Doug Michels & Ransom Love speak pre-Caldera Forum

A reader writes "Now that SCO Forum has been rebadged as Caldera Forum, I decided to duck out of it this year. But according to this interview, Ransom Love doesn't want to make too many changes. The same cannot be said for Linux and Unix though, where it looks like he's pretty much given up on Linux on the desktop except as a thin client with Tarantella. Coincidentally, there's an accompanying interview with Doug Michels, where he talks about life post-Unix. Seems like the two companies are pretty tight. " Update: 08/17 6:29 PM by M : Jason Perlow wrote in with his review of OpenUNIX 8.

"Faceless CEO of Caldera"

[Watts Martin]

While I'm not particularly concerned about Caldera's well-being as a company these days, I get the feeling sometimes a lot of Linux users don't have a clue about Caldera's history.

This is not a fly-by-night operation that never did anything for Linux, guys. They were the first company that made a serious attempt to produce a "professional" Linux distribution. When their first release came out, