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Unix Operating Systems Software

SCO Answers Questions About Linux 79

Posted by Roblimo from the we-may-be-slow-but-we-get-there dept.
Our original interview with two SCO Presidents somehow turned into responses from just one, returned long after they were promised. Anyway, here are answers to your questions about SCO from David McCrabb, President of their Server Division.

customer demand?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Signal 11

Will SCO be contributing / open-sourcing any technology and/or patents that it holds as part of its 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?

McCrabb:

SCO is accelerating its participation in, and contributions to, the Open Source Community. In some cases, we will be taking current technology that we think is needed in the Linux market and driving it forward as the project maintainers. Right now, we are focusing on bringing some of our high-performance Intel development tools to Linux.

In other cases, we will make some sources available as reference documents, without a specific intention of driving them forward as projects. For instance, we think there is an interest in seeing the source to lex and yacc under an Open Source license -- but as flex and bison are already active projects, we see no value in our making a competitive investment. Someone else would be welcome to pick them up, if they saw a need.

There is no doubt that the low cost of Linux is a factor in creating new market demand. There is a solid interest among larger companies who want to take advantage of the Linux momentum. In general, larger businesses are less sensitive to price as a primary factor in deploying an OS. These businesses are more interested in criteria like reliability, availability, and scalability.

Software
(Score:5, Interesting)
by chazR

One of the reasons that SCO operating systems have been so popular is that there are a lot of applications (Tetra, Informix, etc.) that 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?

McCrabb:

ISVs port applications where they see opportunity and market demand. ISVs also appreciate robust support and encouragement from the platform before they invest in a port. Linux is experiencing tremendous momentum and attracting ISVs who have never ported applications to SCO Unix platforms. To leverage this activity, SCO is currently developing better Linux binary compatibility for our existing Unix platforms.

SCO concentrates on offering choice. Customers want solutions, and we want to be in a position to give them the broadest range of options. If the solution includes Open Source components, SCO will be in a position to support it.

Linux as the next SCO Unix?
(Score:5, Insightful)
by bbk

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?

McCrabb:

Our formal product roadmap is undergoing a complete overhaul. When we begin to outline our OS deliverables for the next 18 months, you will see that UnixWare 7 and SCO OpenServer 5 will continue moving ahead. Look forward to new developments as well.

Enterprises building their businesses on a server platform are interested in reliability and availability. Although we believe in a high degree of reliability that comes from the level of code inspection provided by the Open Source Community, we feel it needs to be quantified with benchmarking statistics like MTBSS. This opens a number of possible further improvements -- journalizing file systems, support for hot-plug PCI, multi-path I/O -- things that make is easier to never bring the system down, or to recover the system more quickly.

How will SCO Survive?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by DG

According to the principles of Open Source software development described in The Cathedral and the Bazaar (amongst others), for each "class" of software where there exists significant 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 similarly mature Open Source version of the same thing - perhaps Adobe (Gimp) in a couple of years?)

McCrabb:

Eric Raymond's analysis is incisive and compelling, but I don't think all the votes are in. Products are more than the sum of their technologies - they involve a network of relationships with resellers, ISVs, and customers.

We believe that proprietary software will continue to thrive and interact with the Open Source Movement. At the same time, we are structuring our business in such a way that will allow us to participate in many of the still developing Open Source business models. Tarantella for Linux and our Linux Professional Services offerings are just two examples of this. We are also looking to develop more proprietary technologies, called serverware, that can be deployed one level up from the operating system. You will see us produce more serverware products that are designed for multiple Linux and Unix platforms in the near future.

Monterey and Linux
(Score:5, Interesting)
by randombit

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 Monterey runs on IA-64, or will Linux be a "stopgap OS" to run on your systems until Monterey is finished?

McCrabb:

Monterey and Linux-64 will be an important platform for the Itanium market. Both are expected to be available in the same time frame. Customers demand that Monterey have the ability to run Linux applications. This will be an important area of interoperability that we will stress with the Monterey product line.

SCO & Linux: Past vs. Present Opinions
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Jon Trowbridge

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, 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?

McCrabb:

Our view of Linux has evolved and we no longer stand by the one-dimensional stereotypes made in the past. We made mistakes - one-sided characterizations of Linux - and these statements are no longer operative. We know that Linux is here to stay.

However, we are not ready to flip to the view that sees Linux as the be-all, end-all of operating system software. When making comparisons between Unix and Linux platforms, there are still meaningful and significant areas where Linux falls short. We see ourselves as being in a position to help address these areas.

With our investments throughout the Linux Community, we care about the success of the Linux market more than ever. This being the case, we are very concerned about fragmentation. This is why we stand whole-heartedly behind the Linux Standard Base.

What does "Linux" mean?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by jd

In the eyes of Caldera, it is a proprietary system with no proprietor, an open closed system 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?

McCrabb:

First, it's a marketplace for us to sell our Linux Professional Services. There is a great demand for companies that have no idea how to add the power of Linux to their complex computing environments.

Second, a platform for Tarantella and other potential serverware products.

Further, it's an opportunity to enter new markets with our existing Unix platforms and future Linux-based products.

Price/performance?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by rc-flyer

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?

McCrabb:

It's clear that Linux will introduce changes into the pricing equation, especially in the SMB market. The details remain to be seen. SCO is committed to its resellers and recognizes that they are being challenged to adapt to some of the new terms of this marketplace. SCO will have products that speak to all levels of the market at prices that compete on the terms of the particular market.
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SCO Answers Questions About Linux More

SCO Answers Questions About Linux

Comments Filter:
  • Yes, it *is* a Nixonism--actually attributable to his flack, Ron Ziegler. I remeber it from the first time around. :-) The core message is "We lied" but wrapped in an implication that the lie is the *statement's* fault, rather than the speaker's. "Those naughty statements, we had to declare them inoperative." What *Nixon* said was: "I was not lying, I said things that later on seemed to be untrue." I guess "It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools." That applies to wordsmiths too...:-)
  • I can assure you that the company I work for ran it completely on accident... We bought a few companies that ran on SCO UNIX 4, and we have been stuck with these Beasts ever since.

    Say what you will about TISysV, but it's at least not as laughable as SCO.
  • When you read McCrabb's comments in the context of SCO's statements in their 10K [sec.gov] they make sense. SCO (1) sells server operating systems (2) focuses on Intel processors (3) owns the UNIX IP from AT&T (4) supports open standards such as I20, XPG-4, Spec 1170, DCE and OSF/Motif(R) POSIX(R), FIPS and Internet standards, and (5) talks about "leveraging the open source and Linux opportunity." (The "Leveraging" discussion is in SCO's 1999 annual report page 11, available in PDF on SCO's Web site.) Their basic business model is to sell proprietary based server solutions to companies who are big enough to pay the freight. Their 10K says "SCO's mission is to create, market, and support the server software that system builders choose for networked business computing." To the extent that SCO can guide Linux in a direction that favors SCO and hurts NT they will be right in there pitching. Don't count on them doing anything that will make Linux a substitute for SCO products rather than a complement. SCO also has a page on Linux [sco.com] which I read to say "we can help you install Linux instead of Windows and then talk to an SCO based server." SCO is not a big company. They had worldwide sales of $223 million in FY1999 and competes with UNIX/RISC server software on one hand and NT/Intel software on the other. They have an installed base and a set of third party ISPs that they are totally dependent on. I expect they see SGI's example as exactly what not to do.
  • First lesson of business writing: Write to your audience.

