The end is near for SCO (hopefully)

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 05/08/2009 05:52 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On May 8, 2009, at 10:10 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
>  =20
>> Go in today's data centers and see how big corporations use Linux. =20
>> Why would Red Hat and SuSE produce Enterprise verisons if it is not =20
>> a commercial
>>    =20
>
> Red Hat and SuSE are products built on top of Linux.  They are =20
> commercial.  That does not make Linux commercial.
>
> Mac OS X is built on top of Mach and FreeBSD.  It is commercial.  That =
=20
> does not make either Mach or FreeBSD commercial.
>
> Circa 1990, Linux products were not competition for SCO.=20
Linux did not exist before 1991.  I think you need to define commercial.
> Linux did =20
> not start to become a significant commercial player until around =20
> 1996.  SCO's competition of the early 1990s took the form of Sun, =20
> Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Digital as the big names with lesser names =20
> like Data General, Sequent and Unisys.  All hardware vendors.  Venix =20
> was never really competition against SCO, never mind the big guys.  =20
> Commercial, yes, but not competition.
>
> Thus I stand by my statement: SCO prospered through the 1990s because  =

> it was a commercially supported OS that was not locked to a particular =
=20
> hardware vendor's products
>  =20
This is true, but it was also on very inexpensive hardware. It did have=20
too much competition, but what made them successful in the corporate=20
world was their world-wide support organization.
> And I will add that a lot of why SCO failed as an OS is the disaster =20
> that was Project Monterey.  Linux was on the rise and Intel failed to  =

> deliver Itanium anywhere near schedule.  IBM, SCO, Intel and Sequent,  =

> had an OS -- a very cool OS by the way based on my experience with the =
=20
> AIX 5L developer previews -- that nobody wanted and no hardware to run =
=20
> it on.  This lead to SCO divesting itself of everything except =20
> Tarentella and selling it all to Caldera.  SCO changed its name to =20
> Tarentella and independently until 2005 when it was bought by Sun.  =20
> That is the ultimate demise of the old SCO.
>  =20
Basically when we refer to oldSCO we refer to the Unix division, not=20
what ended up as Tarantela. There are probably a lot of reasons oldSCO=20
failed, but maybe Project Monterey which was primarily a PPC project.=20
But, by that time, Linux and BSD (Free, Net, Open) were gaining market=20
share as well as reputation. HP and Digital were supporting Linux back=20
in the mid-1990s.
> What was Sequent doing there?  Sequent was a pioneer in high-=20
> performance SMP and NUMA architectures including read-copy-update.
>  =20
Sequent certainly was the leader in NUMA, and it was SMP and NUMA that=20
were the 2 major "derivatives" that SCO was suing IBM over. The other=20
"derivative" was JFS, but IBM claims that Linux JFS comes from OS/2 not=20
AIX, but the case is on stay.
> Meanwhile, Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group.  IBM pronounced  =

> Project Monterey deceased, acquired Sequent, and began to focus on =20
> Linux.  The SCO Group found itself without an OS and without the big-=20
> name partners that were expected to prop it up.  The SCO Group's =20
> management decided to sue IBM for contributing code from Project =20
> Monterey to the Linux kernel.  We all know how that is turning out.
>  =20
Actually, that is not the case. The Monterey aspect of the lawsuit was a =

breach of contract and slander. Project Monterey was dead before Caldera =

bought oldSCO. Actually, the suit against IBM was also based on the=20
original AT&T contract. IBM had a perpetual AT&T contract, that=20
originally stated "derivative" works. SMP and NUMA were not part of USL=20
System V, but they were part of AIX as well as Sequent's Unix and=20
Digital Unix (eg. Tru64 Unix) BTW. But, it was probably Monterey that=20
knocked the legs out from under oldSCO. Additionally, the Monterey=20
contract IBM had with oldSCO required that IBM must specifically give=20
SCO permission to transfer it, and they claim that oldSCO was in=20
violation of that when they sold the Unix division to Caldera.

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846