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Unix Operating Systems Software

Ask SCO Presidents About Linux Adoption 83

Posted by Roblimo from the if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them dept.
For years, SCO has been prominent among the "I'd rather fight than switch to Linux or Open Source!" crowd.. Now they've done a radical about-face and are moving into both Linux and Open Source big-time. Mike Orr is president of SCO's Tarantella division. David McCrabb is president of the server division. Between them, they ought to be able to answer almost any question about SCO + Linux and/or Open Source that you post below between now and noon tomorrow U.S. EDT (assuming your question gets selected as one of the "top 10 -15" we send to them, that is). Their answers will appear next week.
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Ask SCO Presidents About Linux Adoption More

Ask SCO Presidents About Linux Adoption

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  • I'd like to see this question answered. I'm writing a reply since I'm not moderating!

    -Paul Komarek
  • I think the above question is very interesting. In particular, what questions does SCO want answered when determining their business direction? What answers did they receive that made Linux attractive?

    I'm curious because I'm unsure how to interpret Gartner Group (for example) research I read on /., The Register, CNET, etc.. Too often, this 'research' is made public by the company which paid for the research. We can all imagine the conflicts of interest here, especially after reading some of the Gartner Group's fine print at the bottom of the page. But if a (sensible) company is determining its future direction, they (hopefully) want the most brutally honest research they can get.

    -Paul Komarek
  • Well, "exponential" in a localized sense. Or perhaps "nonlinear" in the more general.

    You're quite right that there must be bounds on the system - number of available programmers, the scaleability of the development process, and the maximum value of "quality" for the program. (Can "cat" get any better?) - and others.

    But once a certain threshold is passed, an Open Source project's "quality curve" is very much steeper over the same period of time as an equivelant Closed Source one. As long as the Closed Source version maintains a higher raw value of "quality" (say, Photoshop vs Gimp) then the Closed Source software has an advantage. And for very complex and involved programs (again, Photoshop vs Gimp, perhaps Mozilla vs IE) then that advantage may be maintained for quite a while.

    But once the Open Source project hits the "hockey stick" portion of its quality curve - look out!

    So far, the number of Open Source projects that can be described as "sufficiantly mature" are fairly small and live mostly in infrastructure space - Linux, Apache, Perl, sendmail, bind etc. - but the user space applications are coming, and coming fast.

  • Presumably at some point SCO will be selling their own Linux distribution, adding value by bundling some or all of their existing commercial products on top of a Linux rather than Unix core distribution.

    If that's the case, you are faced with either building a new distribution from scratch, or choosing an existing one on which to base your work:

    • If you've chosen to to adopt an existing distribution, which one and why?
    • If you're planning to build your own, what lead you towards that decision?

    Of course, you could just take to selling you're products onto some or all of the existing distributions. If that's the case, would you expect to cover all the distributions, or would you be tempted into an exclusive deal with one vendor, or perhaps one vendor per region?

    Cheers, Phil.

  • After working with a company that specialized in SCO and Linux installations, I've found there are a lot of areas where it would be nice to have better interoperability.


    We were told a few years ago Unixware was the way of the future and the OpenServer lines would be completely phased out. In reality Unixware really only comes into play on the high-end. There's too much overhead with Unixware to justify using it for small server tasks that SCO is typically used for. Will we continue to see Openserver on the low-end? If it continues to be around, will we see integration with Linux like support in each for the other's filesystems? Will we see other products like VisionFS or Taratella ported to Linux? (Not that I'd use VisionFS, Samba is much better). What about the SCO Skunkware stuff? In the past a SCO server was virtually unusable without all of the unsupported GNU utilities, will they continue to be left out of the installation process and unsupported? Even necessary items like gzip?


    And what about desktops.. I heard a laughable claim a few years ago about OpenServer products wanting to take over the desktop. Will you replace the horrid window manager with something like GNOME or KDE? Will you contribute any drivers to OSS projects like XFree86 or even the Linux kernel?

  • It's funny that the article talks about the new tarantella division. The tarantella software was released in 1997. A new spin on an interesting, but slow product does not really constitute new, does it?

    As a former SCO developer, I can assert: SCO is dead. Deal with it. Why is SCO dead? Because Linux is better, faster, cheaper on Intel hardware. SCO only works on Intel hardware...You do the math.

    The only shred of stockholder value that SCO could provide is to either 1) produce a Linux distribution or 2) become a Linux support and services company (c.f. SGI).

    --

  • "Currently there are over forty distributions of Linux... and as a result there is no single standard. Potentially, this means that software written for one system will not work on another."

