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Unix Operating Systems Software

Endgame For SCO 183

Posted by Hemos from the what-will-they-do-next dept.
Gil Bates writes: "So, it looks like old SCO is finally on sale, and that provides an interesting chance to speculate again about the future of a company that had some good technologies, but couldn't respond successfully to challenges from Linux and Windows... Whoever acquires the rights to OpenServer and UnixWare needs to appreciate this fact and admit publicly that there will be no further work, besides bug fixes and sales of the existing versions, on these platforms. Instead, the focus will have to be on an immediate migration path to the next platform, almost definitely Linux. With this admission, the new vendor will certainly cannibalize short-term licensing revenue, but the longer-term benefits of acquiring a chunk of the SCO customer/reseller base will outweigh that (pretty damn small) opportunity loss. osOpinion has an extremely thought provoking editorial piece which expands upon this issue in detail."
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Endgame for SCO More

Endgame for SCO

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  • Well, by "flashy features" i meant mostly stuff like sshd, samba, apache's mod_* etc, shipped by default on any competent Linux distribution, or all the NT backorif^H^H^Hffice stuff. Ofcource you can download/pay for similar stuff on openserver, but why bother when you can have them installed by default?

    About your 1-4 your absolutely right, and points 3/4 should be well remembered in the Linux/*BSD community. Why is IIS so popular? Because of the amount of VB programmers/NT admins around.
  • SCO is (was?) the license authority for the UNIX(TM) source license. If you wanted a source license, you bought it from SCO. SCO also made the source license for 'ancient UNIX source', up to UNIX V7 and including V32 and BSD, freely available (free as in beer, not speech.. It's still a 'real' license with restrictions).

    I wonder what will happen to all this now?

  • I don't think so. If you can say that Solaris x86 supports Hot Plug PCI, Numa architecture, scales well on high end systems, then I might believe you. Plus, there is no clustering solution.
  • "almost definitely Linux"

    You've "almost definitely" never been involved in using Linux to host applications with hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously for a large company, where transactions running into millions of dollars take place every day, and you'd be "almost definitely" laughed out of the shop if you suggested it. You've also "almost definitely" never used SCO for anything. That was "definitely" one of the most stupid statements I've ever read.
  • I still love that .sig. When I used it, I kept getting weird right wing militant SPAM (Use this training kit to teach your trailer trash children the true meaning of the Constitution!) Do you find that to be the case as well?

    -jpowers
  • What about them? This was talking about IBM's 'leg up' on the other partners in Monterey. None of of those companies are part of Monterey.
  • If Novell is to have any real future, it's with NDS. I'm a long time NetWare supporter and fought hard (and won) against ditching it for NT, but it's a dying NOS. It serves our needs brilliantly for the time being, but much of that brilliance is NDS.

    Now if they could just learn to market it. The word-of-mouth marketing that built NetWare doesn't work anymore.

  • Re:The future (Score:3)

    by MikeBabcock ( 65886 ) <mtb-slashdot@mikebabcock.ca> on Thursday July 13, 2000 @07:07AM (#937462) Homepage Journal

    You do realise that several old-school database companies use proprietary data and even partition formats to store their data more efficiently? That's part of what ReiserFS is about -- bring these efficiencies to a general purpose filesystem.

    That aside, if you want an example, go visit Pick Systems [picksys.com]. Incidentally, they support Linux -- but require(1) [slashdot.org] the use of their own partitions for data storage.

    --- (1) You can also use dd /datafile type files as data storage partitions if you wish.

  • Some thoughts from the history camp ...

    From the comp.unix.xenix.sco FAQ [ugu.com]:

    Xenix is Unix -- or at least one flavor of it. In the late 70's, Microsoft licensed the Unix sources from AT&T and ported them to a number of platforms. In those days, AT&T would license the Unix software but not the Unix name, thus each company had to invent their own name. Microsoft picked Xenix. Microsoft did not sell Xenix to end users. Instead, they licensed the software to OEMs (Intel, Tandy, Altos, SCO, etc.) who provided a finished end-user package. Microsoft no longer supports Xenix, and in fact never even offered a 286 or 386 version.

    Ahem, Microsoft.

    :-)
  • What to expect from this combination is something along the lines of "TurboLinux Enterprise Edition", with SCO's proprietary technologies and licensed technologies (including CDE) making their way into a Linux distro

    And gain what???? I'm not sure why it would be worth the work. I've used CDE on Solaris X86 and I have no problems with it, but with the enormous amounts of development going on with KDE and GNOME why whould anyone bother with CDE today? If anything maybe somebody could purchase SCO and bastardize some of their proprietary tools... and of course the customer database would be valuable... but I'm not sure what anyone would gain by putting CDE into a new Linux distro...
  • I'm not at all certain that the problem for SCO is that their systems are being replaced by Linux systems (although that's possible, given that Linux offers some real advantages over UnixWare, including price). Rather, the real issue as I see it is this: most new purchases of UNIX for x86 hardware are now Linux rather than SCO: the UNIX-on-x86 market is growing rapidly and almost none of this growth is going to SCO. Thus, even though they're not losing huge chunks of their installed base, SCO's percentage market share is shrinking rapidly. The effects of this are unpleasant for SCO: application vendors increasingly choose to write for Linux rather than UnixWare.

  • The only article I can find in their press releases that's close is their announcement to split into three companies [sco.com] dealing with "e-Business servers, Tarantella and Internet professional services."

  • Actually, you gotta pay for the trademark. POSIX testing is already being funded for Linux, but once that's done, you gotta install CDE before TOG will let you call it UNIX. On that note, Red Hat Enterprise Edition could certainly be called UNIX, if Red Hat wanted to pay TOG's rediculous fees.
  • >SCO and HP own the rights to 30 years of UNIX
    >development. If SCO tanks, then HP will own the
    >sole rights to UNIX System V and it's
    >development.

    What are you smoking? HP/UX is built on top of a SVR3 codebase, though it has been extended to support a lot of the SVR4 features in order to maintain compliance to the various Unix standards (POSIX, X/Open, etc).

    SCO bought the rights to the SVR4 codebase from Novell. They own it exclusively. Whoever buys them will own it exclusively.

    In any case, I disagree with your assertion that the codebase is the future of Unix. Standards are the future of Unix, whether they are implemented on Linux, BSD, SVR3, SVR4, or SVR5.


  • I can tell you one thing - I've been in a number of labs (brain imaging) here in Boston during the summers. A few years ago, every thing was SGI, SGI, SGI. Now, everything is linuxboxes. I haven't seen an exception yet.

  • "In 1991, on a 486/66"

    Was that even possible? Sounds more like 1993. But what do I know?