    What we just saw was clearly clueless as to it's audience - it's what I'd expect to read in one of those lame sidebars in "CIO". It's not vetted - it's gelded. I expect a public statement to go through a review process (heck, I've been part of that team) but there's a point beyond which the thing gets so anemic on content you just gotta have mercy on it.

    One trick I learnt long ago is to picture how smoething would be presented; the layout, the typeface, paper stock, etc - apply the tone of the text into a physical manifestation. This would be Courier 10pt on a damp piece of cheap photo-copy paper. If it was a speech it would have been delivered in monotone to an emptying room.

    It's not that /. is a particularly great venue for SCO to be interacting in but they accepted the interview, presumably scouted the territory, then burped up something that could have been pasted together by an over-medicated intern.

    Thus they blew what could have been a decent opportunity to plant some marketing seeds, get some geeks interested in what they're doing, establish some creds with a market they're moving into.

    They also wasted everyones time.

    'Nuf said on a throw-away.

    -- Michael

  • The bland marketing-speak of the interview responses are necessary because SCO can't come out and admit what it's really trying to do.

    In an attempt to avoid total obsolescence as the Unix market shakes out in response to open source systems, SCO wants to be closely associated with Linux so that it becomes a choice that people will consider when looking for a commercial Unix to supplement or replace Linux systems.

    I've seen clients "upgrade" servers that have become important from FreeBSD to BSDI, or from Linux to Solaris, for example, for reasons mainly relating to management perception - they feel more comfortable using a commercial product, basically.

    If SCO has ties to Linux users through the products and services it provides, it is better able to position itself as being a logical upgrade for users looking for a commercial alternative.

  • A good point, but it only applies to attracting new customers.
    Existing customers aren't going to change to Linux just because it is
    free: what might make them switch was if SCO stopped developing their
    own brand UNIX. I'm sure that thought must have entered their
    heads when they were thinking out their new strategy...
  • 1) They think there needs to be someone between "the customer" and Linux, and they want to be one of those people. Conclusion: Either an SCO Linux distribution, or a "strategic partnership" relationship with an established distribution.
    So does IBM
    2) It seems they realize that the raw OS space is going or gone - points for that. They can't just come out and say it with new versions of Unixware et al on the way, but it does seem they're starting to get a glimpse of the forest.
    So does IBM
    3) They're thinking "value-add" - stuff that runs on top of Linux that provide services not normally provided by a stock distribution. I can't think of anything in this space not already served by a good existing Free app (webserver? LDAP server?) or someone with huge market share (Oracle?) but perhaps the end-goal is systems integration.
    Middleware, so does IBM.

    I know IBM isn't the one and all, but if that's their whole plan for the future then good luck SCO. I say they should drop that plan.

    They have to compete against IBM, every bigger linux disitributor under the sun and even companies like VA and others.
    If I would have to choose between SGI and SCO, I would bet on SGI - if they survive the next 2-4 years without bigger trouble there are good chances for them in security and graphics for linux. OTOH SCO's plan doesn't seem very original and they still seem NOT to get the development speed of open source.
  • Well, the key phrase in your post is "our mail clients", as if there was some board of directors making decisions about what goes into mail clients.

    No, I mean *nix users. I forget that there are people on /. that do use that other OS ;)

    At some point, the mail client will detect a script and ask some question like, "This appears to be a program. Many programs contain viruses. Would you like to execute it anyway?" -- somewhat like the warning in Windows, isn't it?

    Well, that is not what I said it should do. It should allow you to save it to disk, or open it in notepad. PERIOD. End of story. Most people will not find where they saved it to. It would slow these things down. A worm/virus would not be able to propagate so quickly if this was done.They need to fix this problem.

    The point about permissions is a good one, but it is often useful to be able to execute an attachment in an e-mail, and if Linux/Unix ever manages to rise above the micro-level as a desktop OS, these problems will follow.

    About the only good thing I can thing of is to view an image. Everything else should be saved to disk or opened in a text editor. It dosent matter what OS it is ;)

  • [looks at the UnixWare 7 box on the shelf and laughs]

    I've seen some impressive uptimes and some seemingly bulletproof implementations, but tt's not my ball of wax either.. It's BSD for servers and Linux for playtime..
  • I can't see many of these as major problems. I don't get
    this one at all:


    A modular IP4 stack. Linux -should- be capable of running as an
    IPv6-only system.

    Why?

  • If you "Reverse the Polarity" of his statements on the basis that he is lying, because any Business related statement is necessairily a lie , then what he's plain as day saying is:

    Customers demand that Monterey have the ability to run Linux applications.

    Our customers are dropping us for Linux, so let's pretend we're Linux and hope nobody notices the difference.

    However, we are not ready to flip to the view that sees Linux as the be-all, end-all of operating system software.

    We know Linux is the Alpha and the Omega, but if we pretend we don't know that we know then we don't have to find new jobs.

    Products are more than the sum of their technologies - they involve a network of relationships with resellers, ISVs, and customers.

    Our product is dead. We have no product. But we still have some customers.. for now... so let's call them our 'product'.

    We are very concerned about fragmentation.

    Remember that you Linux-panting customers... I'ts gonna be a minefield for you...

    First, it's a marketplace for us to sell our Linux Professional Services

    ...so let us be the ones to guide you through that minefield.

  • Moderate this to a five now! Regarding boot managers, XOSL is the best looking boot manager on the market, easily outclassing Caldera Bootmagic and NTLDR in terms of friendliness. It is also licensed under the GPL. The only deficiancy is that, right now, it can't pass options to the Linux kernel like LILO can - if someone with experience in this area would like to contribute this feature, the world would be a better place. If you want to see this piece of gorgeousness, and start hacking the source code to implement those extra lilo features, visit www.xosl.com
  • Not SCO-related, but . . . The last one of these (well made) points is the most important for your non-savvy end user. Would help alot in the battle vs. MicroLimp.
  • You can never protect a total idiot from himself, but unless he was surfing and reading email as !!!!!!!ROOT!!!!!!! the script would only execute with his personal login's permissions. The box would never ever get hosed, and any PERSONAL USER files deleted/etc could be restored from backups. If a company doesn't do backups then it deserves whatever happens, hell a junior admin with a coke will eventually destroy a big chunk of your company's data.

