SCO Offers Up The 'SCAMP' Stack 97
Robert wrote to mention a Computer Business Review Online article about SCO's newest marketing tactic. They're offering their OS as part of a 'SCAMP' stack, ala the more familiar LAMP setup. From the article: "The Lindon, Utah-based Unix vendor has included the open source Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP and Perl programming languages with its SCO OpenServer operating system since the launch of OpenServer 6 in June 2005. It is now pitching the technologies as a SCAMP stack, placing it squarely up against the Linux-based LAMP stack. SCO claims that Linux contains Unix code donated to the open source operating system in violation of agreements between it and IBM Corp."
Great name choice! (Score:5, Funny)
n.
tr.v
Re:Great name choice! (Score:2)
Removing a letter here or there would have been even better.
Im actually surprised they didnt do... (Score:1)
Re:Great name choice! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Great name choice! (Score:1)
rascal? (Score:3)
Is it not so in other countries or are SCO just the stupidest company ever to last this long?
Re:rascal? (Score:4, Informative)
I honestly said out loud when I saw this story on the frontpage, "Is this a joke?"
Incidentally, a lot of words survive in English primarily as part of a phrase, with their older, original meanings lost. In a way, the phrase is the word. For example, "hither and yon"; neither word is in common or even uncommon use anymore on its own, but the phrase is still used uncommonly. While "scamp" has not descended to this level, there is a phrase associated with it in my mind that may outlast the word itself: 'a scamp and a scoundrel [google.com]' (and note we don't much use "scoundrel" anymore either), as in "he's a scamp and a scoundrel".
So again, what crack were these people smoking? I mean, I know we like to bag on marketters around here, but there is a certain level of skill involved...
Re:rascal? (Score:2)
Re:rascal? (Score:2)
Re:rascal? (Score:1)
Scamp: From Dictionary.com (Score:1, Redundant)
n.
1. A rogue; a rascal.
2. A mischievous youngster.
How appropriate. . .
Blah, blah, blah (Score:2)
Big whoop. SCAMP, LAMP... so SCO is trying to compete with Linux. This is hardly news. As a matter of fact, you have to wonder what took them so long. Have they become so lawsuit happy that they've forgotten how to compete?
Re:Blah, blah, blah (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, actually. As soon as Caldera took over the SCO Unix business, they pretty much dropped any real support for the platform and focused their efforts on sueing Linux. If the reports are to be believed, their distributors were about ready to hang them during the various regional meetings. The SCO corporate reps came across as somewhat anxious about all the bad will towards them, but definitely not apologetic.
The fallout of these meetings was expected to be that SCO would lose a lot of their local distributors. The results of which would be catastrophic if SCO were actually trying to do business. Now that they realize that their lawsuit has failed, they've found that they've screwed themselves on being able to do business. In addition, they've burned their OSS bridge (guess we won't be seeing an opensco.org, eh?), leaving them with no real edge in the market. So now they're trying to convince businesses that they can provide OSS support without being an OSS supporter.
My prediction? You're going to be seeing quite a few new Solaris 10/OpenSolaris installations very soon now.
Caldera (Score:1)
This is all pretty indicative of the times. A company need not actually make a product people need to use. They just have to either scare people away from competitors, or convince them that a bigger name is actually more important. Of course, bigger name for SCO just means that more people h
Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
To this day I miss this feature. I mean, you can only watch the marketing "This OS Rules!" crap all over the screen for so many installs before you want to drill your eyes out.
Can we get this added in to the Ubuntu installer? *PLEASE* ?
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not really sure how, I remember playing pac man on my sinclair once while a game was loading from tape, which would surely be prior art.
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:1)
some evil corp has a patent on mini-games during installers.
Namco, which first used the technique in Ridge Racer.
I remember playing pac man on my sinclair once while a game was loading from tape, which would surely be prior art.
Tape != optical disk.
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:1)
Loading bytes from storage media - regardless of whether it's tape / floppy (tape flattened out and stretched) / zip / hard disk / optical disk - whatever - it's still the same thing - loading data from media.