  • Ok first the quick history. Micro$oft sells Xenix to SCO. As part of the contract agreement of sales Micro$oft COULD NOT produce or distribute ANY form of a Unix operating system as long as SCO was in business. (Fact). This is why when NT came out it was touted as "better than Unix". Because M$ couldn't release a Unix flavor. This is why They haven't released their own flavor of M$ LInux. Legally until SCO goes under they CAN'T.
    Now here is the thought. What if M$ bought up SCO? Basically buying back Xenix plus some. At that point they contract with SCo is null and void. They (M$) would be free to release a Unix flavor. Now just think about the ramifications of this.
    We all know that the bulk of the people that do as BG and the Redmond campus say is because they are Lemmings and/or sheep. Thus to severly damage the growing momentum of Linux they release a M$ Linux that is a total piece of cr*p. Then they could ocme out and in the press say "see how bad Linux is" "we tried to put out a version, but Linux is just not viable." Or somthing to this effect.
    How many know that M$ just dumped some money into VMWare and signed in with an OEM agreement with them [vmware.com]. This could also throw a wrench into Linux. M$ say starts distributing VMWare with Windows and touting if you want to run Linux you can do it through Windows now.
    I think you all can think of the other endless possibilities M$ could do.

  • The Novell connection (Score:4)

    by ostiguy ( 63618 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @03:27AM (#937472)
    The author has pretty good ideas for Novell participation. Novell is going to die unless they jump on Linux soon. There is no such thing as a new Novell installation, only big businesses are buying the upgrades. Netware really doesn't offer much, it is far too overpriced. Yes, it probably does file and print better than anyone else, but that hasn't been enough for at least three years now. For as much pissing and moaning I see on slashdot about MS pricing, Novell aint exactly a bargain.

    Now, some Novell evangelist is going to reply and tell me about all the wonderful apps that Novell can run. "Can run" is the operative phrase. Try finding anyone to support them. Big businesses do, but small businesses don't. One of the reasons small businesses cant run the apps that Novell is capable of is that they haven't traveled down the road of the upgrade path. One of Novell's problems is that Netware 3.xx was such a great f&p server that these small businesses never had a reason to upgrade to 4.xx or 5.xx. Netware is fundamentally graying, and I just don't see a lot of people who can support it past file and print, while on the other hand, there are tons of people learning Linux and NT.

    Novell's best bet is an cluster capable enterprise ready Linux distro that does all the brilliant NDS stuff. They ought to position it as bringing application serving functions for the low price of Linux while remaining integratable with Netware. I have seen a lot of small Novell shops bring in Linux for email or web, bnut in a standard distro (read: Red Hat), there is a lot more functionality for making the network MS friendly (samba!) than there is to make it Netware friendly. Invariable email and web becomes mission critical (supplanting file and print, thus devaluing Netware's importance), and people question why they continue to deal with Novell client software (keeping up wtih it is a full time job), when they could use the MS stuff, and talk to either samba, or NT.

    matt
  • If you'd read the article at osOpinion, you'd have realized that Gil Bates was simply providing a brief summary. Slashdot editors and people submitting stories might be quick to jump to conclusions- the most annoying example being timothy and his childish bad government/good marketplace dichotomy [slashdot.org])- but that criticism is simply unfair here.
    --
    Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
    H. Rap Brown

  • Re:Was Linux the competitor? (Score:4)

    by {Hecubus} ( 62076 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @03:31AM (#937474)
    I hate to be the one to point it out, because I like having karma, but you neglected to mention that some folks may have moved from SCO to say.... Windows NT?

    I know no one likes to hear that, and neither do I, but some companies are going for Windows-Only networks. It hurts me to see my company moving to an Outlook/Exchange server, running our Intranet on IIS and running our file servers with file and printer sharing.

    I don't want to be the devil's advocate here, but I think it's important to realize some companys are dumping SCO and *nix completely. Their loss I guess.

  • I'd say Linux/Nt are the ones killing sco. Any commercial Unix on a risc system wouldn't replace easily a i386 based system, but a cheaper/easier system that runs on the same computer...

    I wouldn't blame Linux however, the only thing that is killing SCO is their products. /etc/passwd is a symlink to /deep/deeper/in/the/1/8/even/deeper/in/hell ?

    Has there been any new flashy features added within the last few years? Has the development staganeted?

    It seems like they fell asleep, believing that they are something more professional than the free Linux/*bsd. and are just realizing, that in features, linux/*bsd have already left SCO far behind.

  • "In 1991, on a 486/66"

    Was that even possible? Sounds more like 1993. But what do I know?

    It might have been late 91, or even early 92, I forget.

    This was an expensive (~50k) peripheral, for an even more expensive printer (~250k), so if 486/66's were available, we used them.

    George
  • I was only trying to make the point that cost wasn't the primary reason why PC+DOS beat Macintosh in the market. While price may have been of some importance, at the corporate purchasing level, I don't think it was that important. Primarily, it was the huge base of DOS legacy applications (I guess not legacy at the time). All the dbase applications and Wordstar templates and Lotus 123 spreadsheets that were in use by both large and small businesses. Unless the Macintosh could provide a transition path to those applications it would never become the dominant desktop platform. Inertia is a hard force to overcome and the Macintosh was not able to do that. The Macintosh survived and in some ways flourished in markets where they didn't have to overcome that and in markets where there was no existing dominant player(s). Desktop publishing/graphic design are obvious examples. As a matter of fact, PC+Windows has the exact same problem dislodging Macintosh to this day in those markets. I know graphics designers who just will not use anything except a Macintosh. Kind of ironic.

    The point, I guess, is that Linux has the same problem and will continue to have the same problem dislodging the established players in the de facto applications space that the Macintosh had. And I don't think they will be able to overcome that at the desktop level for the same reasons. Because at the desktop, it's applications that matter and not operating systems. Users don't give a damn about OS's. So until Linux has a killer app that everyone wants to use it will languish in the desktop market. Me too, compatible products will not cut it even at zero cost. And I am not convinced that the Linux applications market will be zero cost even if the OS itself is free.

    While free OS's and software may be important buying factors for individual users, the cost of the software and upgrades at the business purchasing decision level is essentially just noise. There have been hundreds if not thousands of Total Cost of Ownership studies that back this up. Support and technical personnel costs are the largest costs involved with the use of any piece of software. So I don't think Linux+Applications is going to get into too many shops on the free software argument.

    So I do think if Linux is going to make the big time in markets other than server markets it will have to be in alternative devices or with some killer new desktop app. After reading your reply I guess we sort of agree on that. Although with the caveat that I don't really buy the free argument makes all that much of a difference. Besides, you discount the possibility that Microsoft could essentially start giving away WinCE, which would negate that Linux advantage altogether. There is certainly some precendent for that :) I wouldn't be surprised either. They are not going to give up the device market without a huge fight.

    Finally, I am not sure about your historical statement about MS Word. I am fairly sure that there was a DOS based version of Word long before there was a Macintosh GUI version. It certainly wasn't the market leader though at the time. Wordstar and then WordPerfect were the champs then. But I might have still been using drugs at the time :)
  • They have probably all sorts of patents which if opened to the community would help OSS projects a lot.

  • (dunno if you're still reading this thread, but...)

    What do you mean they don't handle the load well? Are the kernels setup to detect the second proc?