  • with the goal of making a true SCO Linux/Unix (they own the Unix trademark, no?)

    UNIX [unix-systems.org]® is a registered trademark of Open Group, but if SCO were successful in bringing the GNU/Linux system up to the Single UNIX® Specification, it could license the trademark.

  • You know how, after working on a certain type of system enough, you get this internal jive with it? The way the shell responds, the constant momentary lag when you ps.. The feel of the machine.. They feel BSDish. Actually, they feel just like System 3000, which was kind of a SysV / 4.4BSD halfbreed with compat bolt-ons in both directions..
  • You write--


    More advanced encryption. IPSec's cool, but the FreeSWAN team can't do everything on their own. EnSKIP needs =SERIOUS= work to be usable - I don't know who's maintaining it now, but it's web site died of terminal chronitis. And the International Patches need updating, and adding to. There are more FREE encryption algorithms on heaven and earth than drempt of by the current maintainer.


    I reply--

    Free != Good. Bad crypto is generally agreed to be far worse than no crypto at all, and as soon as we put every algorithm under the sun in the kernel, people whine(correctly) about bloat.

    I'd much rather have development on faster yet still provably secure RNG's--particularly hardware RNG's--than Yet Another Untrusted Algorithm.

    Symmetric Algorithmwise, DES and 3DES are about the only game in town for customer satisfaction, though IDEA, Twofish, and CAST-128 each have their own adherents. The RC series is generally used because it's cheap and ridiculously easy--people can both code it themselves(sometimes in Javascript) *and* trust it. Rare combo.

    Assymmetrically, nobody trusts much more than the old standbys--Diffie Helman and RSA. Elliptical Curve Cryptography, a field basically based on the presumption that there's no Diffie-Helman style way to simplify their equation and thus far fewer bits are necessary for identical keystrengths, is still maturing--and it's been around for years now!

    Hashwise, MD5 is standard but kind of grumbled about, and SHA-1 is trusted but people generally don't like the NSA involvement. RIPEMD-160 is about the only other hash I've heard that actually has some mass behind it.

    XOR is unfortunately still disturbingly common. *Sigh* poor coders writing their own algorithms *sigh*...

    Anyway, I flat out say: Keep the number of algorithms in the kernel low, for the minimum reason of forcing people to STOP USING AWFUL ONES.

    That being said, John Gilmore *himself* is funding IPSec work for Linux, but it's quite a chore. Given the ridiculously successful pppd and rp-pppoe projects, part of me wonders just how much of IPSec really should be done in the kernel.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • These answers were as sanitized, bleached-white, corn-flakes with no sugar, blue pants/white shirt/red tie/wingtips, cut short combed across the top, Reader's Digest, go to bed at 9PM inoffensive as any comments that I've read in a long time.

    That scares me! From the answers, I can't tell anything about the man (or was it a woman? I can't tell!) who wrote them. He gave us nothing really personal, nothing to indicate that he has a different opinion than me about anything. I find that disappointing. Interviews with ESR or RMS at least let you find out what the person really thinks, and what their values might be.
  • I am consistantly tickled by writing that comes from upper mangement! It says (in a highly circuitous fashion) just about nothing with a great many words. This one may have to enter my collection!
  • In reply to the 'what is Linux' question, McCrabb sez:

    First, it's a marketplace for us to sell our Linux Professional Services. There is a great demand for companies that have no idea how to add the power of Linux to their complex computing environments.

    Well, SCO certainly ranks up there as a company with no idea how to do much of anything, especially add 'the power of Linux' to a complex computing environment.

    Refreshing that an executive would baldy admit to his company's cluelessness, tho.

    SCO, and everyone else who makes money selling commodity operating systems, get ready for dodo-fi-cation. Once the big kids decide to take 'OS Sales' off of their balance sheets and move that income over to pure services, you guys are dead.

    Hmm, hey, I can think of one other big company that makes a lot of money selling a crappy OS... :P I bet within the next year or so, we'll start hearing about M$'s 'services division' cropping up.

    --
    blue

  • Re:Business Justification (Score:4)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @08:03AM (#1089640)
    These businesses are more interested in criteria like reliability, availability, and scalability.

    How do these large businesses justify buying MS "innovations" if they are more interested in criteria like reliability, availability and scalability?

    Several possible reasons:

    • They are writing software for the Windows platfrom so they have to use, work and develop on Windows.
    • They swallow the MS marketing without delving below the surface.
    • Hardware and software procurement is handled by a different department to the development team.
    • Support contracts are waved in their direction.
    • They don't believe that something which is 'free' or 'cheap' could possibly be as good as something you have to pay megabucks for.

    I could go on. Some of the reasons are obvious - if your product is aimed at Windows, you have to develop on Windows at least some of the time. On the other hand, the people who pay for the hardware/software may be disjoint from the team of people who really use the machines. Or there is the usual catch that if you deploy an office-load of Windows machines so that the employees will have a familiar platform to work on, there is a natural bias to round it off with a Windows server. The availability of other options may not even be explored. And with MS moving towards greater 'integration' of server and client machines (i.e. Windows 2000 Active Directory, MS Kerberos, etc.) that trend will stay.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Mild Amusement (Score:3)

    by Outland Traveller ( 12138 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @08:05AM (#1089641)
    I got a little kick out of this section which seems to have escaped proof-reading.

    "... There is a great demand for companies that have no idea how to add the power of Linux to their complex computing environments."

    I think LinuxOne has already wrapped up this market :)

    -OT
  • > > A modular IP4 stack. Linux -should- be capable of running as an IPv6-only system.

    > Why?

    For the purpose of providing the user an ability to choose between IPv4 in kernel, IPv6 in kernel, both in kernel, or neither in kernel. Is this a problem with the current Linux 2.x architecture anywhere? It doesn't look to me like there's an IPv4 module, just an IPv6 module. That's not good - IPv4 should be modularized, unless doing so would give the competition a specific set of advantages over Linux if such a change was made.

    Blah, I should log in, but
  • Actually, it is.

    http://slashdot.com/ [slashdot.com]

  • Three possibilities.

    First, if you're on a complex corporate LAN and want to make maximum use of the network and the machines, you're going to be better off with IPv6 as the protocol (as it's much more efficient). But, in that case, the IPv4 stack, which is large to start off with, is now hogging space in the computer, both for the now-useless code, and for the router table that will never be used. Makes much more sense to free up those resources for modules that are needed.

    Secondly, if you're running an extranet (ie: a virtual network of computers that depend on an external network to connect together), but DON'T want any security risks, you have two choices:

    1. Have OpenBSD on the gateways, with ultra-paranoid firewalls & proxies, with ALL the attendent uncertainty, bottleneck, overheads, etc.
    2. Use IPv6-only machines, which have NO IPv4 stack.
    The first solution depends on you filling holes faster than crackers can find them. The latter depends ONLY on the fact that you can't crack a machine you can't see, address or talk to.