    Statements like these damaged SCO's credibility among the community that it now appears to be trying to embrace.


    But that last statement is true! There is plenty of software that will run on one Linux system but not another. Why do you think there are separate java binaries for glibc and libc5 systems?

    Just because a statement is not pro-linux doesn't mean it's FUD. I wish people would start acknowledging some of the more serious problems with Linux instead of crying "FUD" all the time. The first step to fixing the problems is acknowledging that they exist.

  • Since I never post anonymously, I'll just ask... why is this funny? :)


    *ready to take criticism with a grain of salt*

    ++Om
  • While I am one of the three programmers in Santa Cruz county that has never worked at SCO, I have had many friends (and housemates) over the years
    who have worked there. The culture and focus at
    SCO has changed a lot over the years.

    The last time that I interviewed there, the focus had changed dramatically from a cutting edge OS company (Xenix: unix on a 286) to an enterprise support oriented organization that seemed to focus most of their energy on making sure that other people's software ran on their platform. At the time (five years ago) it seemed like the obvious
    path would be to sell the same services for Linux,
    where SCO would not have to maintain the whole OS,
    and could concentrate on "bulletproofing" Linux
    instead.

    Can we look forward to a SCO distribution of
    Linux, where a premium is charged for premium support and an assurance of interoperability with
    "SCO OK" applications?

    As someone that would love to work on Linux without having to commute "over the hill",
    are there any plans to replace the corporate hot tub?
  • Well, if you look on the other side, there are a few softwares that will run fine on SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 and not on version 5.0.2 or below. So, what's the point, exactly ? On my SCO systems, i have seen ELF and Coff executables. That's the same problem.
    --

  • Are you planning to offer Linux or *BSD or related works as parts of your solutions? If, then what kind of system architechture will you use to avoid collisions with GPL with your own drivers?

    Good luck! I assume it's going to be a rough ride from your old business model to a new one including free software.
  • Hi David,

    If I remember correctly, Tarantella is very similar to a GPL'd program released by ORL called VNC (http://www.orl.com/vnc). I would be interested to hear what makes Tarantella better in your opinion, that makes it worth buying rather than using the free alternative.

    Thanks

    Rich.
  • ok, the one question that has been burning in my mind ever since the ny lwe in feb. is....what posessed whomever makes these decisions to have that god-awful band playing at the tarantella booth?


    -dk
  • SCO has placed cscope on sourceforge [sourceforge.net] with a BSD type license,

    Thanks!

  • Molog is right. This translation needed to be posted. I would have bablefished it if Molog hadn't done it for me. I suspect many others would have done the same, had Molog not spared us the trouble. Anyone moderating this forum properly would have had to bablefish it. This particular circumstance demanded it. The moderation point would have been much better spent elsewhere, or on the preliminary post sending it to -1 hell.
  • It's understandable why SCO went in fighting...
    SCO is positioned as a Unix vender... Linux threatons this market.. plain and simple..

    Sun however is positioned as a hardware vender. Linux or Unix dosn't matter Sun is in a good position.

    Sun however recently desided that they live or die with Unix...
    SCO seems to believe Unix is lost and it's time to align with Linux...

    SCO may not be sereous about Linux... and SCO may be remaking themselfs from ground up.. It's hard to tell
    If SCO is sereous.. I'd like this to be a wakeup call for Sun...
  • There is plenty of software that will run on one Linux system but not another. Why do you think there are separate java binaries for glibc and libc5 systems?

    I don't know about your system, but my RedHat 6.1 machine has something called "compat-libs" which seem to be libc5 stuff. So my machine will run old AND new stuff. Of course, an old machine won't run new stuff, but that's no more "fragmented" than any other OS. It's just the nature of progress.
    --
  • It's called "LessTif" [lesstif.org].

    My company has a Motif product. When I ported to Linux, I used LessTif. Using LessTif nearly everything compiled out of the box and most things ran correctly. After getting the non-Motif-related bugs out of the way, I only ended up with about 4 bugs that I can blame on LessTif itself. I definitely recommend using LessTif if you need to use Motif on Linux.
    --

  • IMHO, saying (or implying) that the existence of many different Linux distributions is going to inevitably lead to fragmentation is FUD. And (again IMHO), this is what SCO's statement did --- or, at least, I think that this is how that statement would be read, and was meant to be read, by a vast majority of the intended audience.

    Just because a statement is not pro-linux doesn't mean it's FUD. I wish people would start acknowledging some of the more serious problems with Linux instead of crying "FUD" all the time.