    I mean, when the load hits the roof, and memory usage tops out, Linux pukes. Before that, things are hunky-dory, but if too many people start running their statistical programs on full brain volumes (by volume I mean 4d volumes), then the system sometimes crashes. On the Octane, things get veeeerrrry slllooooowww, and then someone finishes and things go back to normal. Of course, it takes some work to hit that level on our dual PIII/600, 256M RAM, 512M swap Linux system (especially compared to the Octane when it was a single R10k/128M), but when it hits the roof...

    I'm not knocking Linux, I'm just saying Irix is more solid and better designed in high-load, high-memory situations. Which is reasonable considering some of the places Irix has been used.

  • Hmmm, the company I contracted to until recently was still running banyan and also only recently switched from beyond mail to HP Openmail and will be soon switching everything over to M$.
  • You crazy kids. I remember some BSDs used to be that way. Specifically IBM's AIS had binaries in /etc (no, not AIX, or was it AES? ACS? anyways it was an academic-only BSD that ran on RT/PCs, yes this was my first Unix) and didn't SunOS have soft links to /sbin? /etc/ping and others meant that /etc was in root's path. Things are just organized differently now (maybe organized better).

  • Are you sure it wasn't your app?

    I've three OSR5.0.5 boxes here that had no problem with Y2K/Feb 29th. Ticked over in test, and on the actual day.

    OTOH, the accounting/billing app we are running here is ported from a Tiger Minicomputer (anyone heard of a language called CADOL?, (basic on steriods )), running on an emulator for that particular platform. I'm eventually porting it to Linux, as there's no hope if it being replaced anytime soon. So I'd end up with:
    IBCS ->> Emulator binary ->> tokenized object code.

    This will suck, no doubt about it.

    "All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"

  • Oh really?

    Would you mind at least give some hardware names that are supported by SCO and not by Linux/*BSD?
  • I'm replying to someone else's comment here, but since several people have said it, I think this post is better suited for the top level than hidden behind someone else's post.

    There may be some SCO shops out there that will be using their products for some time, but they will be stuck in a time warp.

    It's not just shops that use computer systems, don't forget. Here at Town Hall, we've got a SCO server in the basement that stores, well ... everything. All the tax records for the town, for everyone in the town, and everyone owning property in the town. I'm pretty sure it also stores all the information for the town's spending, and payroll for all town employees.

    In case anyone's heard of it, it's mostly done through a program called MUNIS. I don't know if there's a MUNIS version for any other OS, or what trying to port the database would be like. What I do know is that MUNIS is, in my experience, a miserable beast that works fine just so long as you don't touch it. Not to mention, the server runs some proprietary programs that have been written specifically for our use.

    I hope that, when and if SCO OSR5 goes away, there will at least still be support for it. Because if there isn't, I'm not sure if migrating to a different OS -- even a similar one like Linux -- would be easy, or even possible. (I'm trying to think of what it would involve, and I'm not liking it.)

    Maybe we will be stuck in a time warp. We don't really have much of a choice.

    --

  • In 1991, on a 486/66, running XNS instead of TCP/IP, what a bastardized mess.

    I still have to support this kludge, which gives me an unfavorable opinion of SCO.

    I probably won't miss them.

    George
  • Not being an expert on SCO UNIX, I ask: If portions of SCO were Open Sourced, would any of it be of any use to Linux? Are there any features that SCO has that Linux doesn't?
    #include "usual rant about how this would provide value to SCO/whoever owns SCO"

  • I disagree to a certain extent - we use SCO at work, and on a PPro 200 with 128Mb RAM it runs pretty slow (subjectively much slower than Linux on a Pentium 150 with 64mb RAM). It's also very unfriendly at the command line in comparison to Linux (command line editing etc).

    Linux actually looks like a much more polished, professional product than SCO (OpenServer 5 I think?). It does the job, but it's pretty ugly.

  • SCO right now fills in a niche that Linux will not be able to fit into for quite some time. SCO stills possesses 80% of the high-end Intel market. UnixWare offers high-end features that Linux just compete with now. UnixWare scales very well with many processors, there's NonStop clustering, and many more. Just because SCO is dissapearing from a low-end server market doesn't mean it is dead. There are many IT's out there that would swear by SCO and just because they don't post on /. doesn't mean that don't matter. Now I am a summer intern at SCO in NJ and no one here is ready to lie down and die. -Kevin Hollywood ***Disclaimer: my views and opinions do not reflect those of my employers, etc...***

  • IS the traditional OS-sales business model dead? (Score:5)

    by RobertAG ( 176761 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @04:58AM (#937489)
    A quote:Total revenue dropped by nearly 50% from Q3 1999 to Q3 2000, while sales of Tarantella and professional services have supposedly increased.

    Linux really has introduced a new business model to computing. Almost overnight, without any warning, several different technology companies have chosen Linux or some other publicly available OS (think Mach kernel on MacOSX) to be their foundation for a variety of products. This begs the question: Can the concept of an Operating System now be considered to be that of a general-purpose, standardized factory part and not a specialized, proprietary addition to be sold separately for a premium price?

    In the earliest days of personal computing the Altair (or S-100) bus was the rage because it allowed for a common set of peripherals to be constructed for PC's. That paved the way for the AT bus and the concept of a whole common PC architecture, which pretty much exists today. Because of this, the profit margins on PC's are small.

    Shouldn't the next logical step be a common OS architecture? Traditionally, an OS was something on which you could make a huge profit. When you buy a copy of MS-Windows at the local computer store, what's the cost of the media and packaging compared to the price? Pretty small. Sure you can say that MS is trying to recover R&D, but seriously, most of that was probably recovered a LONG time ago. Besides, you're LUCKY if you get the media with a new computer these days. It's mostly profit. Now in walks Linux, the product of a Grad School student gone berserk. It's free, stable and encourages others to transport it to other platforms. Suddenly, the corporate powers-that-be realize that they no longer have to pay MS, SUN and SCO to get a good, general purpose OS. Furthermore, they themselves can add to the development of Linux, ensuring for themselves a common development platform thereby lowering their own proprietary development costs.

    So these people stop buying OS's. SCO, which had called themselves "an undifferentiated solution with price as the selling point" dies first. Price IS a way of differentiating your product; Linux, on that front, apparently does it better than SCO (it's free). Linux has taken over the low to medium end in server computing. How long before it encroaches on the high end? The surviving Linux companies today differentiate themselves by offering different services to different markets. The Linux companies don't sell Linux the OS; they sell Linux solutions to people. John Zedlewski's article talks about SCO selling of Tarantella, even though it's making money for the company. I think SCO should realize that there's far less money to be made in the general purpose OS market than there used to be. The money right now is to be made in special-purpose server/middleware and other application software.

    But what of Microsoft? Aren't they suffering? Not in the desktop market. Linux doesn't have a simple, relatively fool-proof desktop anyone can use - yet. Additionally, MS's monopoly power will generate cash for the forseeable future. The server market is another story. Most low-end boxes that run Linux are boxes that don't run NT/2000. Sales of NT/2000 may be good, but not as good as they can be. Furthermore, for the sophisticated user, Linux flexibility far outstrips NT/2000's. Shell scripting, background apps and stablility are 3 big advantages that immediately come to mind. With the coming breakup of Microsoft, I wonder if, in ten years, it will be viewed more of as a spin-off than a break-up. Windows currently contributes 1/2 of MS's revenues, but would this still be the case 10 years from now if no breakup were to occur? The break-up will hurt MS now, but certainly won't kill it. And without Windows to worry about, what's to stop it from pushing into the UNIX/Linux markets?