    Last, but by no means least, nobody's going to encourage the application writers, the ISPs or the backbone routers to support IPv6 until a significant number of -popular- sites are not available any other way.

    If Slashdot and Freshmeat were to migrate to IPv4/IPv6 tomorrow, for example, and then aim to go pure IPv6 in, oh, a year, I'd give good odds on every major corporation, backbone router and ISP on the face of the planet to have an IPv6 stack within a week, with or without authorization. (Not because of the dangers of being Slashdotted, but because the techies in charge of the routers are very likely Slashdot and Freshmeat addicts.)

  • Yes, he was really quite clear. Their own OS is dead. Their customers are moving to Linux. We want our customers to think Linux has problems, so they'll ask us to help. And meanwhile we'll invent proprietary tools. Tools that aren't OS's or web servers or... gee, we'll have to think of something...
  • I've used a couple of flavors of SCO Unix. Frankly, I was less than impressed. However, they have a well-oiled business machine and a lot of channels to sell this stuff. The geeks laugh, and the suits buy.

    So far, SCO has been scared to death of Linux. I've been to a VAR conference in the mid '90's where the quote was "Linux? Linux? Linux is for people who want their tech support from Finland!". A year or so back, one of their officers railed against Red Hat's fraudulent business model ("they're selling you an OS that they don't own!").

    They don't have to be scared anymore. They can ride this train all the way to the bank, and unseat Red Hat besides.

    Here's the plan. Start by making SCO Unix Linux-compatible. That is, put a patch into SCO to allow it to run Linux x86 binaries, and then release a copylefted patch to allow Linux boxen to run SCO binaries. Then, start merging their source with that of their favorite distro, with the goal of making a true SCO Linux/Unix (they own the Unix trademark, no?). The SCO distro, with a lot of basis in SCO code, will have been built from the ground up to be server use, not home use. SCO Linux will be industrial-strength Linux.

    SCO takes on the business plan of any distro. But (and this is the biggie), they have more employee-centuries experience selling it, employee-centuries building it, and a bigger intercorporate distribution network than any two Linux distributions put together. Finally, they have corporate trust. From the suit perspective: why buy a support contract from those hippie-dudes at your average Linux distro when you can deal with the suits at SCO Linux?

    SCO makes money increasing their market share (though losing in licensing fees), they free up their development army to do support (since most of the fixes come from the outside when you're a Linux distro), the suits sleep easy with the SCO reputation behind their purchase, and the geeks get a platform with all the advantages of Linux plus SCO's own extras regarding industrial strength use. Everybody goes home happy.

  • > As I understand it, the biggest difference
    > between the MPL and the GPL is that with the MPL
    > you have to assign the changes back to Netscape.

    The *NPL* gives Netscape special rights to redistribute your changes in closed source products (not the same thing as assigning changes back to Netscape). Substantial new code (i.e. new files) being added to Mozilla by third parties is generally being added under the *MPL*, which is similar to the NPL but gives Netscape no special rights.

    > As I further understand it, this is because
    > Netscape wants to make money from your work (if
    > it was to "benefit the community" they would let
    > you distribute your own copy of Moz)

    They do let you distribute your own copy of Moz (both NPL and MPL licensed code), so your comment is basically wrong.

    It's true that Netscape wants to be able to release closed-source products based on their own source code, even after it has been modified by others, thus the NPL. This does not seem to be a big deal.

    Even RMS agrees that the NPL and MPL are free software licenses.
  • Looks a lot like The Onion [theonion.com]... this could be a new addition to their "Ask a..." series... "Ask a Floundering Marketroid President of a Failing Tech Company". Or something. I suppose that is offensive... but it does look very like those articles.
  • SCO used to earn and still earns its money
    with the selling of SCO Unixware and OpenServer
    OS and user Licenses. Wanna run it on a 8 way
    Xeon machine? Ohoh you need to buy 7 extra CPU
    Licenses. This is not done. certainly not today.
    Wanna run an extra SCO Server, well you buy
    all that stuff for the second time. Nah lets
    forget about that, just hand me that redhat 6.1
    cdrom. Even Stef can install it, so...

    If SCO wants to survive it needs to change its
    focuspoint from commodity OS sales into something
    different. What it eventually will become I don't
    know. Best thing for SCO is that they have an
    excellent technical crew. So if they ran out
    of money, they should have themselves bought
    by a company which *does* have a vivid bussines
    plan.

    Robert

  • Well, the key phrase in your post is "our mail clients", as if there was some board of directors making decisions about what goes into mail clients.

    If non-technical users used Unix regularly, I guarantee the power level of mail clients would rise dramatically. At some point, the mail client will detect a script and ask some question like, "This appears to be a program. Many programs contain viruses. Would you like to execute it anyway?" -- somewhat like the warning in Windows, isn't it? But the users will do it anyway.

    The point about permissions is a good one, but it is often useful to be able to execute an attachment in an e-mail, and if Linux/Unix ever manages to rise above the micro-level as a desktop OS, these problems will follow.


    --

  • What did you want? Him to tell you what toothpaste he uses in the morning? What "personal" information did you want?

    Every question that was asked, he gave basically a straight answer. Give me an example of question that you feel he dodged.


    --

  • Oy Vey. Here we go again........

    It was the Unix part (specifically stuff that came from Sun, not really Unix's fault)

    Wasn't Sun's fault either. Yes, the system that went down was an E10K, and yes, it was a bug in Solaris that caused the outage, but the bug was already known, and there was a patch for it available before the outage occured. eBay's admin(s) simply neglected to install the patch.

  • Sure, but that doesn't help in the case of a virus like "ILOVEYOU". All it would have to do is scan for e-mail addresses (from your address book), and start sending e-mails. That doesn't require root access.


    --

  • I used to run Xenix-286 2.3.2 on a 286@6mhz with 1mb of ram and a 40mb RLL disk :) Though I'm not sure what kind of application any SCO OS really has today, though MMDF is pretty cool, if you need a unixlike OS on some really pitiful hardware, Xenix is the way to go.

    As far as open deathtrap (Thank you, Jason Abbott) and its descendents go, I say fooey. It's big and slow and until recently, nothing compiled on it out of the box... And tons of software still doesn't. BAH, and also HUMBUG.

  • Correction to a statement by the interviewer: SGI is not phasing out IRIX. They are continuing to use IRIX on their MIPS boxes, and are expending a lot of programmer time on IRIX development. I've seen their ten-year product roadmap, and basically calls for both IRIX/MIPS and LINUX/Intel for the forseeable future. Notice how they're doing parallel releases of similar MIPS and Intel boxes. This phase-out myth stems from SGI's usual sloppy marcom, and from their decision to not to port IRIX to their Intel boxes.
  • This is a president that "wrote" those replys. Presidents don't just know how to speak marketeze. It's almost their native language.