    I agree. However, I don't think that this comes anywhere close to being an example of such behavior. The fact that some producers of non-free binary-only apps choose to distribute backwards-compatible versions for the convenience of their users is, at worst, a minor inconvenience for the producers of non-free binary-only apps. It certainly doesn't imply anything about the unity or disunity of the platform.

  • How do you explain SCO's change of attitude toward Linux and Open Source in comparison to the SCO president referring to Linux users/programmers as "Punk Kids" [slashdot.org]?
  • There are lots of accounting applications for Linux,

    see www.linuxapps.com for some
    (under office/systems?)

    -and there are many more not on the list.

  • Just a quick thought. Hmm, exponential curves in a finite medium. How does that work? Doesn't that assume that there are an infinite amount of programmers out there?

    Having done my fair share of system analysis during my Cybernetics degree, I know that this is the sort of assumption that has royally messed up our enviroment. Theoretical systems have exponential curves, real one are more complex.

    Mind you I am probably wanting to argue with RSM on this one.
  • Microsoft sold off all their shares the beginning of this year if I remember correctly. SCO has not had a Microsoft representative on the board since 1/99.
  • I have asked other companies (generally via an email comment) in the past if they plan to do anything using Linux, and invariably the reply I tend to get (if I get one), is the equivalent of "No, we do not plan to pursue that".

    When I get that reply, I tend to chuckle, and think to myself "oh, yes you will", and much to my suprise (gasp!), several months later the very same company announces a product, or does something productive for the Linux crowd.

    Now, I understand that some of these denials I was given may have been a way to just divert me, so I wouldn't be able to divulge details to competition. However, some companies are so dead-set against Linux in their replies, that I wonder what they don't see that I do?

    Why is it that I can see the tide turning, and they can't? Why do they come late into the game (sometimes after what they offer isn't even needed anymore)?

    Or am I seeing something that isn't really there?
  • Are you simply trying to reach a new audience by this change, or are you retargeting your entire operations to focus on this new audience? Was this the result of "Everyone else is doing it", or do you honestly believe that this isn't just a fad, that it will be the new paradigm?

    -Adam
  • I would like to know were SCO is going with Linux?

    Specifically, it what ways will SCO be contributing to the Linux community?

    How does SCO plan on making money with Linux?

    SCO has been a longtime business partner with Microsoft (Didn't SCO & Microsoft develope Xenix?). Do you expect retaliation from Microsoft?
  • The FreeBSD people have always been much friendlier to SCO than the Linux camp. I know for a fact that some at SCO have pressed for closer ties with the various BSD groups. In particular, the BSD licensing is much easier for corporate types to swallow. So why didn't that ever go anywhere?
  • > Linux does have Linuxconf, but it lacks many
    > features present in commercial unicies like the
    > ability to see the shell command that relates to
    > the current visual configuration command

    In Linuxconf: click activate changes, then click see what's being done. This will give you a list of every command about to be executed to activate your change.

    But otherwise a good point. ARCServe is in beta [and not too bad either], and hopefully Veritas will follow.
  • SCO's previous business hinged on sales of software licenses. The move to Linux means that licensing stops being a revenue-generator; the corporation has to support itself on something else.

    What is that something? Will SCO try to reduce its costs for kernel and basic utilities and license value-added software for profit? Will SCO shift to putting its kernel and other technology into Linux and then sell its expertise on it as premium tech support? How much value do you expect to get out of the SCO brand?
    --

  • Hate to respond to my own post (yet another sign of schizoprenia, I think), but it's probably spelled Monterey. [slaps forehead]
  • Sun Microsystems recently started allowing the use of Solaris 8 for free for all uses - including commercial use.

    Also the source code to Solaris 8 will be made available within the next month.

    Up until now SCO has always been able to dismiss the concept of free OS's. The argument has been that SCO UNIXWare is better than free OS's like Linux, so customers will want to pay for the commercial reliability of an OS like UNIXWare.

    But now, if computer users "graduate" from Linux and start to look for a commercial server-class operating system backed by an established company, you have to believe that a lot (if not most all) of those people will choose Sun's Solaris - not UNIXWare.

    So my question is how will SCO respond to Sun?

  • It appears SCO is following a trend. That is, "Give Open Source some free code and then embrace Linux.". You appear to be the last one with out a chair now that the music has stopped. For example; Sun is giving Solaris 8 (with Oracle) away for almost nothing (75 $US) and has a Linux group, Corel has a Debian distro and is heading for the desktop, and there is Red Hat and VA Linux and IBM. As a last example there is the FreeBSD & BSDI Walnut Creek merger. Is SCO accepting Linux just to survive and then SCO will move on with a cold shoulder after getting "Free Code" for nothing (see Caldera's CEO)?