Not to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and not to Namco, which can afford a more experienced legal team than you can.
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
Not to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and not to Namco, which can afford a more experienced legal team than you can.
Excellent, so we just install from a 1GB flash drive or NFS mount and everything's cool right?
Not cheap enough (Score:1)
Excellent, so we just install from a 1GB flash drive or NFS mount and everything's cool right?
Distribution of console-sized video games or full-sized operating system environments to residential end users on flash memory or network-attached hard disk drives is still uneconomic in 2006 except in the special case of a hard disk drive that comes bundled with a new computer.
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
Namco, which first used the technique in Ridge Racer.
Tape != optical disk.
That's just the first game you remember that uses this technique.
From the Spectrum Games FAQ [nvg.ntnu.no]:
Here's an image for you:
ftp://ftp.worldof [worldofspectrum.org]
Claim 12: "As above, using an optical disk" (Score:2)
[Joe Blade 2 is] prior art from 1988.
Joe Blade 2 may be prior art for some of the claims of US Patent 5,718,632 assigned to Namco [uspto.gov], as may some other games mentioned in this thread on IGDA Forums [igda.org], but claim 12 refers explicitly to an optical disk. At the time, Spectrum games were distributed on cassette, not Compact Disc Digital Audio. So even if none of the rest of the claims hold up under reexamination, if Namco was the first to do it with a CD, claim 12 may remain valid against Linux distributors.
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
Paticular since it was done by people from another company working in a different country. Wasn't it someone at TrollTech in Norway who wrote the tetris game in the caldera installer? How can you patent something you buy from a contractor? This bunch had IP law abuse problems even before they deliberately drove the company into the IBM wall and employed the brother of the boss to expensively try to straighten out the legal dents.
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
Re:Tetris Installer! (Score:2)
Lots of fun.
Re:Caldera (Score:2)
Not safe to use (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you could convert your SCAMP-based application to LAMP if that happens, but doing that on a production system is very costly due to all the manpower to switch platforms and all the testing to make sure everything works.
You should ask yourself, what advantages does SCAMP offer over LAMP that warrants the risk of using a platform from a dying company? Are there even any such advantages at all?
Re:Not safe to use (Score:5, Insightful)
SCAMP is short on details, but it sounds like it's exactly the same tools as in LAMP ... but in SCO. Except that you could just drop your application back into Linux, and it would just work there too. You could also move it to FreeBSD, Solaris, OpenBSD ... probably even Windows (most of the LAMP stuff runs under cygwin at least, and there's probably native Windows versions of most of it) and it would even work there with minimal work.
I don't see much danger here. (Of course, I don't see much benefit in going with SCO in the first place, and so I certainly wouldn't do so.)
As far as I can tell, it's just a marketing ploy. `Look! We can do the same thing as Linux, but we have a cuter name for it! So use us!'. There's little danger, as your application would probably port right back to a LAMP system with little effort, but there's no benefit either, because a LAMP system would work just as well from the beginning.
Re:Not safe to use (Score:4, Informative)
"The distribution for Windows 98, NT, 2000 and XP. This version contains: Apache, MySQL, PHP + PEAR, Perl, mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v3.32, JpGraph, FileZilla FTP Server, mcrypt, eAccelerator, SQLite, and WEB-DAV + mod_auth_mysql. "
Jason
Re:Not safe to use (Score:2)
Replacing production servers either means downtime for a production system, or new hardware to be purchased. Setting up the new servers is time consuming. Testing HAS to be done any time you change config, let alone re-installing the OS.
So the potential danger is there, I think. Either you're going to spend a lot of money on the changeover buying new hardware to r
Re:Not safe to use (Score:2)
Yes, and I agree. But you're missing my point ...
The amount of work and testing required will be approximately the sam
Re:Not safe to use (Score:1)
So the best thing they offer over the competition is the ease with which
Re:Not safe to use (Score:2)
No, because the competition offers that too!