    I realize that there are niche products/markets where a proprietary OS is the best solution. But for the general purpose market, is this the future?

  • linux and the demise (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The news today is that Linux-Mandrake is the likely choice for SCO's Linux offering. I personally would have preferred Caldera- they have a proven line of commercial grade Linux products, and close ties to another has-been NOS vendor named Novell.

    I don't know if this will be enough to save SCO, or even if SCO should be saved. OpenServer is a steady, if somewhat stodgy UNIX. Merge was about the only reason I saw to use SCO on the desktop. For the most part, SCO is just a reminder that Microsoft at one point tried to break into the UNIX market. How times change.
  • With this admission, the new vendor will certainly cannibalize short-term licensing revenue, but the longer-term benefits of acquiring a chunk of the SCO customer/reseller base will outweigh that (pretty damn small) opportunity loss.

    So in other words, he's advising them to lose money on every sale, then make it up in volume .... what's wrong with this picture?

  • I expect that IBM will buy out SCO. SCO is already working with IBM on Monterey and IBM has a habit of buying out it's partners. IBM has already bought Sequent (the other partner in Monterey).
  • Here's a Forbes article [yahoo.com] on SCO's [yahoo.com] Linux plans.

    Quote: So, the company is hitching its wagon to--what else?--Linux. SCO has been selling support services for Caldera (Nasdaq: CALD - news) and TurboLinux for about 6 months, and it has already given some intellectual property to the Linux open source community. But SCO hasn't yet taken the big step--distributing Linux.

    But that's coming. Sources say it's working out an arrangement with France's MandrakeSoft to distribute its Linux-Mandrake operating system. SCO will use Linux-Mandrake as the base OS and add some features like clustering, which is a complex way to improve the performance and expansion of servers. MandrakeSoft also has offices in Altadena, Calif.
    --
  • So I understand that you build your car, fridge, tv... You grow you own corn, wheat, pork...

    Ah, those fanatics

  • I, for one, am not happy about this. SCO was the first UNIX that I was able to work on. This was due to the fact that the OS was free for personal use. All you had to do was pay for the media. This was the first comapany that I was aware of that offered this. Oh well, if you don't follow the industry, you will fail.

  • (we'll ignore any copyright issues associated with that)

    Maybe you will, but we can't.

    Having said that, I'll look into iBCS if the need arises. Thanks.

    --

  • It should be noted that SCO owns the official Unix title since they bought it from Novel (who bought it from AT&T). Thus, whoever buys SCO can declare their pet OS the one true Unix. I think that the OpenBSD maintainer should buy SCO.
  • This reminds me of the jackyls fighting over an elephant carcass. You don't care that thousands of people will lose their jobs and another commercial UNIX company goes under. All you care about is stealing features that other people worked on. How about doing your own R&D and development work instead of relying on someone else?
  • "No statistics"

    I stopped reading your post right after that.
  • The post I was replying to was asking about Sun, who is definitely not a Monterrey partner. The scope of the conversation has shifted.

  • Nonsense. My company is a small business with less than thirty employees. We use Netware 5.0, and have used Netware 3.1 and Netware 4.1 in the past. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Sure.
  • Actually I just checked SCO's pages, and it looks like Compaq is actually part of Monterey. The following is cut and pasted directly from a press release on SCO's site:

    "Project Monterey, a UNIX operating system (OS) initiative led by IBM, along with SCO, Intel, Compaq and other industry leaders."

  • And beer-free, too. So Solaris may replace SCO instead of Linux doing it...

    -grendel drago
  • Pretty much any unix worth it's salt these days can run SCO binaries... how hard it would be in reality to get some of those apps working though is a completely different matter. I think a lot of the problems would come in from some of the very non-standard way sco deals with paths and locations of some odd things.
    ---
    Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...

  • Can't comment on the installation - I've never installed SCO. I've installed Linux on a fair range of PC's, and whilst it's not perfect, it's improved to the point where I can quite happily give a CD to most people and expect them to get it up and running if they have a reasonable knowledge of PC's. Funnily enough the same is true of most versions of Windows - I installed Win'98 on a clone with an Intel 740 video card. Did Windows recognise it? No. Did I have to open the case, work out the manufacturer, and manually download and install the drivers? Yes. Nothings perfect!

    The server I have is an old OpenServer 5 (5.04? Not sure) running an accounts package. It trundles along and does it's job ok, but I was disappointed with the lack of polish to the command line etc. Maybe I was naieve, but I expected a commercial Unix to sparkle!

  • It seems to me that no one has even discussed the fact that Nasdaqs server software runs ONLY on SCO Unixware. Since Nasdaq is just finishing up their most recent upgrade, it would seem an advantageous time for SCO to sell. Nasdaq has probably been the largest contract for SCO. Since the upgrade is just completing they probably see it as a good opportunity to end it profitably. Not to mention that the replacement "NIX" will be well endowed with this contract. It also makes a good selling point for SCO. That is if the contract goes with the sale. Soullube What is Mind? No Matter What is Matter? Never Mind Homer S.
  • (Nostalgia mode on) SCO was my first. I learned UNIX on an IBM-AT (286) with a Digiboard attached to 6 Wyse 30's. This was in 1989. We also had a brand new Compaq 386-12Mhz with a 300MB hard drive and 16 MB of memory. It cost $10,000. (Nostalgia mode off) Out of the scenarios presented by Zedlewski, the one I hope to see is the purchase by IBM. They have the support organization to handle the transtition, they are already supporting Linux on their hardware, and this keeps Project Monterrey on track. After the experience Novell had with UnixWare in the 90's, I don't think they would be interested. They seem to fighting for their lives against Win2K and have no time for distractions. I think the UnixWare/WordPerfect distractions of the past are partially what opened the door for NT in the first place. So long SCO. Don't forget to turn off that damn Yanni music on hold for the tech support line.

  • Re:Yes, Linux toasted them (Score:3)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @05:08AM (#937508) Homepage Journal

    There are currently more Linux seats than there have ever been "UNIX" seats. While companies like SCO, who made their money selling a commercial UNIX for i386, are certainly getting hit hard, there is no underestimating the damage that Linux is doing to Windows NT.

    The only reason that Windows NT is even considered, in most cases, is price, and Linux gives you UNIX features at an even lower price. Besides, Linux doesn't have to make a profit to survive. In other words, while the Linux firestorm may be especially hard on Microsoft's competitors this does not necessarily mean that this benefits Windows. After all, Linux is replacing Windows too, and Linux is going to be very resistant to Microsoft's usual tactics. Microsoft isn't going to be able to put economic pressure on Linux, GPL software is very resistant to embracing and extending, and they certainly aren't going to be able to undersell Linux. Nor is Microsoft going to be able to count on Intel to close the performance gap between Windows and Linux. After all, Linux runs on the same platform as Windows (and a whole lot more).