    I Thank You -d

  • First off, interesting post.

    Secondly, I would like to add a few more questions to this line: How might a closed company like SCO establish/maintain a market advantage over an equally well-developed open project without attacking the open nature of the competition? In other words, how will SCO compete with an equally well-developed Linux (when there is one) without pointing out weaknesses in the open model?

    For instance, Microsoft seems to have battled Linux by attacking it's open nature. SUN, however, embraces open development, and seems to be succeeding against Linux in the server market by virtue of the assertion (whether or not it is correct) that SUN is more well suited for high-impact enterprise situations, and that Linux cannot handle the load that Solaris can. What is SCO's angle? Do you think that the advantages can be maintained in the face of an army of programmers? If so, how?

    At any rate, I wish you luck, and I anticipate your further excellent contributions to computing.

  • While many people had specific questions about various SCO projects and products, I've got a much more generic question.

    Where is SCO heading in the future with the Open Source community and with Linux? Is this the begining of a new SCO, married to the Open Source concept?

  • "The mythical man-month". You cannot speed up development simply by putting more programmers on the job. It's been tried, it doesn't work.
    Yes I too have read "The Mythical man Month". Good book isn't it? However that was not the conclusion I took away from that book. I believe the point was that in a traditional programming situation (tight deadlines, marketing driven) putting more programmers into an (already late) software project will make it later rather than accelerating things. However he also noted that it was possible in some circumstances to add programmers to a project and to have the negative effect of more programmers (increased communication costs, removing programmers from the job to teach the new ones) be outweighed by the positives. These were under circumstances where the project could be divided up into largely independant tasks without too much communication required, and where possible you should try to add new people as early as possible so as to give them as much time as possible to get up to speed.

    Now in the case of your typical Open SOurce project dealines are more or less non-existant because the focus is on getting the thing right rather than releasing as soon as we can (who cares if it takes another month or two? You gonna pay me to release earlier? No? Well then you can wait). Therefore adding more people to an open source project can be done at more or less any time with few negative effects (since the "deadline" is more or less any infinite time away). I suggest you have a look at Eric Raymonds essay The Cathedral and The Bazaar [tuxedo.org] for a much more detailed, in-depth explanation of why the Open Source model allows us to do stuff that other software models do not.

  • that's some funny stuff. good assstuffing stuff.
  • that may be the case but it certainly wasn't what the original poster was intending to say, so my criticism still stands.
  • How could Linux be a unix killer? Linux is a type of unix. Maybe Linux could be a killer of other unix flavors, but it would be impossible for it to be a unix killer without killing itself.
  • At first you fought the open source movement, and made some questionable statements against the speed and reliability of Linux. Now, you are openly embracing Linux and the OSS movement. While many in the industry are applauding your 'about face', some of us believe that you are 'keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer'. What can you say or do that would counter this belief?
  • SCO has many corporate clients such as Auto Zone and Glidden Paint, several legacy applications such as Fox+ (installed in fleet management, print & tool shops, medical offices) and even, to this day, Xenix applications. Many of these applications are older, and no longer maintained. Several Fox+ applications are dead as far as development and bug fixes go, but are essential for those businesses still running them.

    Does SCO plan to open source any of these older applications? Some of these older applications are just not economically viable to port to new platforms, and moving the valuable history is prohibitive.

  • I don't mean to be rude, but after explaining I'm sure you'll understand. I've worked with SCO (various versions of Openserver and 3.x) in hundreds of retail chains from 2 store outlets, to 1500 store enterprises. A few years ago when I pointed out that Linux was more reliable/stable/busisness ready than SCO I was mocked, harassed, ignored, laughed at, fought with, and basically treated like shit from SCO people and people they had frankly decieved in the busisness community. So at this point I wander what took you so long, why should I deal with you after all that, and if I couldn't have a public apology for an outrageous and condensending atitude I've endured for a good few years because of SCO's inability to deal with Linux and Open Source and honest measurable facts.
  • Forgive me, but Tarantella does not excite me.

    What DOES excite me is Monterey...but I am an AIX bigot.

    With the strategic partnership hubbub between SCO and IBM building an IA-64 Unix, there has been little said about the actual capabilities of the OS. It is worth noting to those unfamiliar with AIX that it is the most feature-ridden Unix I've ever adminned. (And I've run most all of them) It would be fantastic to see the MANY features in AIX in Monterey.

