lacks 3rd party support in many ways, but it will get there. Linux is the future, and SCO have
been worried about them for a while, but that is
quite astute of them. Linux has the ability to
bury SCO Unix one day. Other Unix vendors should
pay attention.
Please, oh please, read a Unix book. Your lack of
knowledge of System V based systems needs help.
At one time SCO was an offshoot from MS but for some reason or another (think it had to do with a deal MS made with ???? to not get into the UNIX market - I may be wrong about this) it no longer is. In fact, SCO just won a lengthy court battle with MS that will alow them to remove all MS code from their kernel. so really, SCO has severed all ties with MS.
I should help clear up the confusion. I think at one stage Microsoft owned around %20 of SCO. Which allowed SCO to market things like AFPS (Advanced File and Print Server) which was an NT port to SCO. AFPS was an excellent product at the time, pre-Samba. SCO also once owned the right to the UNIX sourcecode (hasn't everyone), it now resides with Novell last time I checked.
Wonder when Linus will own the source?
SCO don't know what they're talking about...
Wouldn't it be sad though and ironic if GNOME/E ends up being the downfall of Red Hat? I mean look at all the resources they've invested in GNOME/E and look what they have now. Sure, they have support from the Geek world, but they always had this support.
Caldera, on the other hand, has concentrated less resources on reinventing the wheel and now has suddenly surpassed Red Hat and maybe even Windows in one fell swoop. OpenLinux is here now, is both better and cheaper than Red Hat. (and for all that, Caldera probably paid for the Qt license)
Interesting times indeed.
Look at the number of people with redhat.com addresses on linux-kernel.
SCO can no longer justify their existence. Their overpriced underfeatured OS simply cannot compete with Linux.
Every time I've worked with SCO in the past it's made my flesh crawl. The first time was in the late 80's on a 286 running SCO Xenix. The base OS was over $1000 and if I wanted any of the other amenities that I thought should come stock with the UNIX OS (C Compiler, nroff/troff, etc) you had to add more money. MUCH more money. In addition their support line could never tell us why the OS would suddenly slow to a crawl after 2 or 3 days of running. If Linux had existed back then, my company's choice would have been a hell of a lot easier.
In my last job I was working with SCO again and I welcomed the chance to see if they'd improved at all. Well they haven't. Their pricing plan is still one of the most confusing I've ever seen, they charge by the user if I recall correctly, and in general the OS is just plain irritating to deal with. I'm working with several different flavors of UNIX right now and SCO is the only one that feels like a toy when I use it.
SCO should do the industry a favor and disband, pausing only to bulk-format all their drives so that none of the evil source code can inadvertently escape into the world. Their marketing people and their tech support people should be sent to camps to be retrained for professions more suited to their skills and their buildings should be torn down and burned.
I'm betting SCO is the first casuality of the Open Source movement.
: It seems fairly clear that they have no problem
: with Linux as a hackers toy, but deeply resent
: the fact that Linux is eating away the same
: market segment they are in.
Eating away the market segment? You mean utterly destroying the market segment for SCO.
Everyone talks about Linux replacing or taking some of MS Windows NT market share. That will happen, but what is happening now is that Linux is destroying the market for all commercial Unixes.
Note that Sun, Compaq (Digital), HP, IBM have all embraced Linux. They know the days of the proprietary Unixes are numbered. Since SCO doesn't sell hardware, I predict that SCO will go belly up in the year 2000.
Now I have a soft spot in my heart for SCO, back in 1985 I learned UNIX and C on an Apple Lisa running SCO Xenix. They have been profitable in their own little niche for many years, but now that niche is gone and a $500+ ??? is not going to be able to compete with "free." Either SCO has to come up with a radically different business model or they will disappear. And when that happens it will be sad.
I wish I was shelling C-Shells by the sea shore, that would be the life.
Quoting him from the article:
Yep, that is indeed where he gets in trouble, isn't it? In an oh-lordy-I'm-doomed sort of way...
Mind the Gap
I must have missed that part of the GPL. Could you point it out for me?
---
Me: I must have missed that part of the GPL. Could you point it out for me?
I was being sarcastic. I already knew there is no such part; I was challenging the original poster's false statement.
Obviously, my intent wasn't clear. But thanks to the people who pointed it out, anyway.
---
When you buy Red Hat, you're not paying for linux. The software doesn't cost anything--it's right there on the FTP server for all to have. You're paying for the installation manual, customer support, etc. He knows this, however. He's in a tough position: SCO's sales have increased dramatically recently, and that's due in a large part to the positive press and attention linux has been getting lately. If linux gets Unix good press, of course he's not going to complain about linux itself--hence his coments on the subject. But he knows it's not going to last for him. Let's face it, SCO sucks compared to linux, and if linux is successful in the business world, it's going to kick SCO's ass all over the place. And the biggest danger to him is of course Red Hat. His attitude makes perfect sense.
I personally have bought 2 official versions of RedHat, 2 SuSE and 1 Debian so far this year. I also got older Redhat, Slackware and Caldera CDs that came last years with book purchases. It's worth the convenience to pay for distros on CD
If it wasn't for SCO sucking so bad, Linus probably would have never bothered.
Seriously, who does this guy think he's fooling? At this point, by criticizing RedHat all he does is drive his own disatisfied customers RedHat's way.
We re-evaluated UnixWare as an Oracle server a couple of years ago and were so impressed with the performance that we came close to buying the UnixWare license, but then running Oracle in Linux using iBCS. (Basically, we just wanted the shared libraries and the commercial support that came with an official Oracle platform.) Fortunately, the database vendors have come to their senses and are now all supporting Linux.
RedHat is a great company because they actually add value to an already great Linux. I am still convinced that SCO is the core of a Microsoft conspiracy to make UNIX a bad word.
There are a lot bigger fish to go after in terms of lawsuits. Why should Bob Young waste time, money, and anguish over something said by the CEO of a dying company that his company is in the process of driving out of business the old-fashioned way, by having a better product for a better price?
Bob's revenge is going to be when SCO declares Chapter 7. Beside that, a lawsuit would blatant overkill.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
SCO's sales have not "really" increased dramatically recently. What you are seeing is the final retirement of many older SCO Unix systems, which are having to be upgraded to SCO OpenServer or UnixWare because they were not Y2K compliant. A lot of people, unlike my former employer, left that Y2K upgrade until the last minute, leaving them no time to change to Linux or some other platform before the stroke of doom hits. Thus SCO is smiling all the way to the bank.
In addition, SCO has some additional revenue due to their 64-bit port that is being done to Merced under contract to Intel (and somebody else, but I don't remember who, was it HP?). But this does not really count as sales, even though it is a big boost to their bottom line.
I have a hunch that if you take out the Y2K stuff, SCO's sales are actually stagnant. SCO's problem is that their entire VAR network was set up around SCO Unix feeding a multi-port serial card feeding dumb terminals, and that paradigm isn't going to take them far into the next century. If they had expressed an interest in Internet serving earlier, they could have jumped onto that bandwagon, but they let Linux and the BSD's (including BSDI) and Sun go after that market for some reason. Reading SCO World back in the mid 90's, you would have thought that the Internet did not exist.
About the only thing they do have going for them is big name databases running on SCO Unix already, stable and proven. That will take them a little bit further and is, in fact, the primary reason SCO Unix is still alive -- until recently, your choices in the big name database market for a reasonable price were NT, SCO Unix, and RISC Unix, and if you wanted x86 platform on a non-MS OS, SCO Unix was it. But as database vendor support for Linux solidifies that's going to become less and less a factor.
I would not invest in SCO right now (grin).
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
My employer at the time made the transition in spring of 1996. SCO had discontinued Xenix by then, and our customers were VERY unhappy about the thought of paying massive per-user fees when we upgraded their old Xenix servers (Xenix was unlimited user). I tried running our database engine under iBCS2 on Linux and guess what? It actually ran FASTER than on SCO Unix!
When the bid season started, my boss looked at the per-user charges for Linux, looked at the per-user charges for SCO Unix, asked me what the downside was, and all I could do was shrug and say "I don't know, I've been doing my development under Linux for the last three months and then porting it to SCO, everything seems to work right and work faster."