    SCO is also a reasonably 'old' company. I'm sure that they know both the value and the danger of FUD (from both sides of the weapon). For a president of SCO to just come out and say something like 'oh, well we're going to be dropping support for SCO unix in 3 years) would be like dropping a 500KG FUD bomb in the middle of their prime market.
    It's just not foing to happen
    --

  • Am I missing something or did a lot of this seem to be non-answers?

  • hrm... (Score:2)

    by dentin ( 2175 )
    Seems fairly content free. Kinda like this post.

    I can't say I really expected anything else though. The answers were obviously filtered very heavily by legal and/or other staff. They are too dry and form factor to be anything else.

    -dennis towne
  • These businesses are more interested in criteria like reliability, availability, and scalability.

    How do these large businesses justify buying MS "innovations" if they are more interested in criteria like reliability, availability and scalability?
    I'm not trying to be a troll here, I'm just really curious about the justification here. Especially will the recent wave viruses and the known fact that Windows is neither reliable nor secure.

    Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

  • SCO's position: "sort of". (Score:4)

    by orabidoo ( 9806 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @07:21AM (#1089660) Homepage
    They feel the heat in the market place, they see their customers switching over to Linux or BSD, so they've realized they need to 1) take Linux seriously, and 2) worry about making money with it. But they still haven't understood that "you don't want to compete with a successful open source project unless you're MUCH better". and SCO and Unixware do have some strong points over Linux, but they're not MUCH better, certainly not in a way that Linux can't thoroughly catch up in a matter of, say, six months. SGI saw it and did the right thing: keep improving IRIX, but for the long term see Linux as its replacement. IBM saw it and did the right thing: dump their proprietary webserver and switch to Apache. I believe SCO will end up having to do the same with their OSs, and the longer it takes them, the more money they'll waste in the process.

  • Do you smell what Marketing is cooking? (Score:3)

    by M-2 ( 41459 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @07:11AM (#1089661) Homepage

    (Apologies for catchphrase theft.)

    All of these read like a marketing guy putting out "Oh, Linux, how cute...". Talking about how there's stuff that they don't want to compete with (I'd love to see lex, personally). And the line about "We believe that proprietary software will continue to thrive and interact with the Open Source Movement." sounded very much like getting added on "Especially if we can stick in stuff that we can charge megabucks for." Note their commentary about hot-plug PCI, and journaling filesystems.

    The bit about 'What is Linux to SCO'... jd, that was a brilliant question. He danced around that pretty well. "Well, it's something we can sell, and something we can sell stuff with, and something we can sell stuff with later."

    I'm seeing way more Marketroidisms in here than I'd hope to see. Too bad we couldn't ask an admin at SCO.
    ----

  • Re:Do you smell what Marketing is cooking? (Score:3)

    by spiralx ( 97066 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @07:25AM (#1089662)

    Well obviously a large company like SCO are going to go over their answers thoroughly before they post them somewhere like /. where people will pick at and take issue with the smallest detail. Given some of the attitudes seen here everyday there was no way they were ever going to come out and be totally upfront and honest. Besides, it's not how 99% of businesses work.

    Also, considering that as a company they ignored Linux for such a long time, they are understandably going to be cautious about making firm statements and plans about something for which they are not sure of future viability. The statements made in this interview were very cautious, in fact probably a bit too cautious. This is where a lot of the vaugeness has crept in IMHO.

  • Many might take issue with the brevity of the replies, but it seems to me that he answered the question pretty straight-up.

    The biggest thing I took from this is that SCO doesn't actually know what they're going to do in the future, and that playing an awful lot of the current plan by ear.


    --

  • NT is not my favorite operating system either, but that doesn't mean that you can't make it reliable and secure. First of all, the "recent wave of viruses" having nothing to do with servers (and indeed, the ILOVEYOU virus has little to do with Windows. Linux could be susceptible to a similar type of virus written as a shell script).

    You need an example? OK -- eBay. They use a cluster of NT servers for the front end, and Unix for the back-end. You know those big outages they had? It was the Unix part (specifically stuff that came from Sun, not really Unix's fault), not the NT part.

    NT is less reliable than Unix, that is true. But a lot of problems can be overcome if you have support contracts from Microsoft and you have redundant clustering.


    --

  • All in all, not bad. (Score:5)

    by coreybrenner ( 19101 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @07:27AM (#1089665)
    My take on these answers is that the guy did answer them in a straightforward, sensible fashion.

    Linux is not the end-all-be-all of operating systems technology, nor will it be for a long, long time (if ever).

    There are many issues to discuss, including the availability issue. Issues such as hot-plug PCI, journalling filesystems, etc. are not just playtoys; they are real, necessary technologies that will bar entry into the "enterprise". Linux does not currently have these technologies in its repertoir (though they are being worked diligently on).

    When Linux has this stuff, then it can compete feature-for-feature with commercial Unices. Until then, it cannot. That's not to say that it has no place beside them - it obviously does - and that's not to say that it won't eventually catch up - it obviously will.

    That is the reason SCO is showing interest in Linux, and why Monterey will require Linux binary compatibility. They expect Linux to be a large share of that market, and a growing concern.

    But, we should welcome their input with open arms. Though SCO's stuff has lacked in flexibility and performance in the past, they do have some great technology, and my theory is that they will eventually contribute it.

    The more, the merrier.

    --Corey

  • Re:All in all, not bad. (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Friday May 05, 2000 @08:16AM (#1089666) Homepage Journal
    I dunno.
    • ReiserFS is stable enough to be considered a part of the Linux repetoir, and is now shipped as standard on a number of distributions.
    • SGI's FS is almost complete and may become a de-facto part of 2.4, even if it's not actually shipped with the kernel.
    • IBM's JFS is a little further behind, but is also nearing completion. Once it's ported to the 2.4 series, it may also become a de-facto part of the kernel.
    • ext3fs is waaay out, and is barely creeping along. Which is a pity, as a transparent upgrade would make things easier for a lot of people.

    In other words, SCO's "assistance" will NOT (as claimed) make journalling possible. Rather, it will merely make Linux journalling rather better publicised.

    Hot-pluggable PCI is, as you say, being developed which (again!) makes SCO's claim of being essential to make this technology possible less than credible.