    So...

    What are views on Monterey from SCO, insofar as what the end-user can expect? (practical answers, not the usual marketing crap) Does SCO/IBM plan on open-sourcing any of the OS? Where does Linux fit in the grand scheme vs. Monterey and other SCO developed Unix solutions?

    sedawkgrep
  • Taking the following four statements as widely accepted:

    SCO's main strength is in Middleware and Apps
    SCO's main weakness is hardware support;
    Linux's main strength is in its Kernel and Drivers;
    Linux's main weakness is application support

    Does SCO plan to:
    - use Linux as a source of better drivers to use with OpenServer,
    or:
    - take Linux and improve its interoperability with 3rd party applications eg, Oracle, Informix?

    The former would be a common commercial response to GPL'd code; the latter would be a positive contribution to both the OSS and commercial communities.

  • You know what at the time of these statements i would probably have to agree with SCO.
  • Actually, some of the changes in linuxconf are activated immediately (e.g. adding users) without letting you click on "see what's being done".
    The way I think is the best is AIX's smit configurator. At any screen, you press F6 to see a list of the shell commands that relate to what you are configurating ("#useradd jond -g 500...").
  • If SCO is serious about Open Source, where does that leave older Unix code? I have the Lions Book, as many out there do. It makes no sense to me that if I could find a suitable compiler (which I can, at Dennis Ritchie's home page) that I have to pay $100 to get an Ancient Source Code license. Will the old stuff be made freely available? (What about current stuff, for that matter? How would an open-source SVR5/Unixware/whatever fit into SCO's business model?) /Brian
  • My fear is that this sounds like yet another troll, but it isn't.

    What was the last book you read?

    Regards
  • In the past couple years, linux has become a buzz word, and although it hasn't yet replaced real unix (yet), companies like IBM, SGI, Compaq, and now SCO have embraced it at least to a degree. Is linux a superior unix, or are companies just jumping on the hype bandwagon?
  • Why did it take so long for SCO to about face? Or do you think think that this is an about face? In light of all of Linux (and Open Source) successes, I find it amazing that there are even companies (like SCO) that took so long to appreciate, Linux has done what Unix was unable to do and pretty much in the same spirit. I just hope Linux doesn't go the way of Unix in the fragmentation sense.
  • Why did it take so long for SCO to about face? Or do you think think that this is an about face? In light of all of Linux (and Open Source) successes, I find it amazing that there are even companies (like SCO) that took so long to appreciate, Linux has done what Unix was unable to do and pretty much in the same spirit. I just hope Linux doesn't go the way of Unix in the fragmentation sense.
  • SCO, are you well endowed? (someone had to make a reference to the whole Jeeves thing)
  • I know this was a troll, but the question needs to be answered - because there's a wealth of commercial software built for SVR4 Unix that employs Motif. If companies hope to ween themselves off of SVR4, they need a good Motif for Linux, and if they hope to open up some of their user-space tools, they need to open up Motif for it to be useful.

    ---------------------------------
  • Oce in their Prisma system originally went with SCO so they could deploy postscript rips cheaply. From what I understand SCO co-developed this rip. Is there any intention of releasing the source code to present an example of a production quality postscript rip to the open source community (something that as far as I know doesn't exist in open source).

  • What is Doug's opinion of Linux?

    - John

  • Have you discussed with IBM the possibility of including Linux components in your joint Monteray UNIX venture, or making Monteray essentially a SCO-IBM Linux distribution?

    Since IBM has recently open-sourced their own JFS file system, is there any hope of a completely open-sourced Monteray, or open-sourced components of AIX?

    SCO had also agreed to work with HP on a combined x86-PARISC UNIX for Merced(Itanium). Is there any life left in a SCO-HP association from a Linux perspective?

    If SGI follows through on open sourcing their journaled XFS file system, is there a possibility that SCO would include it in their commercial products (OpenServer, UNIXWare)?

    Also, SCO has said some pretty disparaging things about Linux in the past. Who is responsible for this sea-change within SCO, and why?

  • Can we expect to see SCO officially supporting SCO apps packaged for Linux?