One trial school district later, and it was official: Linux was more stable and more feature-ful than SCO Unix, and ran like a scalded cat even on lowly IDE drives (SCO Unix runs like a bored tortoise on IDE). Porting our SCO Unix application to Linux was basically a case of re-compiling and fixing some minor printer issues in our code (since Linux uses the BSD print spooler while SCO uses the Sys V print spooler).
Y2K hurried the move to Linux too, since all the older SCO boxes had Y2K issues.
I know for a fact that SCO lost over $250,000 in sales from that single move to Linux. Multiply that by every other SCO VAR that is looking at Linux or has switched to Linux, and you can only conclude that SCO would have at least twice the revenue that they have today, if not for Linux.
-- Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
They would be able to distribute LINUX and SCO-UNIX to their customers. They may take a short-term hit on profits but would have long-term gains. Their business is going bye-bye gradually anyway. Why should they just fade away when they can apply their resources to Linux and have a crack distribution going in no time?
I really don't understand why they choose to lose.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Posted by Just Another Perl Slacker:
I posted the following comment to SCO using their website feedback form at http://www.sco.com/feedback/index.html.
Regarding your CEO's comments about Red Hat, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Red Hat has devoted many hours to developing the Redhat Package Manager (RPM) which most of the other Linux Distributions use, free of charge. Red Hat also devoted many hours to developing Gnome, what is quickly becoming the nicest looking and easiest to use Desktop for Linux. In addition, as with most Linux distro's, anybody can download Red Hat Linux for free from many different FTP mirror sites. Anybody who pays Red Hat for a cd of Linux (which I intend to do with Red Hat 6.0) is choosing to support this company for all the great work they've done in helping to make Linux as good and as accessible as it is. This is a loyalty base any company would love to have, including yours. You could learn something from Red Hat instead of slamming them in the news.
Of course, SCO could always get rid of the standard unix utilities that they maintain and have used for the last decade and just use gnu utilities, gnu compilers, etc. Since they own unix they could just charge $50 for the kernel and charge extra for support and optional features.
:)
Then RMS could get on their back for being a GNU system built on top of a SCO kernel
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
The interesting thing was seeing sco's income and profit amounts. Those numbers don't seem large
:)
enough to support all the technology they've been promising (like next generation unix) or to
compete with MS or any of the RISC unix vendors. This puts them in the same league as the remains
of Borland.
I wonder how those numbers compare to RedHat? We'll have to have an announcement if (when?)
RedHat overtakes them
Sure, and before that Project Gemini with HP to do exactly the same thing. I know they have the money
for a marketing department, it's their technical abilities I doubt.
Geeze, even the merger of their two products was supposed to be complete and re-released long ago.
It was sold to X/Open (the Open Group) back in like 1992 or 1993 by USL, long before SCO owned them.
Number one, I've been using Redhat (and Debian) for three years. I have always bought the RH distribution from RH for one reason: money talks, and bullshit walks. These folks are doing a Good Thing, therefore they get my money. It's that simple, and it's not going to change. Perhaps I'm more generous than some, but surely not moreso than all?
Furthermore when I get a distribution to install on one of my customers' servers, I always get RH. They get the book, they get the sticker, and they get something they recognize.
Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode
It's interesting that Red Hat, Caldera, and SuSE are pretty much in sync for the first time -- they all use the 2.2 kernel, glibc 2.1, KDE 1.1, etc. About the only thing that sets them apart are Red Hat's dominant market position, Caldera's Linux Wizard, and SuSE's extensive software bundle.
Caldera has had quite awhile to bridge this gap and it doesn't even appear to have leapfrogged that much.
Yet it might be enough to help them expand their market share several times over.
TedC
Anyone know if SCO Merge runs under ibcs2?
It'd be interesting to compare it to VMWare...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
SCO stinks. You're just jealous. Pppffftttt...
My, isn't SCO popular these days? You can't even give it away! Linux is at what, a conservative 7-15 million? Hehehe.
Who had been selling an inferior Unix for way too much money? I think SCO should have a class action lawsuit filed against it. Granted, anyone allowing people to buy Unix is a Good Thing (TM), but I believe SCO shouldn't take pot shots at people making a buck.
The GPL says no such thing. However, seeing as the software is freely downloadable, it would be difficult to convince someone to pay beaucoup bux.
--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
Remember SCO's into the FUD arena too as it is an offshoot from M$. I'm not sure if its still true, but at one time M$ owned SCO (M$ gave SCO XENIX in return SCO gave M$ SCO), giving them aproximately 80% of the UNIX market as well as the DOS/Windows market (essentially a strangle hold on the operating systems, they were still partners with IBM on OS/2). SCO has had the INTEL/UNIX world totally wrapped up until recently when LINUX entered the arena. For a tidy license fee (similar to NT's) you too can have a nice little SCO Unixware box sitting at your desktop to do your bidding. Just don't try to use anything that's not approved SCO "Skunkware" or expect the entire system to go to hell in a handbasket.
Bottom line is that SCO fears LINUX for being able to take away its marketshare.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
IBM makes great mid-sized servers. This could start a major flame war regarding which x86 servers the best so I'll leave it at this: that server (of which our company had quite a few of) were stable as any other server in both the NT and Novell 4.11 environment as servers, so I'd expect them to be STABLE in a UNIX environment since the OS generally is more stable (at least more stable than NT).
I too expect that SCO will be out and about for years to come, but fact remains that from the early to mid 90's, SCO had a large margin of the x86 UNIX market (80+% I believe) compared to other UNICIES at the time. Linux as well as the BSD's are the first comparable operating systems as far as acceptance and power.
If you feel you must flame me, please feel free to e-mail me directly at my address by changing the at and dot's to @ and . respectively.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Don't burn it!!! Try putting it in the microwave for about 5 seconds or so, label side down. It is quite a bit of fun!!
RedHat is not selling Linux or GNU tools it is convenient to think so but in reality it is plainly not true.
I do not buy RedHat CD's because they have the latest greatest Linux or Tools on them but because they are easy to install and maintain.
RedHat sells the work they but into putting all these utilities together in a convienient and usable format. I would gladly pay the the $50 for that. It's a lot of work and I think they are doing a great job and obviously 400 000 other people think the same thing.
Also I am willing to buy my RedHat CD because I know that that money does not just go into pockets but are actually used to advance the cause of Linux and to help fund other projects that make Linux a better project.
The GNU License says that you cannot sell the software for an unreasonable amount of money. RedHat is not doing that. I do think that SCO is selling their product for an unreasonable amount of money and that is why I'm not using it.
I believe that the Linux community is not anti capitalism or even believe you should not be paid for work you do we just believe that you should not get paid an excuberant amount of money for inverior work.
I also believe that someone outside the Linux community have no say in what RedHat does with Linux or the GNU tools that come with it. But I do believe that they are towing a very thin line and that the Linux community will keep them there.
There is a big price gap, and, (this is second hand information) I hear there is a big preformance gap also, with Red Hat being Cheaper, and Better Preforming.
Somehow, I think if Debian, with it's totally diffrent distribution style and model and charter was in Red Hat's Market Share, and Red Hat was the smaller one, I think Michel's might have attacked them. Loosing your #1 spot hurts, and you gotta blame someone.
"'now I'm Red Hat and I'm going to make a million dollars out of selling this software people developed for free'," he said at a media briefing in Sydney this morning. "I think it's a fraud." Well, if that's the worst he has to say, not much damage done, I'll still send $50 to Red Hat so they can make a million dollars and keep hiring those people who "write the software for free."
http://www.afr.com.au/content/990420/inform/inform 4.html
Now who is stealing what?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I went to a SCO booth during a career fair in '97 at my college. I expressed my interest in learning about the company and what it might have to offer an experienced Linux User and Computer Systems Engineering Degree holder. She said, and I quote "We don't want students using Linux," and hands me a SCO CD. I never did install it, and after this "Fraud" crap, I think I'll use it as a coaster-- or burn it. Or maybe I'll send it back with a copy of this post.
SCO just doesn't get it.
It appears that Red Hat is doing quite well, thank you, with their business model.
In Liberty, Rene
I think he's just bitter because using Linux (even Red Hat :^) compared to SCO is like having oral sex versus a getting a sharp stick in the eye. And if the sex can be had for free and the stick costs $300 per eye, well, it probably just makes him madder.
See, he ignores that Red Hat also makes its distros available for free, as long as you provide your end of the media (bandwidth).
Bander
What we need more of is science!
...thank goodness for a little choice. Sure beats having to resort to windows. It's all good.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I actually didn't miss that point, I know that people are developing out of an enjoyment of the act of developing. The point I'm trying to make is that it is possible for RedHat to make an honest living out of distributing the software and providing support. For the average person who has contributed something to the kernel or a command line utility this isn't the case without resorting to some convoluted logic (it made me a better and more renowned coder, therefore I got a good job). It's a bit like saying that depending on your field going to university is making money. No, going to university in my case enabled me to make fist-fulls of cash. On a similar token I'm probably going to start a free software project in the near future (this weekend if payed work doesn't get in the way), but since I purposely avoided writing software for a living by wiring together transistors it really won't make one iotas difference to my career unless I change careers. Monetary gain isn't why I'm doing what I'm going to do and I don't expect any. For some people however even a small stipend which either helps pay the rent or lets them upgrade there old reliable 80386 to a dizzyingly fast 133 MHz pentium can make a difference in their ability to contribute.
SCO UNIX lost and so rather than admitting defeat or, God forbid, improving their product the CEO whines about Red Hat. The FSF license terms have always made it possible for a third party to sell distributions or support. It bothers me a bit that a lot of people who have contributed code to the Linux kernel, or to the nuts and bolts that makes a Linux operating system work (silly little things like command line utilities, compilers, windowing systems) don't get beans. It's almost like the distribution and support is valued over writing code.
SCO positioned itself to be a niche player though, they aimed at small businesses that may need a UNIX. Linux pretty solidly took away that niche by being free, but also by being a better product. Red Hat still makes their product, with source code no less, available free for the download. They have to, and this is also how they generated enough good will and recognition for their product. My first linux install was some version 1, slackware and was downloaded entirely via a flaky 2400 baud modem. Painful barely begins to describe the experience. Later on I upgraded to a Red Hat distribution and was very impressed with the install technology. It made the Windows install look like it was the product of not infinite monkeys banging away at a keyboard, but about 12. I still did it over a modem, this time a zippy 14.4K and it was still painful, but from that point on I was willing to pay a nominal fee for a distribution.
As an aside does anybody have numbers for Red Hat installations broken up by free distributions and commercial distributions?
What are the chances that there is no BSD-derived code left in SCO Unix? Very very small I'd guess. Of the two companies, SCO is probably the greater of the two evils, while Redhat may be profiteering they still give back to the Linux community (and Unix community as well) and everything is still obviously open source. SCO on the other hand is profiteering off a lot of work done by students at UCB and the list of things the Unix community owes them is probably rather short.
He's just trying to spread malcontent...he knows SCO has been rendered obsolete by Linux and is scared that his company may have a short life ahead of it.
this is completely laughable since this is same sco that charges $1500 for a 5 USER LICENSE of sco with NO SOURCE, NO COMPILER, NO GNU TOOLS, and NO SUPPORT. linux is free with source, unlimited, has gnu tools, and free support is available through the various net resources.
who's the fraud?
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
Log
They sure know there *** from a **** in the ground. It's called being a VAR guys. There's nothing wrong with extending the VAR model to GPL land. As RedHat and many other distros have proven, it works very well actually. This comment is totally biased anyway... who's SCO's biggest threat right now? Of course they would like it to be required that anyone wishing to run Linux have to download 300MB over the net and install it all manually :). I'm seeing SCO boxes replaced all of the time by Linux boxes running IBCS. Very nice.
what the point to running SCO is?
When is it a better choice than Linux, BSD, or Solaris?
How on earth do these guys still make money?
The company I work for is a cross platform shop - many years ago there was a push to port everything to sco and so we did. We never sold a single product so we dropped sco support years ago. Within the last year we have been actively pushed by real clients willing to buy immediately to port our software to linux. SCO is done - make no mistake about it, for a long time their claim to fame was "We have unix that runs on your pc" - but they are now one of a number of unices that run on a pc and theirs is the only one that is costly. SCO is in a sense like the former soviet union - they are the only country that doesn't seem to be willing to accept that they are no longer a super power but not accepting a thing does not cause that thing to be untrue.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
The real fraud is selling an OS with no decent support outside the US. I have been using SCO for nearly 10 years in my job. Support from SCO subsidiaries/affiliates/resellers in continental Europe is certainly not worth the price we pay for .
Such wanking by SCO's CEO suggests to me that he's seeing something extremely unpleasant in the company's bottom-line forecasts, something we don't see but can probably guess. My guess is that Linux and *BSD between them are projected to eat SCO alive.
This puerile public performance can only hasten SCO's demise. Maybe when they go Chapter 7 whoever picks up the codebase and legal trademark known as "UNIX" out of the rubble will GPL the whole thing so they can fix what's wrong using GNU tooling and Linux code, and allow free migration into Linux of whatever nuggets of functionality Linux hasn't already surpassed.
HTML files are not man pages. Man pages are what you get when you type man ls and suchlike. And, yes, the original poster is right: they're not installed by default. Even worse, when you do install them, they're preformatted man pages, because nroff and troff are extra-cost add-ons! That's okay until you try to install a third-party package that has nroff-style man pages and you can't read them.
Then try adding GNU groff to cover that lack. First you have to install GNU C++ and GNU make to compile it because SCO CC and SCO make are so weak. Have you ever tried to compile gcc on UnixWare? It is not pretty.
This is the standard comeback from UnixWare users, and it gets a little tiring. Anyone with sense can see that Linux can scale at least as far as UnixWare, but just because no one has tried it, the UW people laugh derisively and say it can't be done. The truth is, porting PC Unix-like systems to mainframes is just a PR stunt, not a practical solution to a real problem. If you have a mainframe-class problem, you use a mainframe OS, it's that simple.
I use UnixWare and Linux every day, and I can tell you that it's not about price, it's about power, support and convenience. Linux has it, and UnixWare doesn't. It's that simple.
The big problem for SCO here is that even if SCO UnixWare were a good product, it could never deliver the value of Open Source Linux.
Unfortunately, SCO UnixWare is NOT a good product. I should know--I've worked with two revisions of SCO UnixWare, and Univell UnixWare itself since version 1.
Between 1994 and 1996, I worked for a systems integrator--mostly programming for Linux--and during that time, found myself working on two SCO UnixWare deals. Both were implementation and support nightmares--thanks to both the poor quality of the SCO product, and the equally poor quality of its (very expensive) product support.
1. An accouting firm in Detroit was migrating to UnixWare from pure AT&T 386 SysV (Oracle). Due to undocumented bugs in the SCO PCI implementation, UnixWare 2.11 wouldn't even INSTALL on 5 out of 6 PCI motherboards we tried. Meanwhile, the SCO hardware compatibility list was nearly two years out of date, and SCO reps refused to endorse any vendor's motherboards for use with the product. Once installed, we spent three weeks debugging problems with UnixWare's buggy ethernet drivers--which a reliable source told us were in some obscene manner derived from Netware DOS binaries.
2. Later, someone in our office sold UnixWare as a Novell MHS mail gateway. Too bad the PERL scripts AND the Novell integration were so buggy that a SCO tech support person (whom we paid much money) confided the product was basically unsuable. We had to rewrite portions of the mail gateway ourselves, and never solved intermittent connection problems between UnixWare and Novell.
I do not feel sorry for this company.
Matt
Us Slackwarers knew this all along!
just a quickie: isn't there a SCO emulator for Linux?
I'm not surprised, really - the companies that produce boxes as well as Unixes have been embracing Linux (Sun, SGI, HP, IBM), since it gives them an attractive option and lets them keep selling their boxes. SCO, on the other hand, quoting Spike Lee in those asinine Pizza Hut ads: "You got nothin'!" Even though they bought the old AT&T code, it hasn't done them a whit of good. And SCO is far too wed to the old pricing and development modes to really compete against Linux and Windows at the low end, and minis/other commercial Unixes at the high end.
Personally, I'd sell their stock short.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
This is a great comment, realworld, fair, and my experience.
BTW How many tools that SCO use GNU?
"Think of it as evolution in action."
heheh, another great comment, does anyone have a review of SCO tools versus GNU tools?
"Think of it as evolution in action."
slack is a training distro
support gun control: take guns from cops
RedHat may sell their distribution, but it's still downloadable for free.
And of course, at this stage of the game, they can't make enough money from support alone to justify distributing Linux at replication cost only.