    Linux' bigger problems, which I -don't- see SCO helping much with, are:

    • A relatively slow TCP/IP stack. This does need improvement.
    • A modular IP4 stack. Linux -should- be capable of running as an IPv6-only system.
    • Read/Write for ALL non-RO filesystems
    • B1-support (being worked on by SGI)
    • Drivers for MANY more devices
    • Application Detection (for when >1 package management system is used, or for when users install tarballs.)
    • A function-by-function review of the entire kernel, for memory leaks and security holes
    • A filesystem converter. Many users migrating from another Unix or Windows will have data on partitions formatted under another OS. Sure, Linux can read those! But if it's speed-critical, you want to be able to have the partition converted to ReiserFS or ext2fs, without faffing around with making a new partition, copying stuff across, etc.
    • More development on Berlin! It's a good system, and I think it'd blow X out the water if it were completed, but at the going rate, the Universe will have either collapsed into a singularity or decayed into radiation long before version 1 comes out. Which would make it a little cumbersome to use.
    • A better boot-manager. LILO is the most flexible, by far, but it doesn't cut it any more, interface-wise. As I've said before, even Shoestring offered a more usable front-end.
    • More advanced encryption. IPSec's cool, but the FreeSWAN team can't do everything on their own. EnSKIP needs =SERIOUS= work to be usable - I don't know who's maintaining it now, but it's web site died of terminal chronitis. And the International Patches need updating, and adding to. There are more FREE encryption algorithms on heaven and earth than drempt of by the current maintainer.
    • IPv6-izing. By now, ALL network apps should be IPv6-aware, and be capable of exploiting IPv6's features. I doubt as many as 1% have been made IPv6-aware.
    • Split-Modes on X11. Yes, this IS important. It should be possible, under X11, to display more than one resolution and/or colour depth on the same monitor at the same time. For something like CAD or CAM work, for the edit panel, resolution is more important than having a fantastic colour range. For the menu bars and information panel, colour can contain a lot of information, making it more important than mere resolution. Having a one-size-fits-all screen is a compromise that satisfies neither requirement. A split-resolution screen, though, fits both.

  • Re:fp (Score:1)

    by El ( 94934 )
    One doesn't get to be the president of a division by making statements that somebody can point to later as incorrect. Hence the Q. "What's 2 plus two?" A. "How much would you like it to be?" style.

    Add to this that SCO has been blasted in the past for making asinine statements about Linux, mostly due to their well-founded fear of Linux eating into their revenues. So yes, I'm sure several staffers inspected these replies closely to make sure they were guaranteed 100% content-free, and thus safe for release. Which explains the long delay in answering, doesn't it?

    He does imply a good point, though: transaction processing systems command big bucks in business, and as of yet I haven't seen any open source alternatives. SCO is probably planning on transitioning from an OS company to a middleware company. The only problem is, due to their long track record of arrogance and greed, they've probably already generated negative associations amongst many potential enterprise clients, so IMHO a company starting from scratch would have a better chance of succeeding than one carrying the baggage of Larry Michael's legacy.

  • How can someone use so many words, without saying anything?
    --
  • There is no doubt that the feedback to these questions was 'edited' before leaving the SCO house. And I'll grant that a lot of the replies were buzzword and marketing phrase heavy, but what did we really expect?

    For the most part the answers appear to at least somewhat upfront if not always definite.

    The tone of the response seems to be one of */linux OS are somewhat inferior and nonstandard products. SCO comes across as the more reliable, concerned and wiser older brother of OSs ... wanting to pander to the whims of the community at least in appearance. They appear to want to go along with the movement, but I didn't see mention of specific contributions they will actually make to the linux kernels, drivers, etc.

    But this type of behavior is fairly consistent among large corporations, imho. IBM, Microsoft, and others have always pushed their own standards and/or tried to take over up and coming standards. All the while pushing their proprietary tools/apps/hardware.

    And in all fairness, wouldn't we all be tempted.
    Let us hope that their software engineers come out (some of them probably already do) and contribute some help to linux through work or donation of SCO code that they can open source.

    Just my little bit of thought and blabber....
  • That's sweet. That is like business school poetry or something. Or maybe something Data would say. Where do they get that kind of stuff, is there a book I can get? I'd like to start including phrases like that in my vocabulary and probably some of my poetry.

  • I think that your three points are dead on, but I'm not sure that this means that they 'get it'. I just remember a quote from Warren Buffett, quoting someone else about Noah. "You get more points for building arks than for predicting rain". In other words, they may or may not understand the realities of Open Source, but even if they do, that doesn't mean that SCO as an institution can adapt.

    Let's have some sympathy for SCO. They face a competitor with more developers, more QA people and a larger, faster growing market share. Their opponent's costs are zero, and their price is extremely reasonable (not zero-- remember support and equipment costs for linux users). This competitor has not only outsourced everything, it has also somehow gotten its customers to do product development!

    Everything SCO does is influenced by its business model. The problem is that it turns out that software is better made and sold the way healthcare is than the way milk is. Look how Apple thrashed around before Gil Amelio and later Steve Jobs went in and performed major surgery.

    The problem is that profit opportunities presented by Linux are tremendous, but require companies to rethink themselves. Providing server tools and hood ornaments will work for a while, but eventually they have to start thinking of software as a service. This means reworking everything-- sales/marketting, management, development, QA, everything. You're practically building a brand new company from scratch.

    Someday, maybe next year, maybe in ten years, the Open Source paradigm will be replaced by something better. It will require all of us to reevaluate our assumptions. It won't be easy, because we won't even recognize the newcomer until it is too late. In fact, that replacement might already be out there. When that time comes, we'll each have to decide how ourselves and our companies will react.

    Maybe we'll ignore the problem and use our by-then-significant power to try to put off the inevitable (MS). Maybe we'll give the problem lip service, try to make changes at the margins so that we can keep going more or less as we are (SCO, IMHO, and plenty of others). Or maybe we'll realize that this is the Way Things Will Be, and refocus completely. (Netscape? maybe...)

    When all our treasured assumptions are trashed by something new on the horizon, will we adapt or wait until it is too late? "Destruction is easy, and Creation is hard" goes the cliche-- well Change is the hardest one of them all.

    I don't envy SCO's position, and I totally understand their cautious tone. I don't blame them for being wary. Nope, not one bit.

  • That doesn't sound reasonable to me, considering the thing went down at 5-6 times, and you know Sun was out there every time trying to fix it. If it was a simple as "loading the current patches", I think once would have been enough.


    --

  • SCO has continued to work with Unixware, but I haven't heard of any major releases beyond version 7. Monterey will be a different animal because of the "64bitness" and the folding in of stuff from AIX (if there are others besides IBM and SCO on this, I'm probably missing them). Monterey of course will start out at version 1. If it requires as many patches just to keep it stable and running as Unixware 7.0, then I would rather run Linux-64 until Monterey is in version 2+. My company ships alot of machines loaded with Unixware, but the main reason I think goes back to a) partnerships and b) somebody to point a finger at when something goes wrong. I think there are technical aspects to be worked on in Linux yet, but the bigger issue is the support and the scapegoat when something doesn't work. I know there are organizations providing this yet, but they seem to try to market to me. They need to direct their salespitch at my managers. If we had a good corporate scapegoat that could offer decent support, it would go a lot further in getting Linux shipped ( at least from here ).

  • SCO (Score:2)

    by tsikora ( 6430 )
    McCrabb:
    It's clear that Linux will introduce changes into the pricing equation
    Translation:
    Were screwed

    McCrabb:
    There is a great demand for companies that have no idea how to add the power of Linux to their complex computing environments.
    Translation:
    We know nothing about Linux and have no idea how to use it.