Really, they offer one thing -- a cooler acronym, SCAMP vs. LAMP. And while I'm not sure about this, it would also appear that they offer support for this, things that generally aren't supported, but it wouldn't surprise me if Redhat and other vendors also offer similar support. If so, then the big benefit is the better
Re:Not safe to use (Score:2)
It's not safe to not use [cio-today.com] SCO, at least if you used to be a customer at some point. It's sad, but I think that they actually have customers that are hoping they'll go bust, in order to cease being their customer without risking getting sue
Probably Not, But it's Still Pointless (Score:2)
Re:Probably Not, But it's Still Pointless (Score:2)
Forgetting the $34,000,000 plus interest that the SCO Group owes Novell [groklaw.net] from the M$ and Sun license fees? Or the fact that Novell still own the UNIX copyrights, that tSCOg has no trade secrets or patents? Or the Red Hat suit?
A happy thought is these 3 passing round the hot, smoking corpse of Cald^H^H^H^H^H tSCOg: "Here, take it", "No, it's yours", "We insist" while trying to ignore the stench of napalm-bu
Re:Probably Not, But it's Still Pointless (Score:2)
So, there is a small chance that IBM would feel bad for SCO customers and offer to support them, but that is unlikely.
Besides, SCO is sueing IBM, not the other way around. I don't think IBM can claim damages when they're the defendant. I think the best they can do (and what they want to do) is have the lawsuit dismissed.
Another danger is that SCO will go bankrupt before the court case even e
IBM's countersuit (Score:2, Informative)
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (Score:2)
Re:Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (Score:2)
Want proof? SCO just announced a few days ago that their net loss for the last quarter of $4.58 million dollars. That is up from the year ago quarter's net loss of $2.96 million. Their profits are also down, going from the year ago quarter's $8.86 million to the current quarter's $7.34 million.
This is a company that, even if they don't get destroyed by IBM, will probably collapse under their own debt. They can't keep losing millions of dollars ev
Re:Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (Score:1)
Re:Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (Score:2)
Re:Not safe to use (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, you could convert your LAMP-based application to SCAMP if that happens, but doing that on a production system is very costly due to all the manpower to document the old system and all the conversions from unsupported formats.
You should ask yourself, what advantages does LAMP offer over SCAMP that warrants the risk of using a platform from a bunch of communist hippies? Are there even any such advantages at all?
Re:Not safe to use (Score:2)
The 1990s called. They want their arguments back. :)
SCAMP? (Score:1)
It will save a lot of viewing time for those readers who actually want to find out about how SCAMP measures up to LAMP, LAPP, WAMP etc.
Re:SCAMP? (Score:2)
Why should anyone care? SCO are attempting to copy something which exists already while charging more for it. The reason they went the 'sue IBM and Linux' way in the first place was that they could not compete. A couple of years down the track, their lawsuit is on the rocks, they have seriously annoyed everyone (except Microsoft), they have neglected their main product wh
Am I the only one? (Score:2)
wink-and-nod (Score:5, Funny)
Pay more for less! (Score:5, Informative)
So how this SCAMP thing is supposed to be anything special, is completely beyond my comprehention.
However, I for one would be VERY curious as to how SCO is treating all the different FOSS licenses which apply. As far as I know, Apache's license has a mutual patent annihilation clause, and I'm pretty sure the other licenses have their own set of rules too. It would be all too funny if one of them found a reason to sue SCO over their prepackaged SCAMP solution.
Re:Pay more for less! (Score:1)
Re:Pay more for less! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen "FLPR" (FreeBSD / LigHTTPd / Postgres / Ruby (on Rails)) gaining popularity...
Re:Pay more for less! (Score:1)
Winamp? (Score:1)
So if I were to develop or deploy a web app on a Windows server using Apache, MySQL, and one of the P* languages, would it really whip the llama's ass?
Re:Pay more for less! (Score:2)
Oh come on, that would be BS-DAMP. Amusingly enough, it would also demonstrate that the "BSD is dying" trolls are all wet.
