SCO & Linux: If You Can't Beat 'Em

BugBBQ writes "The NetworkWorld Fusion News reports that SCO is going to jump on the bandwagon and produce its own Linux Distro. " The article also has some analysis of what the SCO folks could bring to the scene as well as what extras they have to add.

SCO can prolly do what Corel couldn't

Which is make Linux attractive to the suits.

Love 'em or hate 'em, SCO are a "name" to the Men With Big Chequebooks. And being a "name" is far, far more important than having a decent product or any trifling considerations like that.

However, SCO UNIX isn't actually all that bad and has a half-decent, tried and true support infrastructure behind it. SCO also have quite a lot of money.

I would be very interested to try out SCO Linux, just to see what a commercial UNIX vendor makes of this weird now-it's-SysV-now-it's-BSD-now-it's-POSIX-omigod-i t's-all-three thing we call Linux...
--

Finally!

A Linux distro with all the quality, completeness and usability of Xenix!!!

From the cryogenic chamber ..............

"SCO is in a unique position to dominate this [Linux] market," says Tony Iams, an analyst with D.H. Brown Associates, a Port Chester, N.Y., consulting firm. "They own the low-end Intel/ Unix market. They know this space like no one. They have a tremendous set of relationships with resellers and OEMs."

I must have missed something here. Has the science of cryogenics moved on so much that we can freeze an analyst for ten years, thaw him out and get an opinion ?

SCO and Small to Mid Businesses

I think this is where an SCO distro could really make some serious inroads. These are the companies that have a hard time maintaining fully licensed shops running commercial OS's and software.

Now, they will be able to get a stable, affordable solution from a company that they are already familiar with and can trust to provide the support they will need. (Yes, I know Red Hat provides support, but they're still not proven yet at the suit level).

And for mission critical apps, they can get their Unix box and linux support servers all from the same place now. Bring out a desktop distro with decent office apps and you can have the whole organization outfitted from the same place. Well, maybe not that yet... but this is a great start.

SCO is merely jumping on the bandwagon

I don't think that this was a great surprise to anyone. It was really only a matter of time before they released a Linux distribution. After all, what else is SCO good for if not following the leader? Sun releases free copies of Solaris/x86, SCO shortly thereafter announces the free version of UnixWare. Now that the other major Unix companies are switching to Linux, what can SCO do but tag along?

But SCO is doomed. Unlike SGI and Sun, SCO has no major products outside its operating systems. Any add-ons it offers are likely to be duplicated by Open Source Programs from someone else. What will they be then? A Linux distributer? Good luck.

And, quite frankly, I'm surprised that they didn't consider using BSD. A large percentage of SCO's usage comes from VARs who offer SCO-based products or services. Wouldn't it be better for a business if you used an operating system in which you didn't have to release all the changes you made? But I guess OpenBSD just wouldn't have the same press impact as Linux. Their loss.

When is there too many? Standards?

My real problem with the hoopla of too many distros is bigger companies complaining about the lack of standards. People complain about companies like the one I work for or whoever only supporting selected few distributions...well...if every distribution wasn't so different it would be an issue. This doesn't bother me...its actually something I like. I like the fact that no one person's machine is like mine. But the more distributions there are trying to make themselves look unique the less they adhere to certain standards which have developed. Hell..what am I talking about. There aren't any standards. ;-) And here is the beauty of that..

The great thing is that those standards aren't as important if the software is open source. So maybe this lack of standardization is helping bring more companies to look into open sourcing their products...which in turn converts them (because they'd see the obvious beauty in open source immediately if they have half a brain)..Wow...what a thought..more distros bring more variety...more variety brings less standards...less standards help people to see the light!

So come on SCO...anyone else want to start a distribution? This is GREAT! I welcome them all!

They will have to watch the GPL

I wonder what approach they will take to make sure their software is decoupled enough from the rest of the system to insure they don't run afoul of the GPL?

Either they open source (or free software for people obsessed with semantics) everything they have (a radical departure for their corporate culture), or they try to keep a clean boundry between the Linux/GNU system and their own proprietary software.

If they try and keep a boundry and maintain their own closed products, they are likely to do as much work trying to stay clear of the GPL and similiar licenses as they are to put the distribution together... Lets see, this product links to the c library, which is LGPL, so I can do that, but it requires this kernal modification, so I have to release that, but it requires this utility, which is GPL, so I have to include the source for that...

Their web page worries me a little, they sing the praises of open standards, but open standards != open source... both are good but they are apples and oranges.

I am not trying to slam any companies or criticize any of the licenses out there... I am just pointing out that all the current major Linux/Gnu distributions have avoided running afoul of any of the "open source" or "free" software licenses by making everything they add "open source" or "free" as well. If you release everything you add under the GPL or similiar license, you can't be violating the licenses. It keeps it relatively simple.

If they are the first to try to create a hybrid distribution, they will have some new ground to break and some work to do.

The problem they used to address was easier... we have this closed system and we are adding some open source / free software tools. Hard to violate the GPL in this case, just release the source to any GPL software you add. When things are turned around and you are trying to add closed source / non-free software to an open distribution, it is tougher to make sure you have not violated the GPL.