    McCrabb
    We care about the success of the Linux market more than ever.
    Translation:
    Linux saved our ass and every other Unix.

    McCrabb:
    Customers demand that Monterey have the ability to run Linux applications.
    Translation:
    Without Linux compatibility nobody will want it.

    McCrabb:
    SCO *will have products that speak to all levels of the market at prices that compete on the terms of the particular market.
    Translation:
    *We are really screwed!

  • McCrabb:
    It's clear that Linux will introduce changes into the pricing equation
    Translation:
    We need to drop prices so the PHBs think we're cheaper, but not free since they're scared of that.

    McCrabb:
    There is a great demand for companies that have no idea how to add the power of Linux to their complex computing environments.
    Translation:
    We can use our Unix skills to quickly learn enough about Linux differences to allow us to make up the money we lost on cheaper licenses by selling training. And the PHBs will buy from us, since they don't trust the scruffy Linux pengoids anyways.

    McCrabb
    We care about the success of the Linux market more than ever.
    Translation: still
    Linux saved our ass and every other Unix.

    McCrabb:
    Customers demand that Monterey have the ability to run Linux applications.
    Translation: still
    Without Linux compatibility nobody will want it.

    McCrabb:
    SCO *will have products that speak to all levels of the market at prices that compete on the terms of the particular market.
    Translation:
    We will sell cheap where Linux is breathing down our necks, and make up the cash on the training and the parts that noone realizes there are Linux solutions for yet.

  • A better boot-manager. LILO is the most flexible, by far, but it doesn't cut it any more, interface-wise. As I've said before, even Shoestring offered a more usable front-end.

    GRUB [gnu.org] offers the best boot loader in the business. Caldera offers it in eDesktop. As well, I believe a BSD or two use it.

    btw, I'm a bit biased as I work for Caldera.

  • ? Do you really think SCO's shareholders would read that interview on slashdot to see if he says something they don't like ? Or did they check on his answers before he sent them back ? I'm sure some marteking/legal departements at SCO did, but as for shareholders... I would'nt expect them to watch the company's president THAT closely. And, anyway, if it was so sure that we would get proto-marketodroid answers from that guy, why interview him in the first place ?
  • Just go to their site and order the free versions. I believe you pay ( a surprisingly large fee ) for shipping, handling and media.

    I have worked with Open Server and it's predecessors for many years. SCO is rock solid for character based apps over serial connections. Unfortunately, their networking is unstable. MAC addresses mysteriously vanishing from the ARP cache, never being refreshed. No support for NAT (masquerading). A broken ppp implementation, with no intent to fix it. That sort of thing....
    But Linux/FreeBSD is as stable in non-networked situations and much more capable and stable on networks. Why bother with SCO?

    -Steve Bergman
  • Do you really think SCO's shareholders would read that interview on slashdot to see if he says something they don't like ?

    Not very many of them. But some may. And reporters and stock analists read slashdot (I don't know if it is just a few, or lots).

    But not many need too. If CNNFN's reporter sees a nice jucy quote, it'll go somewhere SCO's shareholders do read. If it is east-bumfuck's reporter, and they print it, you can bet other reporters will reprint it later.

    Intresting news travels. Far beyond slashdot.

  • Hmmm... Well, I guess your assumption is correct, but if I only use the software for printing greeting cards, or some other printer utility, I'm not really saying that I'm doing too much with the software. I guess I need to ask them what exactly they mean by auditing rights. Their Tech Supt. has always made quick responses to all my questions. Thanks for pointing this out.
  • nope read it, sems like more of ye olde bs marketing speak....
  • Thanks! I glanced through the answers, the first time, but read more carefully when I saw your post. You're absolutely right about him dancing round it. I'll award him 6.8 6.9 for that.

    There was -some- degree of definiteness about support for companies that have made up their minds to use Linux, and the porting of Tarantella, but after that he managed to use a good number of buzzwords without actually saying much.

    (ObSemi-Relevent Question, re Buzzword Bingo: Ok, who got a Full House on the answers?)

  • The answer posted to my question is brief, as one expects from sound-bite journalism, but reading between the lines we can get a fair idea of SCO's current plans:

    1) They think there needs to be someone between "the customer" and Linux, and they want to be one of those people. Conclusion: Either an SCO Linux distribution, or a "strategic partnership" relationship with an established distribution.

    2) It seems they realize that the raw OS space is going or gone - points for that. They can't just come out and say it with new versions of Unixware et al on the way, but it does seem they're starting to get a glimpse of the forest.

    3) They're thinking "value-add" - stuff that runs on top of Linux that provide services not normally provided by a stock distribution. I can't think of anything in this space not already served by a good existing Free app (webserver? LDAP server?) or someone with huge market share (Oracle?) but perhaps the end-goal is systems integration.

    For their sake, I hope the long-term plan IS systems integration and other services, because if they're thinking of new sever-side "killer apps" then their lunch is going to get eaten AGAIN as soon as the Free version of whatever-it-is is developed.

    How 'bout that - maybe SCO is starting to Get It.

  • What did you expect??

    This is an interview with a President, not with an engineering team leader.

    The only game there is to play here is the "let's see if we can generate loads of comments on slashdot and be told that we have a 'clue' by some teenagers."

    It's a game not worth playing.

    They got asked strategic questions, and they gave strategic answers. Would you rather that SCO was a company where no-one vetted what a President released as public relations? Do you really think that if the CEO of VA Linux or Red Hat writes to a /. forum that the PR department wouldn't read it through first?
  • RMS and ESR don't have to answer to company shareholders if they say something stupid. Of course, he's going to be careful. If he comes out and says, "Linux is dead!" then there goes all their credibility as a Linux support vendor. We already know they don't have much with the OSS crowd and really needed to approach this carefully. On the flip side, if he comes out and says, "SCO Unix is dead!, long live Linux" their clueless shareholders and possibly some of their customers will go balistic. I think its clear that SCO is trying to play both sides of the fence. They're trying to cater to the "Open Source Sympathizers" and the "Business as Usual Crowd".

    I'm skeptical of SCO's long term intentions, but I think he handled himself well. And I honestly got exactly what I expected from this article.
  • When I rented a a floor sander from Taylor Rental to redo the wood floors in my house I discovered that they use SCO to network all their rental locations. Unfortunately the reason I learned this is because the system went down on Sunday and nobody working knew how to reboot the system or the login.

  • Lame answers except for one (Score:3)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @07:42AM (#1089687)
    This was all bizspeak ("remain to be seen", "product space", "ISV", "relationships") except for the first answer. That one answer alone made this interview worthwhile, I think. SCO Gets It.

    That answer indicates they clearly aren't trying to be like Netscape (*gasp* he's about to drag the queen through the mud!) and get free development and bugtesting but continue to reap the commercial profits solely for themselves*. "Current project maintainers" and "code available as a reference not as competition" sounds like exactly what we like: Make your IP available to us because a rising tide lifts all boats.