Anyway, not that selling Linux at any price is against the GNU philosophy - as long as the source code is there, and the option exists to get it for free.
So SCO's whining sounds like sour-grapes from a company who are losing market share hand over fist. SCO Unix / Xenix was always a dog anyway.
Chris Wareham
"It felt like a car at the demolition derby: somehow it kept going while bits and pieces seemed to be falling off left and right"
Hee, hee! Probably the best description of SCO I've seen.
SCO is my 2nd (or third) least favorite operating system. But you do have to grant them one thing. It DOES keep going (Unlike a certain companies product that starts with an W).
I had the *ahem* pleasure of working on a SCO system that did not have an administrator for 2 years! No one had the root password, and the last person who did left 2 years prior. The dang think just kept running, and never managed to run out of hard drive space.
Sucky design, but it ran....
No. The kernel and most of the system is pure System V, with Xenix extensions. Shudder...
Thank you for mentioning SCO VARs. I hope they all switch to Linux. Here's why:
Last month when I attended SCO's quarterly VAR briefing in Minneapolis as an end-user guest of our reseller, I was astounded by how little regard SCO had for these people who presumably are making them money. We sat through a long, inaccurate PowerPoint presentation on the Y2K problem, presented by "someone from corporate" who had no idea what he was talking about. Then they explained how SCO was going to charge several thousand dollars to evaluate legacy SCO UNIX systems for Y2K compliance, effectively cutting out the VARs from this source of income. You could hear the grumblings getting louder as his talk went on. The presenters were aware of this; midway through, they switched from talking about SCO as "we" to SCO as "them."
My reseller and I walked out before the end. It was a waste of time. There was no talk of new products, not even their "Tarantella" product which appears to do most of what Citrix MetaFrame does. There was no talk about what SCO was doing to compete against Linux or NT. There was nothing to give me confidence that SCO will exist as a company after the year 2000.
With Linux, VARs can be as independent as they choose. They can be their own developers, or they can resell Red Hat, Caldera, etc. They don't have to worry about being the only "SCO-authorized" training center in a 300-mile radius or whatever the limit is.
Thanks, SCO, for spreading FUD about Y2K and FUD about Linux. You've ruined the attitude of this once very happy customer.
Very sincerely,
Carl Patten
Systems Administrator
Trimodal Inc.
(cpatte@trimodalinc.com)
I think it is fairly clear what their problem is. Linux is being developed openly, at no cost to resellers, apart from what they decide to contribute themselves. SCO, on the other hand, needs a large -- and expensive -- staff to produce their OS. This means that Red Hat, Caldera et. al. can resell the system at a price point that would be suicidal for SCO. It seems fairly clear that they have no problem with Linux as a hackers toy, but deeply resent the fact that Linux is eating away the same market segment they are in.
I would'nt be too suprised if SCO tried attacking the Linux distributors legally, claiming that they have unfair advantage in the marketplace. Don't think they could win such a suit, but it would probably slow the adoption of Linux during the legal proceedings.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
As one of the Unices I had never tried, I had this nagging idea that someday I might need to try out SCO. However, I'm glad that their CEO just made my life easier by showing me that I have absolutely no interest in their product.
My
...on SCO's part.
A company chief exec has come out and
openly accused another company of fraud.
I hope RedHat pursues this.
Before you accuse somebody of fraud (a civil
crime in California and probably everywhere else
in the USA), you'd better have some pretty good
evidence, or have an attorney general with some
good evidence, and be ready to defend your
allegations of fraud in a courtroom.
If RedHat played their litigation card just right,
this one word could actually end up costing SCO
the farm.
I do know for certain, that if such an individual
made a groundless accusation of my company committing fraud, I would file a complaint consisting of an initial petition to cease and
desist, a restraining order to stop the individual
from making public statements about my company and I would publicly demand a retraction from any news
media that carried this story in a sympathetic vein. That's where I'd start. Then I would start
tallying the potential damages from such reckless,
willful defamation.
Yes, this could cost them.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Just like standing up for your trademarks
is important, standing up against slander
is important too. They have an obligation
to fight this ignorance.
I want an apology from SCO on RedHat's behalf.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
They are selling a Linux distribution. Creating a Linux distribution is a lot of work, and surely they are charging a fair price for what they do. It's not like they are selling sand at the beach.
I can't believe I'm defending RH here! :)
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
If you need an app that runs on SCO but not Linux/BSD, or you need a real System V Unix system. Of course Solaris x86 fits that bill, but I think SCO has more marketshare than Solaris on Intel.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I worked in a shop where had both SCO Unix and Linux (1.2 at the time). Linux almost always ran circles around SCO. More throughput? I laugh. We had a UUCP link between a SCO Unix machine, on a P90 and Linux on a 486/66. (This was several years ago when such hardware was common). We couldn't have more than 38400 bps on the UUCP link because the SCO kernel would puke. Linux on the slower hardware had no such problem. There were other similar incidents, we had SCO boxes crash when you tried to change virtual consoles!!
Of course this was SCO Unix, not Unixware. I can't speak for SCO Unixware, but it has got to be better than SCO Unix.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
The difference between SCO and the other Unix vendors is that the other guys also sell hardware, SCO doesn't. The other guys will be happy to sell Linux running on *their* hardware. Sun does seem worried about Linux too, though.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
At the 1996 Unix Expo, SCO had a booth giving away free CD-Roms of SCO Unix. I already had SCO experience, and although I preferred Linux even then, I thought It might be cool to have a SCO partition.
So I inserted the Boot disk, SCO was like, "Um, you have IDE hardware? What's that?". Well supposed SCO had patches on their website for IDE equiptment, but I decided that it probably wasn't going to be worth the trouble, so I never installed it!
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I worked in a SCO shop from 1995-1997. We had a few Linux boxes, and even then, Linux was running circles around SCO Unix. Despite this, there were a number of very Pro-SCO people who thought this Linux thing was just a toy, and didn't belong in the corporate environment because it's not commercial.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
More like they are selling prebuilt sandcastles at the beach, not just scooping up sand an packaging it.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I don't think SCO comes with any GNU tools, but you can get them as add-ons.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
No, GNU tools are better implementations than the Unix (SCO == Unix) equivalants. SCO is not trying to clone what the GNU project has done, it's the other way around.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
That would be true if it was the SCO "OpenServer" product. However, the product that they were giving away is SCO "Open Desktop" (ODT). How many desktop systems have SCSI? A small proportion of them.
My point was that SCO's hardware support is lousy.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
If they built SCO & Xenix compatibility into it, maybe building on what iBCS already offers, and adding the libs needed to make it work, and made a more SysV-type setup, there would be a market for it. But they wouldn't be able to get away with the license fees that they charge.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I lost interest in mine when I found out during the install, that I'd have to go download patches from SCO to be able to use my IDE devices.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
My understanding is that MS contracted SCO to write Xenix, which was originall sold as an MS product.
I don't think MS or Bill every exclusivly owned SCO, but MS was (is?) heavily invested in them.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
SCSI's great for a multiuser system, but its need is questionable for a personal Linux system, that never sees more than one user at a time.
Sure I'd like to have it, but I'm not bottlenecked by disk performance now, so I can't justify paying hundreds of dollars to switch.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
SCSI's great for a multiuser system, but its need is questionable for a personal Linux system, that never sees more than one user at a time.
Sure I'd like to have it, but I'm not bottlenecked by disk performance now, so I can't justify paying hundreds of dollars to switch.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Like I said, this was 1996. I've never used Unixware, so I can't speak for it.
As for SCO hardware support. We always had to carefully spec out our systems in accordance to what SCO supported, and even in 1995/1996, Linux supported a wider range of hardware than SCO did.
I know it's tough in th x86 market, with the wide variety of hardware available.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
But the deal is: every machine I put SCO on I have to cough up a license fee; a big cost of s/w is the config and support, to make it useful to a business or individual - NOT a fee just to install and hang an O'Ficcial license on the wall next to the box to admire.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
> It's not like they are selling sand at the beach
It's exactly like they're selling sand at the beach. They just strain out all the rocks and seaweed and stuff, put it into nice little baggies with a professional looking logo, and tape them shut so you don't have to get any on you before you get it home.
substrate wrote: While I understand the sentiment, you're missing a point and it's a very important point. RH makes money from Linux because they try to. Those people contributing all that work "for free" may or may not be trying to make money. But that better not be their primary motivation, because if they don't enjoy what they do for its own sake, the quality is going to go down.