    Since ix86 Linux has iBCS2, which runs SCO binaries, could we expect to see specifically SCO Merge packaged for Linux? I'd love to see a free (at least as in beer) alternative to VMWare, and FreeMWare (or whatever they're calling it this week) isn't anywhere close. SCO Merge looks cool, but SCO puts stuff in some *weird* directories, and I wasn't about to unpack that package in / on my Linux distro. (it took me long enough to figure out what they *did* to cpio to make the archive in the first place! :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • For years, SCO has been giving reasons why one should not buy/use Linux. Why should we buy a distribution/ Linux products from a company that is apparently carpetbagging into an area that has been faithfully supported by RedHat Debian etc ? Indeed, should we trust in Linux support from a company that has not exactly had kind words to say about Linux in the past ?

    P.S.This is meant to be a serious question, not Flamebait, however it may appear. If this appears a little too inflammatory, can someone phrase this more diplomatically ?
  • Besides the two very different development models, what do you see as the primary differences between UnixWare and Linux on a technical level? What do you see as the greatest assets and weaknesses of each?
  • I believe that many people are interested in other solutions, such as Apache (in particular)

    If I was to answer this question, I would say "Hmm, poster, do you know shit from shinola? Are you aware that a great many Linux orientated products run under NT. Apache for instance, Perl too."

    Too many corporate people have assumed using MS means sticking ones head up the ass.

    I believe the issue is that one cannot transparently change solutions from MS to anyone else. There are propietary features of the MS software, often documented and distributed to a select few large and well paying companies, that improve the quality of software that relies on these features.

    The issue is not that Apache runs under NT, that is well known. What is not known is how one transports multimillion line ASP applications that rely on IIS/4 and NT 4 and IE 4 and SQL 7 to Apache and/or Linux and/or Mozilla and/or MySQL (or Postgres). One cannot selectively port application components, but must rather redesign the application and application framework from scratch, at best having a "prototype" to go by from the existing application.

    Now, I suggest you reevaluate your criteria for "shit from shinola" knowledge, as you are not providing anything useful to this discussion or this community or this world with comments like that. It is not as much that their head is up their ass so much as their priorities are not in evaluating non-sensible solutions. It just doesn't make sense to switch to "alternative" solutions if the framework for transparent solutions are not there, and I would very much like to know if SCO has any intention of providing such a framework.

  • Microsoft is notorious for locking people into a platform and tying in products that further lock them in. For example, Windows NT and IIS and SQL Server 7.0 and Internet Explorer. These things work great together, and intermingle with non-Microsoft products quite poorly. Thus, for many big businesses, it is often considered wise to travel down that path, the Microsoft Solution, with exclusively MS software, after initial investments of software, licensing, and training have been made.

    I believe that many people are interested in other solutions, such as Apache (in particular) and Linux (in particular) and open source (in general), but because of precedent choices they are tied into MS products. What take does SCO have on the viability of providing "alternatives" to these tie-ins as a market for your products? What market does SCO plan to target; which do you think is most important, from SCO's business perspective and intentions: an upgrade path for legacy software (ie. MS), or new products to be marketed separately?

  • How does the embrace of Linux at SCO affect project Monterrey? Can we expect to see Project Monterrey components merged with Linux?

  • It has been asked already, in a way or another, so I will just make it more explicit: what is SCO's current business strategy, what is their most important asset`Is it UnixWare, Tarantella, the Linux services or Monterey? How much do you expect to earn from Monterey?

  • What advantages do you see SCO having over Linux?
    What advantages do you see Linux having over SCO?
  • I recently read somewhere (Damn, I wish I could remember where) that the Open Group was considering a truly open implementation of Motif in order to attempt to preserve the dwindling Motif mind share. Apparently too many companies have large investments in Motif and don't want it to die off, which it is currently doing.

    Personally I prefer GTK to motif, both for look and feel and ease of application development (Not to mention it's free (speech, not beer.)

    I wonder if we'll be seeing GTK apps coming out of SCO anytime soon. Or Gnome/Enlightenment ports. Or is SCO prone to the common corporate Not Invented Here syndrome?

  • Troll my ass! I was just posting the babel fish translation! WTF? The trolls are right about the moderators...
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • Applications are obviously one of the must have items for any OS to succeed. Although Linux has more applications being released for it than most other Unixes, it is behind on older, established apps (In particular, our CAD and accounting software both run on SCO, but not on Linux.) In addition to your position as an application vendor, you have influence over other vendors. Do you have any plans to use that influence and (hopefully) increase the rate of ports by older school app developers?

  • Conflict of Interest (Score:3)

    by ajakk ( 29927 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @07:09AM (#1123378) Homepage
    Per your Schedule 14A [sec.gov], Microsoft owns 4,217,606 (11.9%) shares in The Santa Cruz Operation. This makes Microsoft one of the two largest shareholders in SCO.