    *As I understand it, the biggest difference between the MPL and the GPL is that with the MPL you have to assign the changes back to Netscape. As I further understand it, this is because Netscape wants to make money from your work (if it was to "benefit the community" they would let you distribute your own copy of Moz). If I'm wrong, let me know. In any case, my above point about SCO remains the same.
    --
    Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
  • they take a fresh look at the market. they see their customers switching over to linux, so they've realized they need to take linux seriously and work out how to about making money from it. the problem is this: they still haven't understood that you don't want to switch from with an open source project unless you're better and open ended enough so there aren't any limits to the program. sco does have some advantages over linux, but they're not especially better - certainly not in a way that linux won't catch up in a matter time. sgi saw it and did the right thing: focus on what they have that other os's don't/can't do, but for the long term see linux as its dominance on the other side of the market place. i think that sco will end up having to do the same with their os, and the longer it takes them, the more money they'll loose in the process.
  • That's a Nixon-ism from Watergate. My opinion of SCO went down a few points when I saw that they let that get into an official statement.
  • Hey, I wouldn't be complaining if SCO pushed a couple of demo copies of OS and UW into my hands.. Their products do rock in a old-school, BSDish sort of way..

    Besides, they were salesmen. They make more money per unit off their commercial offerings than the VAS they provide for Linux. Until the model changes, they'll push OpenServer and UnixWare first and foremost.
  • May 1993, SCOC was trading at 12 dollars a share. Today, its under 8 (no splits in the interim). I don't think we can accuse these guys of maximize shareholder value for the long term ...
  • Linux could be susceptible to a similar type of virus written as a shell script).

    This is not a flame at you, but I would like to rebutt this statement. It's Waaaay Off Topic, but who cares about karma :)

    With any *nix OS, you will have to set the execute bit on the script before it will run. By allowing people to execute any old program from their mail client, you get these types of viruses. The reason we do not have these types of problems with our mail clients has EVERYTHING to do with the *nix security model. Just because a programs filename ends with .pl does not mean it will run. In an email client the same should be for .vbs .vbe .exe .doc .mdb .xls etc. Under windows you HAVE NO PROTECTION from yourself. What should have happened when someone clicked on those files, was prompt you to save the file or open in in notepad. Period. That would fix the problem, but I don't seem to see a hot patch from the windows email client vendors. I guess they don't care!

  • SCO Merge for Linux (Score:3)

    by bruceg ( 14365 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @09:29AM (#1089693) Homepage
    While on the SCO topic, I recently purchased a product called Win4Lin, which I guess, is a port of SCO Merge to Linux. This product is similar to VMWare, where you actually have to own a licensed copy of Win95/98, and load it in. Where it shines is performance. I have this running on my modest Pentium-120, with 96MB of RAM, and it seems fast. In fact, it boots Win98 second edition faster than a P-300 at work! Sound support is forthcoming, but so far it has run everything I've thrown at it! I'm very impressed, and the price is only $49.95. If you still have a few Win apps. which may never see the light of day on Linux (like my wifes greeting card software), I'd highly reccommend it. Not to mention that having a native windows color printer driver, is much better than anything ghostscript can currently do for me. Check it out here. [trelos.com]
  • Read/Write for ALL non-RO filesystems

    The problem with some of the file systems is the missing documentation -- take NTFS. There is write support, but it's still not stable. Microsoft just doesn't give away good specs. I can't see anyone but them helping there, and they probably have no interest in good NTFS drivers for free Unices. Bad luck...
  • I saw SCO's booth at the Linux Expo in Madrid last week, and asked how they relate to Linux. Their answer was "we sell software for it, and we'll sell more of it". Next thing they were giving me a demo copy of OpenServer and another of UnixWare, and practically begging me to install them and test them out!! so I wouldn't count on SCO actively supporting Linux very much so far. not that they have an obligation either...
  • SCO like any other OS company from way-back-when was/is in the business of selling OS code, utilities, some middleware & service. They made some efforts to accommodate third parties and OEMs for utilities and other ware that was either better or more accepted in the marketplace, generally a side effect of being the cheap Xnix alternative for Intel the application vendors actually wrote code for in the late 80's, early 90's. There was no useful NT/2000 SCO could afford to charge lots of money. As the market moved onward to other xNixen, Novell and the like SCO recognized that glucode, directories, filesystems and other infrastructure components were going to be the only avenue for revenue in the future. Look for example at Novell which is now pretty much the NDS company and Banyan which is also just a directory vendor. So what you end up with is SCO, a company with a strong following, fairly good OEM relations, ownership of a great deal of good technology such as SVR4 and a large installed base of small-midsize vertical business applications such as a big piece of the medical office management market. If they read the writing on the wall correctly they'll see that they should start trying to move that space into maintenance mode and work with applications vendors to port this stuff to Linux/Freenix/BSD what-have-you. Beef up the services arm and third party service partners. You see, now that for application vendors and customers in this space W2K is a viable alternative there is no incentive for SCO to charge anything for the xNix OS code itself and instead focus on solid infrastructure components, well built applications and service and maintenance. As almost a seperate function SCO can continue to develop enhancements for xNix and then decide if they can reasonably open source them or not. There are quite a few things that SCO is in a good position to develop for xNix such as better authentication and cleaner user administration. How about distributed directory services for xNix, or enhancements to Samba, or backup/storage management facilities. What about something simple like more robust terminal servers for the thousands of character terminal application installations out there?
  • I would not normaly bother to reply, but Yes, some of the things I work with use SCO.

  • Let's read between the lines here (Score:5)

    by jbarnett ( 127033 ) on Friday May 05, 2000 @07:49AM (#1089698) Homepage

    Shall we read inbetween the lines for a moment (this is for the people that have a disorder and can "hear" "marketing speak")

    It's clear that Linux will introduce changes into the pricing equation,

    Linux is cost effective as hell and making everyone look bad, including us!

    especially in the SMB market.

    and Linux sure is kicking Microsoft's ass, anyone that can stand to MS is one tough mofu. When Microsoft is out cold and we kick them? Can we stand behind Linux and mouth Microsoft and have Linux protect us from getting hurt?

    The details remain to be seen.

    We have no clue what we are doing, everyone here has been walking around a circle confused. Bob had a paper bag on his other day, it took him 2 hours to get it off, it was funny watching him run into things and paw at it.

    SCO is committed to its resellers and recognizes that they are being challenged to adapt to some of the new terms of this marketplace.

    We are starting to freak out, when need something here man! Can I use my lifeline to call someone? NO NO Regis this isn't our final answer! Come on, help old Gil out.

    SCO will have products that speak to all levels of the market at prices that compete on the terms of the particular market.

    We have a really good marketing and PR team and use them to save our arses.

    btw, this is a joke

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