And a lot of them are making money. They put their not-insignificant free software work on their resumes, and they use it to get hired into full-time jobs that pay the rent. Some of them are even working for people like Red Hat, SuSE and Cygnus. So believe me, their work is appreciated, and the only reason they aren't paid directly for it is that they are doing their job, which is to work on stuff they enjoy working on.... ;)
1) Support. Many people like support, and they'll pay for it. I suspect the 50 dollars you pay for a official Red Hat package are money well spent if you use the 90 day technical support...
2) The name. In the business market, I imagine it will be a hell of a lot easier to make the boss buy "Official Red Hat Linux" than a noname Red Hat Linux clone.
I bought my copy of Red Hat 5.2 for $1.29 plus shipping (another $2). SCO will sell me a non-commercial disk for $20 plus shipping. They claim it's to cover the cost of the disk. That's fraud. I refuse to believe that copying CDs costs SCO 17x what it costs infomagic.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I bought my copy of Red Hat 5.2 for $1.29 plus shipping (another $2). SCO will sell me a non-commercial disk for $20 plus shipping. They claim it's to cover the cost of the disk. That's fraud. I refuse to believe that copying CDs costs SCO 17x what it costs infomagic.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
it's not just nice that RH has their dist up for free, it's required :)
GPL and all that, ya know
Actually the GPL doesn't mention putting binary RPMs and installation tools on the Internet for free download. Caldera's distribution contains lots of GPLed software but you can't download it for free.
You can't even download all of Official Red Hat for free -- or you couldn't at 5.1 when I got BRU and MetroX on the CD. Maybe those proprietary programs are no longer part of the Official package.
Jonathan
of course the CEO of SCO is pissed. They spent a lot time and money developing thier version of UNIX (and removing MS code from the kernel) only to have Linux develop into a better product, all for free. To add insult to injury, RedHat leverages all this free labor and becomes a major player in the Linux/UNIX/thin-server/server market (or whatever you wish to call it). I live and work in the Santa Cruz area. I once concidered working for SCO but I realized (even 2 years ago) that SCO would be the biggest loser in the Linux/OSS revolution (if not to Linux, then to FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc). If SCO were smart about it, they would add a Linux division to their company, port thier tools (and maybe make a mid to high range server distro) and make a bunch of money off of consulting and custom development. They definatly have the UNIX expertise and the name to give them credibility.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
At one time SCO was an offshoot from MS but for some reason or another (think it had to do with a deal MS made with ???? to not get into the UNIX market - I may be wrong about this) it no longer is. In fact, SCO just won a lengthy court battle with MS that will alow them to remove all MS code from their kernel. so really, SCO has severed all ties with MS.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
When SCO finally goes under what will happen to its assets? The codebase might be useful for historical reasons, but the Unix trademark might be worth a bit of money. Perhaps Red Hat or Caldera might buy the assets and put the code under GPL? Wouldn't that be fun.
C-x C-s
Both are protected by copyrights and patents. RedHat is not. What I'm telling you is that there are really no barriers to entry. IBM could come in right now, copy everything that is good with RedHat, byte for byte, maybe even add a few packages. Whom do you think has more clout in terms of brand equity? While some may argue that Coca-Cola and the rest taste differently, the same argument can not be made for a byte for byte copy of software.
RedHat is still a very tiny company which has yet to prove itself to the powers that be. Even if we could warp forward in time, in a universe where RedHat's distribution is king, they _might_ be able to retain it with brand equity. But RedHat simply is not at this point yet. Linux is still very immature from a commercial viewpoint. RedHat may be on top of the heap today, but its commercial validity as a serious contender against real competition of the future I question.
Have you ever wondered why RedHat is reluctant to join the Linux Standard Board? I think this is atleast partially about RedHat trying to differentiate themselves. Their argument that the LSB is too slow might be partially valid. However, I think their real motivation is that they want to differentiate themselves. Assuming that RedHat becomes the unofficial standard, and that the other vendors are too proud to clone RedHat lay out, this would give them a leg up. Both in the distribution and the support business.
I too use and buy RedHat's 'official' releases. I also think RedHat has made many vital contributions to Linux. But if you look at each one of these, these are not major efforts, they are significant because Linux is/was so small and they're badly needed. They've just addressed what no one else had, ease of use issues and what not. The question is: Can RedHat, and operations like it, get a return on their future efforts. I really don't think they can. If they were to go out today, and spend 50 million dollars (which is never going to happen) on Gnome -- and make it every bit as good as Windows95 from the beginners perspective -- how would this be a wise business decision? Even IF the software market jumps at this enough to cause 2billion dollars worth of Linux sales -- who says its going to be RedHat with the lions share? Thus far all of RedHat's competition has tried to make it on there own, but there is nothing stopping them from literally duplicating Linux's distributions and offering it for 3 dollars.
This article was far too short and didn't say much. He never really explained what he meant by 'fraud'. However, I'm assuming that he was attacking RedHat's business model. If this is the case, I think he does have a point. In other words, this is not a company you would want to invest in. Redhat doesn't have any propietary software. 99% of their package is developed by the general open source community, the other 1% by their in house staff. They have no propietary software, I'm not even sure if they have exclusive rights to their own documentation. It can all be downloaded with source for free! Right now their cash cow is the convience factor. They make money by packaging Linux up on a CD in a nice convenient easily installable package with documentation. The problem with this is that when and if Linux takes off, what stops competition from coming in and copying their packages exactly and selling them for 2 dollars? The fact of the matter is that even right now most slashdotters only buy the 2 dollar cheapbytes' versions of RedHat. People new to Linux and RedHat actually buy the 50 dollar CD from RedHat. But eventually this market is going to slip away when the market begins to mature someone going to figure out just how easy it is to pirate RedHat's cash cow. Ok, now from the Linux communities perspective. What can RedHat add, never mind their profit margins. The amount of money that they can sink into Open Source projects like Gnome is extremely limited. They simply can't afford it. The only way they can get a return on their money, is in minor trimmings that get added to their own distribution. When other companies start mirroring these additions you'll see these projects get strangled.
Certainly some of you will clammor that 'RMS says that he doens't mind them making money on support'. This may be true. Theoretically, RedHat could make money by offering support. I've yet to see any proof that this business model even works. Certainly RedHat hasn't shown it. I doubt that their support operations are even breaking even right now. The support operations are even questionable in the long run. What makes RedHat the ideal source to answer questions about Linux? If MS were to suddenly die tommarow and Linux declared THE new OS of the masses, who do you think is in the best position to offer support for Linux? Since there is nothing propietary, nothing secret, in Redhat Linux distribution what makes RedHat any better at support than anyone else? IBM and many other companies are in great positions to jump on markets like these. They just need to train the right people, but they have the resources and the people to do it.
Anyhow, my point is not that RedHat can't possibly make money. I'm sure they're going to make a fair amount of money in the short run. However, I think they're going to fall victim to their own hype. They're going to believe their own line, and they're going to start playing their chips foolishly. I believe the only way that RedHat's investors are going to make out well in the next 5 years, is if they understand their limitations. It may very well be prudent for them to cash out in the next year or so.
don't forget that they're also selling support :)
so if you (or anyone else, for that matter)
accidentally (or not) tramples your sandcastle
they'll help you rebuild it
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
just a small correction to an otherwise praiseworthy post....it's not just nice that RH has their dist up for free, it's required :)
;P)
:) I don't need the manuals (HOWTOs rawk), i don't need the cd media (cdr's rawk), and i don't need the support (usenet rawks ;P) but i'll probably buy it just the same mostly so that i can feel i'm doing a small part to help the community out...since i can't code anything more advanced than 'hello, world' buying RH's (or anyone else's) dist is one of the small ways i can contribute.