    Microsoft was competing quite successfully against commercial Unix, but they have yet to come up with a tactic that is even somewhat useful against the Free Unixes. I would bet that Microsoft would give anything to be able to compete with the likes of SCO instead of Linux.

  • Here in Pgh there's an SGI-only brain imaging lab, but that was right down the hall from the lab I worked in, which was Linux and HP-UX. It was frankly pleasant to work on the SGIs (since we shared resources), but at the same time getting their Octane up to a dual processor system with a measly 256M RAM was apparently very expensive. We had a couple dual processor Linux machines with 256M, but they didn't handle high load as nicely :(

  • It would be more than interesting (though it may not line up with their business goals) to see the new BSDI take over SCO - thus bringing BSD operating systems full circle, from BSD is UNIX improved to BSD is UNIX-free to BSD is free UNIX. Hell, we might even get SYSV source code sans licensing fees ;)

    Then again, I don't see what the contribution would be - I like BSD as is more than any commercially-licensed UNIX.
  • Monterey [ibm.com], as you may or may not know, is the recently formed alliance between several Unix distributors, who having faced the prospect of rewriting their operating systems for the 64-bit Itanium processor decided to pool their resources. Monterey was to have been a combination of IBM's AIX, Sequent's Dynix and SCO's Unixware with technical support from other companies such as Compaq and would run on the IA-64 and PowerPC chips (support for AMD's 64-bit chips have yet to be announced).

    Monterey was to have a signified a shot in the arm for Unix vendors who are being beset by not only the growing market share of Linux and Windows NT. Industry momentum is building and commitment is growing for Monterey on IA-64, which will be "a leading, high volume, channel-ready, shrink-wrapped, UNIX operating system" as trumpeted by its developers.

    Now that SCO is up for sale, will the momentum on the Monterey project be severely hampered? In addition, will the purchasers of the Santa Cruz Operation continue to work on the Monterey project or will they break off from the alliance and take a solo path such as Hewitt Packard and Sun in developing their next generation Unix distributions? Are the prospects of profit arising from the Monterey Project be enough incentive for another company to buy SCO?

    Nevertheless, it is sad to see SCO leaving the BSD/*nix scene after their pioneering work in the earlier days and their philanthropy in providing free/lost-cost licenses to students long before Linux became prominent.

  • <troll feeding>

    UNIX is not a kernel. UNIX is a trademark. If your system is POSIX and X/Open compliant and contains CDE, you can license the UNIX trademark from The Open Group and get it applied to your system. If I modified BeOS to contain X, ported CDE, and had it certified POSIX and X/Open, then I could pay TOG to let me call it UNIX.

    </troll feeding>

  • I just chuckled to myself about how I came up with that nickname when they can up with OpenServer. I know... it's early here.
  • I know from personal experience that Linux replaced SCO, I know of atleast one system that was totaly replaced by SCO, where the database vendor ported the verticle app to linux, and now promotes it over their SCO product.

    I have also seen several SCO systems replaced by NT, which i think has eaten more into SCO than linux has.

    What I find odd was this situation, I was doing on the side desktop PC repair, and other misc maintence for a small laundry supply distribution company, they had a cute little AIX 3 box sitting in the corner, running a small verticle app/database to do all the ERP stuff. the VP knew the stability of unix, and wanted to stay with it when they did the replacement of the system for y2k issues.. (OS and database) I told them that they should look around to other software vendors, but they wanted to stick with the same system, to save training costs. I went to a couple meetings with them, to see what the software vendor was like.. it had to be the best example of a bunch of morons leaching the proffits of y2k bugs. several things bothered me about the setup of this system, they just didn't seem to have anyone who really knew unix. I warned them that the hardware they were being sold was over priced, and not a good buy.. but hey.. let's spend $7000 on a single PII-300, with no RAID. did i mention that this was only a year and a half ago? but the "officialy supported" platform was a Digital box.. not an alpha, just a plain old intel box. "i told you so" #1 now it's a totaly un-supported compaq legacy system. next I told them, stick with AIX or go linux. I contacted the database developer, and found that the system was simply running on top of an interprited language.. (i don't remember which) that was avaliable for just about every platform under the sun, including linux. (i thought there was source avaliable, but i can't be sure) I said great, let's do that.. "no.. that's not officialy tested" I'm hoping to go back in a year or two and upgrade the whole damn thing, get rid of the shitty hardware, and get them going on linux. either by sco emulation, or just porting the damn thing myself.
  • I've been waiting a _long_ time to see SCO go under. I knew it was only a matter of time before those arrogant assholes finally had to eat their words. Sure, they tried to embrace the open source community near the end, but their wide open mouths damaged their credibility with their FUD and insulting comments about free *nix.

    I promised a coworker long ago that I would take the news with a celebration, and tomorrow night's Friday! It's party time! ;-)

    Mark this flamebait if you must, but saying it loud and clear is worth the karma hit.
  • Do you honestly feel the average 30 person company has an employee who reads Slashdot? You are an atypical case.

    matt
  • Because. The corporation is required to act in the interests of it's shareholders. This may be more important than you think.
    They are *REQUIRED* to do this by law. If they were to give it away, they would have to be able to show how they were gaining shareholder value. Frankly, it would look like they were simply *giving* away something that belongs to the shareholdres. Yes. The shareholders *DO* own the company.
  • While Linux-based systems are infiltrating the server world, I question whether they are replacing current commercial unix systems or creating a new niche.

    Both. Linux is also replacing current NT and NetWare systems, not just commercial UNIX.

    While SCO's apparent demise (and possible upcoming resurrection?) may be due to a surge of Linux use, I would doubt it.

    I wouldn't doubt it is a factor. I would share some of your skepticism that it is the only factor. It is also likely that such things as free Solaris x86 and the increasingly price competitive proprietary commercial UNIX hardware played a role. Both of those things are at least partialy because of Linux though.

    More than likely, their business was merely not as profitable anymore in a developing industry.

    That is probably partly it, at least to the point that their business was not as profitable anymore because their products have been comoditized.

    I'd like to see statistics, to know whether people were replacing SCO systems with other commercial unix systems or Linux/*BSD.

    That would definitely be interesting. I suspect that the answer would be that people are doing both, but given what I've seen, Linux is getting chosen fairly frequently by people migrating away from SCO's products as its price tag is attractive, and it runs on the same type of hardware.

    It may be a bit pretensious to assume it was Linux pushing SCO out of the market.

    Slightly, in that it is highly likely that there were other factors involved that shouldn't be completely discounted.

  • Nop. Thats just an opinion (look at the URL). If SCO would announce tommorow that they're for sale - then their stock price would be $0!
  • I supported SCO Xenix and Unix systems in the past. Support was poor. Known problems were not documented. Hardware support was difficult to get hold of. The usual stories with non mainstream commercial software.

    I became the only person in the UK supporting Banyan's VINES on SCO Unix, and had real problems getting support from anyone knowledgable through the official channels. I felt things could be better. and had to learn everything by trial and error.