SCAMP : Dogfood or Dogshit? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.sco.com [sco.com] was running Apache on Linux [netcraft.com] when last queried at 9-Mar-2006 20:57:45 GMT
Worse still
http://www.edgeclickpark.com [edgeclickpark.com] was running Apache on Windows 2000 [netcraft.com] when last queried at 14-Mar-2006 14:43:14 GMT
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with all vendor patches installed and all vendor workarounds applied, is currently affected by 21 Secunia advisories [secunia.com] some of which are rated Highly critical.
Darl owns Linux... (Score:2)
http://www.sco.com/ [sco.com] was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 9-Mar-2006 20:57:45 GMT
Don't you get it, Darl owns Linux - IBM stole his code and put it in Linux therefore Darl owns Linux. So of course it's OK for SCO to run Linux because they own it all.
If that bit of reasoning makes sense to you then I've got a nice bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale.
What? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:2)
Daimler-Chrysler should sue SCO (Score:1)
http://www.turbinecar.com/scamp.htm [turbinecar.com]
Re:Daimler-Chrysler should sue SCO (Score:2)
Oh... you were being facetious... pardon me
Trademark dilution (Score:2)
But do Plymouth own "Scamp" across ALL categories? I doubt it :)
Under dilution law [wikipedia.org], if your trademark becomes famous enough, you do own it across all categories of goods and services.
Re:Daimler-Chrysler should sue SCO (Score:2)
Tcl (Score:5, Funny)
And if they replace the PHP package with Tcl, they can call it SCAT.
Re:Tcl (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tcl (Score:1)
claim? (Score:2, Funny)
Wow! That's big news if it's true. Why haven't we heard more about this?
Because.... (Score:2)
-Charlie
SCAMP disease (Score:1)
1 2 1 2 The Naken Crew
Re:SCAMP disease (Score:2)
From the Article (Score:1)
Re:SCAMP - P = SCAM (Score:2)
What really caught my eye here: (Score:2, Interesting)
Now wait, I'd be curious about this. It sounds to me like "SCAMP" is basically four free programs packaged together. Every single one of those four programs is under a different open source license, and the strictest of those licenses-- the GPL [theregister.co.uk]-- SCO is probably not bou
Re:What really caught my eye here: (Score:2)
Apache and MySQL could be running wide-open, but if the OS only allows five concurrent inbound connections to port 80, then not much else matters.
Any (minimal) level of tech support? (Score:1)
It sounds to me like "SCAMP" is basically four free programs packaged together.
How much does it cost to support Apache, MySQL, Perl, Python, and PHP?
Re:What really caught my eye here: (Score:2, Insightful)
Especially considering that some browsers will open two connections to load a page, and most will keep the connection open for a second or so just in case it needs to make more requests. If there are dialup users where each page load takes five seconds, and opens two connections, and users click about once every twenty seconds...you need ten people to render the website unusable, on average. (It can handle less dialup people than normal peo
Re:What really caught my eye here: (Score:4, Informative)
I worked at a place that used SCO OpenServer about 5 years ago... the costs were outrageous. At that time you had to buy additional users in multiples of 25, which cost about $5000 + 20% annual maintenance.
SCAMP in 1999 (Score:2)
Anyway, a little irony. Caldera in
Lets see (Score:3, Informative)
Then again, lets see about the technical merits. Other than the underlying OS, it is the same as the LAMP package. That means the choice is Linux vs SCO. From what I gather, SCO is:
1) Less secure
2) More expensive
3) Prone to legal attacks toward users
4) Far less supported
5) Far less available software/plugins
6) Has serious questions about the company being there in a year
7) Laughably scalable
8) Drivers?
I could go on, but you get the point. The vultures are circling, and no amount of hand-waving is going to fix things.
-Charlie
SCAMP (Score:1, Redundant)
oh, the irony (Score:1)
the claim was too obvious... i'm certain that linux, windows, macs, and all other kinds of OSes and computers are being used by terrorists. (except for Windows Millenium Edition, which Al Qaida's IT department would not support because it sucked so bad).
but sco's suggestion was not the fact that terrorists use all kinds of tools, but rather they
AMP noises (Score:1)
Scamp? (Score:2)