GPL and all that, ya know
otherwise, i echo your sentiment exactly...
even though i didn't pay for my copy of RH5.2 (universities with t1 lines rawk) i probably will buy the next RH release mostly because i want to give something back...even if it's a couple bux to RH, it's still a couple more than they had before and it'll help them pay for raster to keep developing gnome (for a couple hours at least
that having been said...i _like_ free stuff...mostly since i'm so broke, i've forgotten what money looks like...and because of the GPL i don't _have_ to buy RH's dist (or anyone else's for that matter) if i don't want to...but i want to
linux, like life, is all about choice.
at the risk of sounding too much like RMS, those of us who can't code worth a hill of beans should do all we can to help and support those who _can_ code so that _all_ of us can benefit from having the choices we all hold so dear, choices that the borg up in redmond (and most of the software industry) have been working so long to take away from us. whether you use GNOME or not, whether you use E or WM or fvwm2, whether you use X at all, we should all do our best to support these endeavors so that when the redmonites turn their lazy eyes at us, we will still, no matter what they do, have choices of _our own_ making and not theirs.
the choices micros~1 gives us remind me of a quip attributed to Ford, joking about his Model T, which only came in black:
(paraphrasing here) "You can have it in any color you want, as long as it's black."
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
A friend of mine was involved in testing and porting a Xenix app to Unixware for Y2k compliance. Whoever decided on Unixware should be taken out in the street and shot twice in the head (some marketing fop).
Unixware had terrible support for video cards and scsi cards, and SCO support wasn't particularly helpful.
I don't know where Michels gets the idea that selling Linux isn't going to work. I think that anyone selling a product that actually works is going to do a fair bit better.
Once the higher-ups figure out what a POS SCO sells and stop making these stupid decisions to go with their overpriced product, SCO will be in deep.
Fraud involves misrepresentation. I don't see where RedHat is misrepresenting what it's selling or doing. Sounds like a bad case of sour grapes to me.
It's not the average Linux advocate, it's the average loud mouthed slashdot ranter who wants everything for free. Plenty of people, myself included, have paid for RedHat, and plan to continue to do so. They make a decent dist, and they give a lot back to the community.
It is nice that RedHat has their dist up for free, btw, for things like the comp. sci. department of my school where we're strapped for money and there's a semi-lengthy process involved in actually paying for anything, so for the computers in our lab we just download the RPMS and install.
But I (for personal use and at work), and many other people pay for RedHat. We're happy to. RedHat deserves the money.
Please don't confuse the loudest people with the most people. There's a world of difference, as the fact that RedHat is still in business and doing well proves. If it was only the minority of people who didn't want everything for free, how do you think that RedHat would still be financially alive?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Me thinks that he is a wee bit scared of Linux an dthe good job that Redhat does at packaging Linux. After all isn't SCO supposed to be the UNIX for the PC, but now Linux is quickly taking that spot from SCO.
Redhat has also contributed to the Linux community, buy employing some of its developers, at RH LABS and RH. I do not think that thay are doing a bad thing by selling there version of Linux, cause they also offer then fro download, and you can always get a cheepie cdrom from several Linux venders. The cheepie cdroms have everything from there ftp site, usually too...
If Linux becomes more popular SCO may disappear completely.. I think that is what he is most afraid of....
Only 'flamers' flame!
After having Slack'ed for quite a while, I found it's almost as easy to build your own packages under RedHat, using "RPM -b?". The document "Maximum RPM" is quite some help, but it's easier looking at other people's spec files.
Of course SCO is going to whine about RedHat. They realize that Linux has been a better product for about 5 years now and they need to do something to keep their installed base. Has anyone here every met anyone who likes SCO? I haven't.
-Rich
and if I'm not mistaken, don't they own the word "UNIX" now?
You are mistaken, albiet understandably so. SCO owns the rights to the legacy AT&T Bell Labs designed source code for UNIX. However before they bought that, Novell (the previous owner) gave the UNIX trademark to The Open Group (formerly X/Open).
It is technically possible for a non-AT&T/USL/SCO source licensed product to be officially UNIX -branded by TOG, albiet it rarely happens. TOG's rules make it difficult if not impossible for a free product, as they include requirements for some expensive commercial components such as Motif and CDE if memory serves. There has been talk about trying to get Linux (or at least one distribution) officially UNIX branded, but I don't know how far that has gotten.
but the Unix trademark might be worth a bit of money
Unfortunately for SCO, they don't own that. Novell gave that to The Open Group (formerly X/Open) before they sold USL to SCO.
One expression I have heard is "You are not just selling the steak, you are selling the sizzle".
Red Hat is selling a complete package with value added in things like support and a spattering of commercial licenses.
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
1) this article does not say many things about why Red Hat selling free software is a fraud. Of course the main argument is obvious. But the article is a bit short to be really valuable.
;-)
2) anyway, it seems to me that Michels is only afraid of Linux selling model, since RH begins to be attacked here and there (or at least some people look at it with attention), then it is easier for SCO to attack it. Michels will not attack a smaller / RH competitor... You always attack the bigger... when the bigger is not anymore the most appreciated... like Windows
3) Michels should read the license. Even though it might be considered unethical by some people to sell the free work of others, that's legal given GPL. Therefore Michels' claim has no basement. There is no fraud.
Michels should have think before he talked. Now he appears dumb. That's not good advertisement for him...
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
There was an article just yesterday somewhere where the CEO of SCO (IIRC) was going on about how he loved Linux, and how it was improving SCO's bottom line.
The best line was near the end, where he stated: "We love Linux. Because it's free, we can steal anything we want. We can keep in step with it."
[rolls up GPL into a stick]
[THWACK]
iSKUNK!
Unlike KDE, GNOME does not include a GWM (Gnome Window Manager), it just needs any window manager (same is true for KDE, so no flames please). The Default window manager for Redhat + Gnome is E, however I'm sure they will do what they have ALWAYS done, you will get the option:
Exit -> Switch to... -> KDE/WindowMaker/E/etc..
And probably (though I am guessing), all but KDE will have the option of running the GNOME Panel.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
I didn't either, but I did watch the part of Linus's speach (via RealPlayer) where he addressed some of the critisisms against the distribution vendors (not RH specifically).
He said something along the lines of the distributions being a great help to the community, because they make Linux more usuable and easier to install for newbies.
I'm probably butchering that since its been a few months since I watched the speech, but you get my point. When the CREATOR of the OS gives his blessing to comanies that make a profit on it, you have NO right to open your mouth and make judgments.
Red Hat gives away its OS (you can still download it off the 'net or buy it on a $2 CD). They have contributed code to the open software and only make money off their documentation and support.
SCO, on the other hand, has taken the origonal Unix, repackaged it and sell it for hundreds of dollars per copy and have given nothing back to OS development.
It sounds like SCO is running scared.
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
I look at it as just the opposite really. I use Mandrake 5.3 at home, because I had too many problems trying to compile programs, so RPM really helped me to spend less time configuring and installing and more time tinkering with what is already installed. I intend to move to Slack at some point in the future, as I figure compiling my own programs will give me a bit more speed than using binaries. So for me, Mandrake is a training distro, and Slack is where I want to eventually go.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
In the may 1993 edition of a dutch PC Magazine someone compared the then available version of Linux (Slackware distro, kernel 0.9x.xx) with SCO unix (version 3.2-4.2). There was one field where SCO was better, DOS Merge vs dosemu. In every other field there was really no competition and the gap has been widening ever since. I especially loved the final comment about SCO in the article: "if you need to know the price it is definately not for you" (translated freely).
I am an SCO ACE and have worked with quite a few SCO boxen to this date. Except for thinking you can sue someone when something goes wrong, I can see absolutely no reason why anybody would want to pick SCO over Linux. Neither Openserver nor Unixware.
Hamal is an yellow star in the constallation Aries.
It is 66ly away, so it doesn't alter your personality.
> I must have missed that part of the GPL. Could you point it out for me?
First read Selling Free Software by RMS: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.ht ml.
In it, he mentions:
This is manifested in the GPL in section 3, Subsection (b):
It's right there in the GPL!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Erm.. surpass Windows? Hellooooooo?!
Perhaps he was talking about the ease of installation issue? That's what I assumed, anyhoo.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
There's also the Windows-based, GUI install program (for people too confused about rebooting with a boot floppy) and Tetris.