    In 1995 I was tasked with setting up our DNS server on an existing SCO system which ran other tasks. The BIND implemenation shipped with the current SCO UNIX TCP/IP implemenation was ancient even then, and just wouldn't work with our then ISPs DNS. A few days of attempting to get help from SCO got me nowhere, so I grabbed a PC destined for use as a print server, upped the RAM slightly, snarfed Slackware via FTP, and had a working DNS server within a couple of hours, which not only ran quicker, but also had all the bits and pieces that cost SCO user an arm and a leg (TCP/IP, NFS, C compiler, nroff and so on). I started to relalise the SCO was overpriced junk.

    We were still an official reseller/integrator/whatever, and still receive the glossy magazines, although they didn't come to me :-(. 3-4 years ago I finally saw one on a sales-droid's desk. Despite SCO being the magazine's title, over 75% of the magazine content was NT - and this was an official publication. I knew SCO had troubles.

    I'm just suprised that they've lasted so long. Only the actions of suits in preferring SCO over Linux or *BSD ('We need someone to blame when things go wrong! - Waddya mean no-one;s sued Microsoft') has kept them afloat for so long.

    I want them to either go out of business, or to suffer the ultimate fate bestowed upon the dead - a buyout from Computer Associates.

  • Judging by the list of copyright notices whenever you boot a SCO system, I'd have to say that opensourcing anything would be difficult to acomplish.

  • Re:Yes, Linux toasted them (Score:3)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @10:05AM (#937544) Homepage Journal

    I will grant you that Windows NT still has a distinct advantage in application availability, and I will even grant you that there are a certain number of shops that are going to side with Microsoft no matter what they do.

    This does not take away from the fact that Linux has become a force to be reckoned with in the server realm, and that it is even gaining acceptance in Microsoft's own backyard, the desktop operating system.

    The reason for this is quite simple. Linux is less expensive, and it comes complete with an impressive array of programs (especially programming tools).

    For years the Macintosh was a much more sophisticated machine than the IBM PC, and yet DOS reigned supreme because of one simple fact. Macintoshes were more expensive than commodity PCs running DOS, and DOS was essentially "good enough." In the end DOS + Windows not only surpassed the Macintosh in revenues, but they surpassed it in technology as well.

    The same thing is happening again. Only this time the commodity platform is not Windows, it is Linux. For an ever increasing number of people Linux is "good enough," and the price is certainly right. Windows advocates have been explaining to me how Linux was doomed since 1995, and yet it continues to grow at an exponential pace. Even worse, for Windows anyhow, Linux is getting to the point where it is much harder to find Windows applications that don't have a functional equivalent Linux application. This is especially true when you are considering using Linux as a server.

    Not to mention the fact that Microsoft's biggest customers (the hardware OEMs) would absolutely love to see Linux become the standard for the new Millenium. After all, why should Dell or Compaq have to pay Microsoft a tax to sell their own hardware. Especially when Linux is free.

  • >I hate to be the one to point it out, because I like having karma, but you neglected to mention that some folks may have moved from >SCO to say.... Windows NT? Good point. I interviewed at a company who had a SCO Unix app. It was a turn-key product for doctor offices. The interviewer mentioned they were planning on migrating this to NT. And no, they hadn't considered either Linux or *BSD. One of the reasons I decided I didn't want the job well before the interview was over. While I had been unemployed for a couple of months, I wasn't *that* desperate for work. Geoff
  • I suspect I'm not in that unusual a company.

    I must work for an unusual company, because there are a lot more new Linux installs than anything else. BTW, did your company formerly use SCO?

    But go ahead and have a hype fest. At least you'll have your fantasies to keep your life fulfilling.

    A Microsoft apologist talks about hype... Who is it that has paid millions of dollars on advertising, media events and grassroots... err astroturf campaigns? It is Microsoft that is all about hype and glitz.

  • Actually, saying "osOpinions expands on this in further depth" is not really paraphrasing. It is a simple statement of common fact. Saying "Author Bill Billson provides a in-depth discussion of trout wrangling" is not paraphrasing; "According to Bill Billson, the most important aspect of trout wrangling is knowing your knots" is paraphrasing. He was not presenting someone's ideas (summerising the points made in the article), he was stating the topic and existance of the article.

    Of course, all of this is probably tangential, seeing as how he copied verbatim significant portions of the article as his "summary". But, IMOO, the last sentance would not constitute a paraphrase or require attribution.

    Of course, according to my writing teacher freshman year in college, every time you wiped your nose while typing, you should attribute it to someone, as they probably provided you with the idea.

    "snort"- Prof. Mafi

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

  • I am not a lawyer, but if you have a legal copy of SCO that you aren't using (for example, because you've moved to Linux or bought a second license), you should legally be able to copy the libraries over and use them under Linux/iBCS.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • Because if there isn't, I'm not sure if migrating to a different OS -- even a similar one like Linux -- would be easy, or even possible. (I'm trying to think of what it would involve, and I'm not liking it.)

    are you sure migration would be *that* hard? Linux does have binary emulation of SCO/SysV, with the iBCS module. Back before the major databases were ported to Linux, people were running SCO versions of Oracle on Linux using this.

  • The problem is that NT labor is readily available, while Unix/Linux labor is not. Now, granted, most of the NT labor is incompetent, but too many businesses think "an admin is an admin" and hire the cheapest one. And what's this incompetent admin going to do when the SCO server needs replacing? You betcha, he's going to install the only thing he understands -- NT!

    -E

  • SCO was never about flashy features. That's not what killed SCO.

    What killed SCO was two things: 1) Pricing, especially for educational institutions (for many years Microsoft practically GAVE NT to educational instutitions), and 2) availability of trained administrators and technicians. But SCO's management never saw these as problems, "SCO Unix is more stable than Microsoft products" was their attitude, and "people will pay more for a more stable product". As we all know, that's not true -- people might pay the SAME for a more stable product, but if they're paying MORE, they want to see flashy features for that money. That's what killed SCO -- they did not understand that stability doesn't sell, flashy features do.

    -E

  • What SCO has is the copyright on the original AT&T System V code base. That is the main thing that IBM would want. If Monterrey is based on any of that code, as it almost surely would be, then it would give whoever owned it a leg up over their other partners as far as being able to market it (they wouldn't have to pay royalties, for one).

  • The source code would probably not be very useful. Their kernel is certainly different enough from Linux to be not useful at all, and the tools are redundant because the GNU tools do everything that the UnixWare tools can do.

    One possible use for the UnixWare tools would be for compatibility, ps for example has a completely different syntax in SVR4 systems. And the sourcecode would be interresting for historical reasons..

    Beside that SCO probably has lots of engineers that are very experienced with Unix and high-end features. This could be the most interresting asset of SCO for Linux.
  • What about BSD? why not just opensource the entire technology and let the communities decide what they like. I for one, do not like my choices dictated to me.

