Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 08, 2003 02:03 AM
First of all, having been an SCO OpenServer admin for a few years in the mid nineties, I can safely tell you that SCO OpenServer was a VERY solid product that you could quite frankly receive years of uptime with. Was it flashy? No. Was it administrator friendly? Generally, yes. Was it open? No. Did corporate America care if it was open? No. Objectively, is Linux as stable yet? No.
That being said, SCO Group, formerly Caldera, IS desperate for operating capital. Despite Unixware's and OpenServer's original quality, it's expensive as hell compared even to other commercial Unix systems. The only people that still buys SCO are those that already own it from the "dark years" before the viability of Linux and the BSDs. Last time I checked, even QNX is cheaper than SCO these days. SCO market is mostly flat at best, declining at worst. SCO Group is priced out of the market so they are trying a rather stupid end-run by suing one of their UnitedLinux contribution partners. SCO doesn't really have a chance in the long run of pulling this off and, I suspect, inside the boardroom, they probably know it. It's possible that IBM will buy them out, either via "friendly negotiation" or a hostile takeover. It's also possible that IBM's legal department is looking at grinding them into the ground in a slow manner. Assuming SCO even has the money to back expensive patent suits, can they afford to defend themselves from the number of counter suits IBM and others might file? Even Sun is starting to show the strain from suit/counter suit over Java and MS's anti-competitive and monopolistic lawsuits. Only time will tell exactly where SCO Group will end up. Alienating not only the partners in UnitedLinux but also the free software community supporters in corporate IT which is what UL is aimed was a very bad move.
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a lot of ignorant assertions in these comments
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 08, 2003 02:03 AMThat being said, SCO Group, formerly Caldera, IS desperate for operating capital. Despite Unixware's and OpenServer's original quality, it's expensive as hell compared even to other commercial Unix systems. The only people that still buys SCO are those that already own it from the "dark years" before the viability of Linux and the BSDs. Last time I checked, even QNX is cheaper than SCO these days. SCO market is mostly flat at best, declining at worst. SCO Group is priced out of the market so they are trying a rather stupid end-run by suing one of their UnitedLinux contribution partners. SCO doesn't really have a chance in the long run of pulling this off and, I suspect, inside the boardroom, they probably know it. It's possible that IBM will buy them out, either via "friendly negotiation" or a hostile takeover. It's also possible that IBM's legal department is looking at grinding them into the ground in a slow manner. Assuming SCO even has the money to back expensive patent suits, can they afford to defend themselves from the number of counter suits IBM and others might file? Even Sun is starting to show the strain from suit/counter suit over Java and MS's anti-competitive and monopolistic lawsuits. Only time will tell exactly where SCO Group will end up. Alienating not only the partners in UnitedLinux but also the free software community supporters in corporate IT which is what UL is aimed was a very bad move.
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