:-)
Of all these, I think Tetris is the coolest enhancement.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
It seems Doug has definitely put his foot where his mouth is but, well, that's corporates for you :)
:). :) ). However, consider again that most of these boxes have a small database installed on it, probably functioning as a print/fax server as well - no need for fancy stuff besides that bare minimum. Sure, it hurts us guys who are used to the nifty stuff (gosh, less :) ) - but I always carried a couple of diskettes loaded with all the convenient utils with me - no problems. And that SkunkWare thing has _certainly_ grown up - all the useful stuff you'd want (_including_ KDE, Gimp etc.), all in the basic distribution. So stop whining. :) I also hear many of the system developers at SCO are Linux-heads as well, so you can be sure to hear grumbling in the halls of SCO's dev cubicles today :)
:) ) can't hold a candle to UnixWare 7. And any IT manager who splashes out on such a box wants something _commercial_, with _official_ patches and support, with 20-years experience. And please don't raise the Solaris on x86 issue - Sun isn't properly commited to that platform, and indeed their performance and stability suffers because of that.
Anyhoo, having worked with SCO Unix systems for a long while, I'd like to make a few points. (Note: I no longer work with SCO platforms, besides some development).
1) Indeed, SCO's licensing seems atrocious at first glance. However, consider that their systems have, for the most part, been set up for 2-10 users (small to v.small bisunesses). Since they don't sell hardware, and SMP systems have been _extremely_ rare (to say the least) before ~1995, _profitable_ licensing can only be done per-user.
2) Hardware support: Since SCO Unix systems are meant to be _servers_, and not _workstations_ (please disregard the absolutely silly notion named "Open Desktop" - marketing getting the better of management), one takes care to buy A supported PC+SCSI+VGA+Multiport. You buy it once, and it lasts until your drives start failing. And speaking of that,
3) Stability: I've had customers (and acquaintances) running almost every version of Xenix/SCO Unix/Openserver, and one of the things that were consistent was the absolute stability of these systems. Most people asked for support only when a drive or serial port failed - running for years on end (with periodic downtime - many customers don't have UPS) without stopping for maintenance. Many of my customers had uptime that I'm sure you'll be _really_really_REALLY_ hard-pressed to find any sub-50,000$ Unix box can attest to match; and this on $2000-worth PC's (486 and lowly Pentiums). SCO Unix's price-performance can be said to be unmatched - at least until the start of serious *BSD/Linux deployment
4) Features: Again, this comes in with 1 & 2 - SCO Unix/Openserver is a _primitive_ beast, which has been maxed out technologically long ago (well, maybe besides PnP support - which is not terrible, by the way
You can also run many Linux apps on all SCO platforms today, so _that_ should count for something
Now, about UnixWare: (I think the OpenServer issue can be closed anyway, since it's a dead platform - will be completely phased out within 3 years or so, so don't bother)
UnixWare 7.1 is an _excellent_ platform, and is a terrific weapon in the fight agains Redmond. It has tons of features that Linux needs in order to be a player in the enterprise (journaling file system, excellent and proven SMP scalability, single-image clustering), has _already_ been ported to Merced (running on an emulator), is being ported to Sequent's 128-CPU clusters etc. Sure *BSD/Linux is _usually_ more cost effective on 1-2 CPU boxes, but once you move out into $15K hardware and onwards, Linux (still
If I were to base my business on Intel hardware, I'd put my web/mail server on Linux/*BSD without even stopping to think twice, but I'd take UnixWare for my database _any day_.
Just my 2 cents; comments?
http://www.sco.com/monterey/
Besides it being in SCO's best interest to discredit Red Hat and Linux, SCO's CEO overlooked something that most of the software industry is based on. People are willing to pay large amounts of money for the luxury of ignorance. If people want to throw money at Red Hat, nobody should stand in their way. Unlike with most other operating systems everybody has a choice whether or not to send somebody money for a copy.
Yes, there is one.
It's called the ibcs2 module.
I'm not sure how current it is. It may only successfully emulate older SVR3 based versions of SCO Unix.
In 1994, I was programming SCO systems at work, we were an SCO shop.
Early in 1994, I read an article stating that Linux 1.0 had been released, the first "stable" release.
I had heard little things about Linux, and decided that it was time I checked it out.
I got myself a Slackware distribution and installed it on my home PC.
Having been the veteran of already 5 or 6 SCO installs at the time, my first impression was of how simple the install was. I had a working system in a half hour or so. I was particularly impressed with the fact that this thing had installed from my proprietary interface Mitsumi CDROM drive, all the commercial UNIX's at the time required a SCSI CDROM. I had PPP and X working after a couple of evenings of fiddling with the system. Much easier than SCO and most impressive!
Remember, this was 1994. After a little experience with my home Linux box, it became apparent to me that there was NOTHING we were doing at work with SCO that we couldn't also do with Linux. We would have to replace some commercial apps we were using with SCO with freeware equivalents, but clearly the functionality was there.
I floated a few trial balloons at work about migrating from SCO to Linux. I work for a pretty good employer, they were met with some interest.
The first Linux box we set up at work was a little server built out of discarded parts for the purpose of letting SCO developers run Netscape Navigator on their desktops. You see, in 1994 and 1995, there was still not a port of Netscape to SCO. We ran Navigator on the Linux box and displayed the display on the SCO desktop, it worked great, we called this machine our "Netscape Server", even though, of course, it was not running the software, "Netscape Server", but was "serving" netscape client sessions to the SCO developers!
Long story short: by early 1996 we had migrated completely from SCO to Linux for our application (a factory automation system) and there's been no looking back.
SCO is the least stable, least intuitive, hardest to configure, hardest to scale, crashingest, and buggiest of the commercial UNIX distributions. Linux kicked its but in 1993 and does so even more today.
Mr. Michels' comments are transparently the remarks of a CEO who's company is in it's death throws and needs a scapegoat to blame.
But, they truly have no one to blame for their situation but themselves.
SCO's unhappy that RH is selling something that was developed for free.....
Ok, is it just me or doesn't that seem just a tad hipocritical. SCO uses sendmail (a program developed for free, and ported to SCO's kernel) Hmm, and if we put a wee bit of thought into it the list of "Freely Developed" programs that are sold as part of just about every *nix, would seem quite large to me.
Of course being a CEO he probably has very little clue about what goes into his product
SCO includes them with some (or perhaps all) distributions under the name "Skunkware" (no affiliation with the NASA project). The skunkware stuff comes on a separate CD and must be installed at the user's inclination -- it is not integrated into the initial installation.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Ok, some shareware is developed freely... what gives THEM the right to charge us for the full version? Can't you just sense the sarcasm?
Didn't think so.
If RedHat can be got for free and is a fraud, then just what is SCO which costs $thousands and sucks.
SCO is and always has been the worst UNIX on the market. Being UNIX it wasn't too bad (not stinking like NT), but pretty buggy nevertheless. NOTHING ported particularly easy to SCO.
Red Hat charges an INCREDIBLY fair price for what they provide. For one, their CD distribution DOES include some non-free commercial software (I'm thinking, specifically, Metro-X and BRU. The latter of which, at least, is quite useful.) That plus the excellent manual plus the install media alone is worth more than $50. And that's all before you even start talking about the added value of a user-oriented linux distribution.
Are things that bad at SCO? If I worked there I would be looking for work or something. When you have to call the CEO of another company a fraud, business can't be going well.
Hey, why don't we all let SCO know what we think of their whining?
http://www.sco.com/feedback/index.html
"..less resources on reinventing the wheel and now has suddenly surpassed Red Hat and maybe even Windows in one fell swoop. "
Erm.. surpass Windows? Hellooooooo?! Anyone home? Can you count? The distribution of Caldera Linux would not come close to the volume of Windows...this is a silly thing to say.
I can't understand why everyone is baggin' RedHat! RedHat is one of the major reasons you have the support of people like Compaq, HP, Intel etc.. and they put in a lot of effort to produce an excellent distribution. You people that live by Linux are bagging RedHat for putting in heaps of extra effort and trying to make a little money out of it. I'm starting to get the impression that the average Linux advocate wants everything for free....
i've done that before! :) take up too much screen realestate though. (unless you overlap them). it was pointless and a waste of RAM. BTW, StarOffice contains a "K-menu" as part of its start button.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
> What can RedHat add?
Coca-Cola == RedHat
RC Cola == Cheapbytes RedHat distribution
In the end, cola is cola -- why do the vast
majority of people walk past the RC Cola and
buy the more expensive Coke? Brands are powerful
things. RedHat is setting themselves up to be
the 21st century Apple -- building a brand that
means high-tech rebellion, just like Apple did.
...because it seems obvious to me that no-one sells *linux*, they sell the value added stuff they produce, like easy installation, manuals, support, etc.