  • Was Linux the competitor? (Score:5)

    by Watts ( 3033 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @03:04AM (#937573)
    While Linux-based systems are infiltrating the server world, I question whether they are replacing current commercial unix systems or creating a new niche. While SCO's apparent demise (and possible upcoming resurrection?) may be due to a surge of Linux use, I would doubt it.

    More than likely, their business was merely not as profitable anymore in a developing industry. I'd like to see statistics, to know whether people were replacing SCO systems with other commercial unix systems or Linux/*BSD.

    It may be a bit pretensious to assume it was Linux pushing SCO out of the market.

  • SCO's next venture (Score:5)

    by 11223 ( 201561 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @03:06AM (#937574)
    SCO has hired Chase H&Q to explore future directions, including "strategic combinations". Those strategic combinations will almost certainly be with a Linux firm, and almost certainly TurboLinux at that. Here's what I expect SCO to do:

    SCO has seemed to have finally discovered the Linux kernel. At the same time, SCO owns a wealth of proprietary technologies and licenses a bunch more. What to expect from this combination is something along the lines of "TurboLinux Enterprise Edition", with SCO's proprietary technologies and licensed technologies (including CDE) making their way into a Linux distro.

    At the same time, the number of non-Linux members of The Open Group is shrinking. Expect to see The Open Group forced to open CDE in the same way that it opened Motif soon, and the UNIX trademark being "donated" to certain Linux distrobutions.

    Note: This is wholly speculation and is for entertainment purposes only.

  • OK folks, here's the plan: We get roblimo to act as coordinator and the slashdot reader/contributor community conglomerates it's collective funding power to buy SCO for the open source world. Slashdot then becomes the maintainer of record and we all own a piece of it.
  • yea... and we'll use karma for how much people get to talk at board meetings...
  • Gil Bates simply Cut N Pasted from the editorial, which obviously wasn't written by him.

    Read before you flame.
  • It was a frankenstein at least till 96 when the last SCO I had to deal with met its demise. And it was obliged by a crosslicensing deal with MicroS..t to be a frakenstein till last year. So I guess it did not change a hell of a lot. Anyway the average number of more than 100 required hotfixes per release says something...
  • I don't think it'll hurt Monterey at all. From the start it was pretty obvious that Monterey was mostly an IBM project. I think IBM got the others involved just to grab some easy tech instead of doing it themselves.

    Monterey is really just the next version of AIX. If there's anything in Monterey that IBM really needs SCO for, I expect IBM will simply buy SCO.
  • The big advantage that I see in this for Linux (or even BSD) is that there's lots of interesting hardware currently supported under SCO that's nary been touched by the Linux community. Getting this hardware and the associated applications running under Linux will only underscore the power of Unix.
  • Gil Bates did not author that phrase, he CUT and PASTEd it from the editorial. Please read the articles before you flame.

    Gil Bates only found the article.
  • But SGI is indeed going to stop making IRIX boxes, and is going to try to convince everybody to move to Linux. The thing is that there won't be any "similar platorms" soon other than Linux - Linux runs on most of their proprietary hardware (at least on SPARC), and IRIX and HPUX are slowly dying. What you'll see as the next-big-thing in UNIX workstations is actually Linux on Itanium, and SCO wants a piece of that pie.
  • but you neglected to mention that some folks may have moved from SCO to say.... Windows NT?

    Linux is a drop in replacement for SCO. NT is similar to SCO as bolting parts from a tractor onto a motorcycle. You can get it to work, but its going to take some labor.
  • SCO Merge is ALREADY available for Linux. search linuxtoday for it.

  • SCO is still around? (Score:3)

    by gitm_tym ( 210406 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @03:10AM (#937602)

    Although I will admit not having much recent experience with SCO. My nightmares still harken back to the very late 80's and early 90's with that frankenstein of a *NIX, Xenix.

    I find it amusing that they have their hands on the child of Sys V, and wish luck to whomever ends up with it.

    All in all, SCO has been missing the ball the entire time. First with their clunky and inept implementations of *NIX, and then with their inability to see the trends (right before their eyes) of the ever-encroaching open source community.

    Score 1 for our team. And so long, Santa Cruz. Thanks for all the fish.

    gitm

  • What makes you so sure that SCO customers would immediately migrate to linux? SCO isn't/wasn't the only high-end mucho-money Unix out there, you know. They'll probably dribble over to Solaris, or AIX, or something else expensive, proprietary and closed, unless they're running a very small installation, in which case linux's cheapness might buy it a slice.

    But don't think this is going to be some huge linux windfall, 'cause it ain't.

    -grendel drago

  • Thanks for replying, especially considering that I got the usual "Flamebait" moderation for pointing out the sometimes sad history of UNIX advocacy.

    Are you kidding? Your post was intelligent and quite pointed. However, I have been using Linux professionally for nearly five years. Back then you had to be crazy (I prefer visionary) to think that Linux had a chance. As far as I am concerned Linux has already made it. Say what you will it is an important part of the architecture of the Internet, it is a cost effective solution for a wide array of problems, and it is gaining applications and abilities at an unprecedented pace. It is not the right tool for every job (my wife doesn't use it on her desktop, yet), but it gets closer to being "good enough" every day.

    You may be right, but I suspect you are underestimating the effect of marketing forces. There were two powerful forces behind the PC; the fact that it was relatively inexpensive, and the fact that the corporate power of IBM was backing it. These forces are opposed in the case of Linux (with the corporate power now being Microsoft's, of course), instead of aligned, and it will at the minimum cause the rise of Linux acceptance to be noticably slowed (although IBM still has considerable clout in that area. Were IBM to start pushing a pre-loaded corporate Linux desktop, that prediction could well take on the air of "Dewey Defeats Truman" :)

    The corporate power of IBM was backing their mainframes. PCs were a toy that were snuck into the enterprise by people trying to get their work done. The one redeeming factor that PCs had was that they were inexpensive enough to sneak in under the radar.

    Does that sound familiar? Linux is penetrating the enterprise in almost exactly the same way. It generally starts out with a developer or two on a skunk works project and blossoms from there.

    Even more important, however, is the fact that Linux also has quite a bit of industry support. IBM has Linux running on the S/390 (and just about everything else they sell). They have also donated quite a bit of software to the Free Software community. Dell has published SpecWeb99 scores running on Linux that destroy their Windows 2000 scores. SGI and SCO have practically abandoned their commercial *nixes for Linux. And the list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the only company that wouldn't benefit from an open platform for development is Microsoft. And while Microsoft is certainly chuck full of bright people, they don't have a monopoly on talent.

    Not that Linux needs industry support. Most of the gains that Linux has made were accomplished without so much as a "How do you do?" from the computer indsustry. The question at this point isn't what Linux needs to do, it's numbers show that it is growing at a much better than merely healthy rate. The question is "what can Microsoft do that might somehow slow Linux down?" I personally don't see Microsoft doing anything that appears to have an impact on the growing Linux community.