    How has SCO handled the investment of Microsoft, while at the same time offering a competitor to Microsoft. In addition, does the investment of Microsoft cause problems when dealing with the Open Source Community. Specifically, does the Open Source Community have reservations dealing with SCO because of their connections with Microsoft.

  • Licensing and technology (Score:3)

    by genki ( 174001 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:37AM (#1123379) Homepage
    I've noticed you've started to open-source parts of your user-space tools - good for you, and you're especially comitted given that you use the BSD license. But what I'm worried about is some of the technology that's in the kernel. Does AT&T still have any say over some of the SVR4 kernel source, or do you own all of that? If AT&T owns it, could AT&T stop any potential open-sourcing of kernel-space components as being "derived works"? If you own it, could you force other SVR4 licencees to open up their kernels? Or maybe just open up yours, and "encourage" projects that emulate features found in other SVR4 unicies.

    ---------------------------------

  • Motif and Linux (Score:3)

    by genki ( 174001 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:54AM (#1123380) Homepage
    SCO (like most SVR4 vendors) pacakges Motif (with CDE) in their OSes. As a Motif licensee (and a member of the Open Group) you have the power to lobby for a free version of Motif to enable further development on Linux. This would be of innumerable benifit to the community and to application vendors who don't necessarily want to staticly link with Motif. Would you consider lobbying TOG, perhaps with other member Linux companies like SGI?

    ---------------------------------

  • Tarantella vs Citrix (Score:4)

    by Om ( 5281 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:13AM (#1123381)
    Dear Sir,

    The company I work for (S.C.I.) currently uses Citrix ICA Client, that I am told is your biggest competitor to the Tarantella line. What would you say are the strengths of Tarantella over Citrix, and what you are aiming for in the future to combat Citrix which has the majority of this particular market share? I would love to embrace SCO Tarantella, but not sure how to tell the IT Admin/board members how it is benificial to do so?

    Thank you, sir.

    ++Om

  • How much life left? (Score:4)

    by Kamelion ( 12129 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:21AM (#1123382)
    I've noticed a pattern of software companies dropping their SCO offerings while many companies start up a Linux offering. Assuming this pattern continues, how long do you think you can continue to sell a proprietary Unix?

    A related question. Will SCO someday offer their own Linux distribution?

  • Why switch (back) to SCO? (Score:4)

    by gorilla ( 36491 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @07:26AM (#1123383)
    As someone who used to run SCO, and switched to Linux to get a better supported, more featured, and not to mention cheaper product, what are SCO's plans to encourage people like me to switch to SCO?

  • SCO Skepticism... (Score:4)

    by antiher0 ( 41258 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @07:27AM (#1123384)
    Last September, /. featured an article about SCO [slashdot.org] and their view on Linux. The opinions they had about Linux were less than flattering to say the least. I have been thinking about SCO's possible motivations for this recent "change of heart", but I can only conclude that it is from a rapidly decreasing market share. Is it possible that SCO finally realized that Linux isn't for "some punk young kids" as mentioned in this article [computerworld.com]? I am skeptical of this... I'm not anti-SCO, but I was somewhat disheartened to read anyone putting Linux down in such a way. Could someone from SCO fill me in on why you've suddenly made Linux your best friend?

  • What future software projects will be opensourced? (Score:4)

    by danpbrowning ( 149453 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @07:04AM (#1123385)

    I've seen a lot of quality software come from Santa Cruz Operation, but until recently it's mostly been proprietary, closed-source software.

    Given Linux's shortcommings in system configuration and system backup software in comparison to SCO's high quality implemenatations, what possibility is there that SCO will open the source for it's configurator and backup software? Other software?

    Linux does have Linuxconf, but it lacks many features present in commercial unicies like the ability to see the shell command that relates to the current visual configuration command. And the open source backup software offerings for Linux aren't very mature. Well, that's compared to products like Veritas backup exec.

    I really was mostly wondering if SCO had software projects that it was planning to open source in the future, what they were, and when, possibly?

  • How will SCO Survive? (Score:5)

    by DG ( 989 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:21AM (#1123386) Homepage Journal

    According to the principles of Open Source software development described in The Cathedral and the Bazzar (amongst others), for each "class" of software where there exists signifigant community interest, the Open Source version of the software will at first lag behind its Closed Source counterpart (in terms of features, reliability, etc) but as time progresses, the Open Source software will eventually surpass the Closed Source software.

    Once this happens, there's no looking back - the Open Source software has far more developers and debuggers working on the project than even the richest and largest Closed Source software house could ever hope to employ.