The raw materials, the kernel, GNU, and GPL apps are "free" but it's a non-trivial thing to put them all together and produce a working computer. I don't have the time (or prob. the ability) to do this so I can choose to pay RedHat, SuSe, Debian, Caldera, etc, for their particular packing of everyting into a neat bundle.
In fact since I can download the distros via ftp or purchase them at 2UKP per cd, i.e. get them for free or next to free, this is a particularly strange kind of fraud.
Come on everybody spell it with me...F...U...D (only this time the F is for Fraud)
grek
It's got nothing to do with decent support outside the US. I couldn't get decent support _in_ the US. BTW, SCO laying the FUD on Linux is nothing new. Three years ago, at a business briefing, some SCO marketroid spent a half hour FUDing all other server OSs. Right after NT, he went to Linux: "Linux? _Linux?_ _Linux_ is for people who want to get their tech support from _Finland_!". My response on the reply card: "Linux is for people who want to get their tech support". My outfit had reported bugs to them, including a full-blown PANIC. We got nowhere.
--The basis of all love is respect
Redhat is not selling linux itself, they are selling the convenience of a prepackaged distribution on CD, which if I understand the GPL you can then legally make copies of. This guy is just upset because linux is eating into his market share. Anger and resentment are behind his statements, not objective consideration.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Caldera is cheaper than Red Hat? Last time I checked Red Hat distros were still open source and freely downloadable of the 'net (as well as other sources). Can't go below zero, eh :)
Caldera also doesn't seem to have the same commitment to free software as Red Hat does. I fear that if Caldera gains power in Linux land they could become a SCO with lots of expensive add-ons. Their NetWare is but a taste. I also remember when they multi-hundred dollar versions of OpenLinux (the "Lite" (sick) was the free one).
Someone want to tell me, why IDE should be an issue for a server OS? How many servers out there do you know that are IDE based? So this point is not worth mentioning.
---- "It is never too late to give up our prejudices." --Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
Point taken and I would tend to agree with you. But, you are basing your opinion on a product that isn't even sold anymore. The ones that are in competition with Linux are OpenServer 5 and even more so UnixWare 7. Support for IDE is there in both. I'm not so sure if I agree with your comment that SCO's hardware support is lousy. They support the hardware that is found in servers. Not the hardware that is found in many desktop type systems.
---- "It is never too late to give up our prejudices." --Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
Everyone has to keep it straight what product they are talking about. UnixWare 7 as of release 7.0.1 does not have any XENIX/Microsoft code in it. It is pure System V.
---- "It is never too late to give up our prejudices." --Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
The thing is don't you have to do that with every other OS except Linux. This isn't just a SCO issue.
---- "It is never too late to give up our prejudices." --Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
>there is nothing propietary, nothing secret, in Redhat Linux distribution
Yes, isn't it wonderful!
What you seem to be pursuing is the answer to this question: How can Redhat differentiate themselves from other distribution vendors in a significant way within the context of a sensical, effective business model?
The answer is obvious as Redhat has already done it. They differentiate by adding value to Linux and aiming their marketing at the Linux newbie. Linux newbies aren't going to know about $2 CDs generally and are going to want the manual that comes with the CD -- a good deal for $50 (especially since it provides some initial handholding which is often a good thing for newbies.)
Once the newbie gets past the newbie stage and graduates to a more involved distribution, he's already shown his system to his friends and talked up Linux to just about anyone who'll listen and has helped generate a new batch of newbies, some of whom will buy Redhat Linux for $50.
To augment newbie creation via word of mouth from happy ex-newbies, Redhat funds certain development tracks (Enlightenment, Gnome, etc.) which, in addition to providing great new software, generates huge amounts of goodwill within the general community where the denizens are happy to direct newbies to Redhat Linux as a good place to start. To further augment newbie creation, Redhat advertises in those few magazines which the Linux curious are most likely to buy, as well as advertises on certain websites the Linux curious might hit when looking for information on which to base a purchasing decision.
Redhat has shown nothing but excellence with their marketing/positioning (*bow* Bob Young) and have maintained an exceptionally high ethical standard of behavior with the Linux community. Even if I don't use their product (I'm a content Slackware junkie) I do very much admire Redhat and feel they have made great contributions to the advancement of Linux overall. Redhat has proven themselves generous yet judicious in spreading the wealth around the community where it helps foster growth in the direction Linux most needs to grow -- the
general-purpose computer user (coming soon to a computer near you!)
My compliments, kudos and gratitude to the Redhat Linux folks.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I was at a SCO presentation before Xmas last. They used a time limited version of Win NT to display powerpoint slides, and the license ran out have way through. Needless to say we weren't very impressed.
I can't also remember that there tools were pretty bad implementations of there GNU's equivalent, perhaps its time for them to rethink thinks before they go the same way as the Dinosaurs.
After all the tree that doesn'y sway with the wind is broken by it. I wonder it the CEO listens to his developers much
Regards Redemption
All we got to do is keep our poker faces on. Might help to give BSD er's some of the limelight we have. And then just let the clowns shoot themselves in the foot.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
He's right, more like a religion and certainly nothing new. Article at:
/ 990426A08E
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all
SCO just put the gun to their head and pulled the trigger. Other Unix vendors like Sun, Digital, IBM and HP have been smart enough to ride the train (to varying extents); this SCO CEO seems to think he can stand on the tracks and derail it. Not a wise move.
In my experience, SCO should worry about getting a decent product out the door rather than spouting about RH ripping off the Linux community. I guess he never noticed that they are funding quite a bit of defelopment and all their code is GLP'ed.
... in my experience Linux was more stable and complete back in those days; I would assume that by now SCO executives would get a heart attack if they actually spent some time behind a poroperly configured Linux box
A few years ago (around Linux kernel time 1.0) I had the 'pleasure' to adimister a 486PC running SCO UNIX. It felt like a car at the demolition derby: somehow it kept going while bits and pieces seemed to be falling off left and right
"SCO also gives away copies of SCO Unix for non-commercial use" Rofl. Sorry folks i have been lurking for quite a while. That line had me going. I work as a Systems Administrator for small company. We use SCO OpenServer software. I came into this job with some linux background but there are some differences.
But my point being, their "free sco" they dont tell you you have to buy a "press kit" version, and durring the install you have to register it with sco in order for it to work. This press kit runs $49.95
After these few months comparing SCO to Redhat, I can easly see why he said this. I would be quakeing in my boots too.
After showing my boss the CEO the news and showing him actual truth, it looks like Sco just lost $3,000 in business to a little penguin with a red hat.
Cormac McFionn
Just another Techno-geek lost in cyberspace.
Why didn't anyone make a boot/root disk and wipe out the passwd in the /etc/shadow file?
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
I really wonder who the fraud is in this. Last time I looked into the "Open SCO" that's available "free" you could get the license free but you had to buy the install CD. Course they said if you could get your hands on a copy then you didn't have to worry about getting CD.
They don't even give you the option to download their Unix distribution if you have obtained a license.
Sorry, but I think that Red Hat is far from being a fraud. They give you the option to download their disto, or you can go and purchase the ease of use of a CD (or you can get a friend to burn you a copy) were's the fraud?
...now, I give it 2 at most. Others have covered the reasons (pricing, crappy code, bad support) very well. Even if they tried to totally re-write their stuff, you just can't beat the Linux pricing model.
What they are working on is a support structure. That is what they are doing with the investment money pouring in. Corporations want 24-7 phone help desks. THAT is the value they are adding and it is where they will make their bucks.
I think Mr. Michels is a wee jealous of Red Hat's success givent hat Linux has successfully whipped his product's butt. More significantly, he is attributing the shortcomings of his own company, and products' to the success of another competing company. Can anybody say....loser ?
How many of those 100-200,000 are actually in use?
I suspect most people install it, find that
it's uninteresting, and never touch it again.
That's what I did, anyway.
Such as all BSD-licensed code.
You have an IDE hard drive?! Maybe someday you
will get SCSI. Real men use SCSI. Real OS's run
on SCSI. DOS and IDE, both 3 letter words.
Get SCSI.
These industries are likely to change in time too; SCO in particular seems to have a limited lifetime left - everyone else (in the Unix market) can reposition. SCO has to rely on third party applications remaining unavailable for Linux. Not a very comfortable position to be in...