    Gnome and KDE get better every day, and I am already using Mozilla as my primary browser. All it will take from Microsoft is one slip and they will be a legacy system. Not only do they have to maintain their marketshare, but they have to upsell all of their customers on a regular basis to the newest and greatest software. If they don't maintain revenues they are as good as done, and in this particular battlefield older versions of Windows are much bigger competition than Linux. Linux, on the other hand, doesn't need to turn a profit, it doesn't need industry support, and there isn't very much that Microsoft can do that would convince the legion of Linux developers to develop instead for Windows.

  • How many chickens was it? (Score:5)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @03:14AM (#937606)
    Is Gil Bates a new Slashdot columnist? He's got the length AND the leaping to conclusions down...

    We go from "SCO is on sale" to "SCO didn't/doesn't have a viable business model" to "new owners have to kill the product" (but not the business model?) to "migrate to a different product". From there we conclude, somehow, that there will be "longer-term benefits of acquiring a chunk of the SCO customer/reseller base", whatever that means.

    How about we just have the summaries spell out the NEWS and leave the theorizing to the comment area?
    --
  • No statistics, but I know a lot of people who moved systems from SCO to Linux, and others who came to Linux for new systems because they were tired of SCO.

    It really has to suck when you get letters from VARs saying things like not to bother about the support issue after all, we finally got frustrated enough to try it on Linux and it worked.

    Personally I think that Caldera has to be interested. After all they are the Linux distributer who is most interested in targeting the VAR market...

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Wrong. See your own first statement ("Windows NT has a distint advantage in application availability.") for the reason why DOS + Windows "reigned supreme" over the Macintosh. Does the phrase "application barrier to entry" ring a bell?

    I am talking about the Macintosh long before there was a such thing as DOS + Windows. Perhaps you don't remember the time when Microsoft's most famous application was probably Microsoft Word, which was available only for the Macintosh.

    I would also say that your statement about it becoming harder to find Windows applications that don't have a functional equivalent Linux application, especially in the server market should read: pretty much ONLY in the server market.

    Compare the disparity of desktop applications between Windows and Linux in 1995 and today. You would be amazed at the progress made in the Linux camp. In this same amount of time Microsoft has purchased a browser and bolted it to their desktop. Linux has several very usuable Office suites, it has several very usable browers, and it has not one but two competing projects to create an entire suite of desktop applications.

    In the server market Linux has really been giving Microsoft a kicking, but the pain is starting to spread to the desktop as well. The amount of Linux desktops is small, but it is growing at a furious pace.

    To extend your Macintosh analogy, Steve Jobs knew early on that in order for the Macintosh to be competitive on the desktop he had to have the dominant application providers: Microsoft and Lotus writing applications for his platform. Because the desktop is where the big money is. I don't see anybody cutting those same equivalent deals on the Linux platform, so I can't see how Linux could ever be a credible desktop alternative. Perhaps the alternative device market will change all this, and that is probably why you see so many blocking moves coming out of Redmond in those markets.

    Fah, I told you why Macintosh failed despite the fact that it had all of the applications. The PC was less capable but it was also less expensive, and it was "good enough." DOS had already destroyed the Macintosh long before Windows ever was a reality. The technical advances of DOS + Windows only sealed the fate of the Mac.

    Linux is already showing signs of being able to one-up Microsoft in this area. Not only is the operating system free, but the software that runs on top of Linux is largely free as well. For server installations (which are quite a bit more expensive) this price differential has already had a profound impact. But eventually Linux is going to be at a point where Dell and Compaq are going to become very tempted by the billions they could save by preloading Linux instead of Windows. And with the DOJ watching Microsoft it is possible for the OEM to hedge their bet with Linux without facing retaliation from Microsoft. As for the "alternative device market" Windows has already lost. They can't afford to compete with Linux on price, and they certainly aren't willing to give the OEM the freedom that Linux gives them. Linux allows the PDA OEM to create a whole array of value added extensions without giving up the compatibility that Linux allows. Ever notice how WinCE devices all look the same, and act the same? Well Linux would allow much greater flexibility without giving up compatibility with other Linux based devices. Not to mention the fact that Linux is free.

    More importantly, however, is that there is no such thing as a legacy PDA application. The application availibility of Windows does not give Windows CE an advantage. In other words the two platforms are starting out equal, and the only thing that differentiates them are things like price and stability.

    Sure, Microsoft will throw their money and weight around. But for every vendor that Microsoft pays to use Windows CE, there will be several other vendors that have no choice but to push Linux. After all, if they too choose to adopt WinCE, then they will be at a disadvantage. They will be selling what essentially is an identical device, except they will have paid more for WinCE than their competitors.

  • What about HP, Compaq(Digital) and SGI? Sun are big in the UNIX market, but they aren't the only ones that IBM has to think about.

  • reports of SCO's demise... (Score:5)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @04:35AM (#937624)
    So, it looks like old SCO is finally on sale,

    Funny, but I must have missed that press statement, and you don't link to one here, nor does the opinion column that you linked to.

    and that provides an interesting chance to speculate again about the future of a company that had some good technologies, but couldn't respond successfully to challenges from Linux and Windows...
    (Cough) FUD (Cough)

    Whoever acquires the rights to OpenServer and UnixWare needs to appreciate this fact and admit publicly that there will be no further work, besides bug fixes and sales of the existing versions, on these platforms. Instead, the focus will have to be on an immediate migration path to the next platform, almost definitely Linux. With this admission, the new vendor will certainly cannibalize short-term licensing revenue, but the longer-term benefits of acquiring a chunk of the SCO customer/reseller base will outweigh that (pretty damn small) opportunity loss.

    That has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Everybody here is a little dumber for having read it.

    There is one reason, and one reason only, that anybody would want to buy SCO, and that is for their products... specifically, SVR4, UNIXWare, and Tarantella.

    Nobody who wants to be YALD (Yet Another Linux Distributer) would have any reason to buy a non-Linux company. A friendly take-over of one of the smaller players (read: not Red Hat) would make a hell of a lot more sense.

    As for the loopy idea of buying SCO's customer base... If, as you imply, the Linux and NT vendors are stealing these customers away so easilly that SCO is on its death-bed, how much could those relationships possibly be worth?

    osOpinion has an extremely thought provoking editorial piece which expands upon this issue in detail.

    No they don't. They have an extremely speculative rant that reminds me of the "Apple is dead" stories that ZDNet used to run every other week a couple years ago.

    Linux is very cool, but we gotta tone this kind of zealotry down a little. One bad quarter != a dead company.

  • but they charged over $400 for it, at a time when Microsoft Windows + DOS 6.2 sold for $99 as a package. A guy I know called Doug at SCO (this was back when you could actually do something like that) and said "what kind of crack are you smoking? Nobody's going to pay that much for a desktop!" and Doug said "doh, but it's more stable than Windows! People will pay for that!". Well, we know what happened there, it flopped, and flopped badly...

    Of course, part of the reason they couldn't sell it for a competitive price was because they were licensing other people's products as part of their product... the CDE license alone was as expensive as Windows 3.11... and that was only one of the components they licensed.

    -E

  • Um, actually he just cut and pasted the entire thing from the article. The only 'commentary' he added was the very last line- the sentance that said that there was an interesting article. I'd zap him for plagiarizing, but not for editorializing.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

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