    If one could somehow graph "quality" of a given software project, one would see that Closed Source software increases linearly, whereas Open Source increases exponentially.

    Given that the Linux "quality and features" line is either close to or already across the SCO Unix "quality and features" line, and given that SCO Unix and Linux compete in the same ecological niche, there is really very little reason to put further effort into developing/supporting SCO Unix - Linux has (or is about to) "win" and once "won", SCO Unix will never be able to make up the lost ground.

    How then does SCO plan on surviving as a corporate entity when their primary product is outclassed by an Open Source, "free beer" version of the same thing?

    (This isn't a borderline troll, I am genuinely curious how SCO intends to survive. They are perhaps the first "major" single-product company to butt heads with a mature Open Source project. How they handle the situation may predict what will happen to other such companies when their single product encounters a similarily mature Open Source version of the same thing - perhaps Adobe (Gimp) in a couple of years?)

  • What does "Linux" mean? (Score:5)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak&yahoo,com> on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:46AM (#1123387) Homepage Journal
    In the eyes of Caldera, it is a proprietary system with no proprietor, an open closed system with a bottom-up top-down design. (Escher would have been proud!) In the eyes of SGI and IBM, it seems to be a way to showcase their technology and get free bug-fixes in the deal. To Red Hat, it's a means to sell support. To VA Linux, it becomes a means to sell cheaper, faster hardware, especially in the embedded and server markets.

    What, then, is Linux to SCO?

  • customer demand? (Score:5)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:06AM (#1123388)
    Will SCO be contributing / open-sourcing any technology and/or patents that it holds as part of it's linux adoption effort? Also, did your market research pan out - is linux really being used in large businesses or is it still primarily used by small startup companies strapped for cash?

  • Price/performance? (Score:5)

    by rc-flyer ( 20492 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:55AM (#1123389)
    I have been a long-time user and reseller of SCO products. One of my big concerns is the high cost of SCO Unix for a small installation. Small in this case is a single machine in an office network environment with a few machines networked to the system.

    Considering that a good Linux installation is either free or less than $150, will the movement of SCO into the Open Source arena mean that the price of the O/S will drop? How will the new marketplace affect the price of SCO's products?

  • SCO & Linux: Past vs. Present Opinions (Score:5)

    by Jon Trowbridge ( 24980 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:32AM (#1123390) Homepage

    In the past, SCO and its representatives has made a number of statements about Linux (and free software in general) that many of us saw as FUD. In the most infamous example [www.xos.nl], these statements included:

    • "Linux at this moment can be considered more a play thing for IT students rather than a serious operating system..."
    • "The future of Linux is very uncertain... As there are such a large number of developers it is virtually impossible to predict what form Linux will take thus putting the future security of your business at risk."
    • "Currently there are over forty distributions of Linux... and as a result there is no single standard. Potentially, this means that software written for one system will not work on another."
    Statements like these damaged SCO's credibility among the community that it now appears to be trying to embrace.

    Do you/SCO still stand by these statements and opinions? If not, what changed your mind? Do you still assert that these statements were true when they were being made by SCO representatives --- or, in retrospect, do you admit that it was not accurate, but was just marketing FUD?

  • Linux as the next SCO Unix? (Score:5)

    by bbk ( 33798 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:14AM (#1123391) Homepage
    What does your future roadmap for SCO unix look like? - Are you going the SGI path and gradually phasing out your own Unix in favor of Linux, or are you pursuing a parallel development path of both OSs?

    What features currently in SCO that are not in Linux do you feel are necessary for wider corporate acceptance of Linux?

  • Software (Score:5)

    by chazR ( 41002 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:10AM (#1123392) Homepage
    One of the reasons that SCO operating systems have been so popular is that there are a lot of applications (Tetra, Informix etc) that the run on them. These are used very widely (particularly in manufacturing industry in my experience)

    As you seem to be embracing open source, will you be encouraging the suppliers of this software to port their applications to open source operating systems?
    And how will you sell the idea of open source to the traditionally conservative manufacturing sector?

  • Monteray and Linux (Score:5)

    by randombit ( 87792 ) on Wednesday April 19, 2000 @06:24AM (#1123393) Homepage
    As most people know, SCO is working with IBM and Sequent (which IIRC IBM bought a while back) to develop a new 64 bit Unix. How will these two OSes work together on your systems? Are you planning on using Linux only on low-end machines, while Monteray runs on IA-64, or while Linux be a "stopgap OS" to run on your systems until Monteray is finished?

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