Just some thoughts...
Bill

SCO - the Dan Quayle of OS vendors

Newsflash:

A vendor famous for its remarkably comical marketing dept, SCO shocked the entire unix world by jumping on the linux bandwagon after everyone else had, instead of standing alone and fighting it out as it generally does. "Our marketing dept. ran out of analogies and cliches," said a senior SCO executive on condition of anonymity. "So we jumped on the bandwagon to show we are not a flash in the pan".

SCO's CEO had been quoted a few years ago in Byte magazine ridiculing open source development for linux, using the analogy of holding a cup under a waterfall and waiting for the water to flow.

But having changed its mind, SCO outlined some of the features which would differentiate it from other distributions:

* README files with a neverending flood of press releases announcing "industry partnerships" and "strategic alliances".

* Industrial strength stick-to-it persistence. "Once we make a mistake, we repeat it until we get bored of it or people stop paying attention," said a SCO executive.

* Clueless marketroids included free with each upgrade.

* 20 year old icons, stored carefully in clingwrap in the secret SCO vault.

* Open Source Litigation to harness free legal support for SCO's battles with Microsoft over Xenix (not included with distribution, but free if you buy a $5 "I love SCO" bumper sticker).

AT&T, SCO, Microsoft and Xenix

AT&T developed Unix during the 70's to support their in-house publishing needs and such. (Well, it started out as a way to make a game, but AT&T didn't mean to fund that part.) During the 70's, AT&T still had the monopoly on long distances phone service and a huge chunk of the local phone service. As a result, the government banned them from entering other markets so that AT&T couldn't abuse their monopoly position on on market to take over other markets.

The result was that AT&T gave away copies of Unix to universities for educational purposes, which made it very popular in very important places.

After AT&T was broken up, they were allowed to start selling things, and one of the things they did was sell commercial licenses for Unix. In the late 70's, Microsoft was one of the people who bought the right to distribute Unix, and they modified it to run on the 8086 and 68000 and sold it to folks like Radio Shack and other vars, the largest of which was called SCO.

The first license that AT&T used was *very* cheap, and MS was making a lot of money selling Xenix. AT&T was kind of new at this computer stuff and didn't really know what it was worth. As a result, the next version of Unix that AT&T released, they jacked up the licensing fees to the point that MS said pluck yew to AT&T and sold off their Xenix distrubution to SCO.

Microsoft has never liked Unix since that spat, although they did add many Unix like features to their CP/M clone called "MS-DOS".

If AT&T had been more reasonable with their licensing of Unix back in the late 70's, we would all be running Unix now.

SCO has no credibility with "suits"

Basically, SCO over the past ten years has destroyed any credibility they ever had with "suits". By offering outdated, buggy products, in a multitude of confusing configurations, for a price that was often twice as much as an equivalent Windows NT server, they basically have destroyed any real credibility they ever had with "suits".

They still have some credibility with solutions vendors -- folks who, e.g., make custom medical records systems and other such things -- but even ISV's are inching away from SCO and towards Linux. Most of the "name" Linux wins lately have been the result of this migration.

But Fortune 500? I know of no Fortune 500 company that would consider buying SCO Unix or dealing with SCO. If they have Unix, they have "real" Unix (Solaris or AIX). Or Linux, in certain special-purpose instances. SCO Unix rates behind even IRIX and HP/UX on my list of "sales into Fortune 500", though the solutions vendors still sell lots of it indirectly.

-E

Xenix was *NOT* written by Microsoft

History:

Microsoft was the first commercial Unix licensee. They bought a license to Unix System III.

Now, you must remember that at this time Microsoft was a considerably smaller company. In fact, they only had a few dozen employees, hardly enough to handle their other product lines. So they contracted with a consulting outfit called The Santa Cruz Operation to port Unix System III to the various 16-bit microcomputers that were being introduced. The result was called "Xenix". Radio Shack had a version for their 68000-based business system, I believe Altos had a version for their 8086-based business system, but I don't recall Xenix being sold for standard "PC Clones" by Microsoft at that time -- it was, at the time, a strictly OEM deal, where an OEM wanting Unix had to go to Microsoft, pay money up front for the port, then Microsoft would pass along most of the money to SCO for SCO to do the actual work.

Eventually, Microsoft decided Xenix wasn't going to be particularly profitable, especially with IBM shoving tons of money at them to make OS/2 be foremost on their plate. They handed off Xenix to SCO in exchange for some cash, future royalties on future sales of Xenix that included Microsoft-paid-for work, and a large share of SCO stock (just hedging the bets in case Xenix DID take off).

So anyhow: yes, Xenix originally WAS a Microsoft product. But no, Microsoft didn't write Xenix (or at least not the majority of Xenix), though most of the early Xenix work was a "work for hire" done by SCO for Microsoft (and thus like all such "work for hire" was property of Microsoft). A fact which led to a lot of acrimony and lawsuits in later years.

-E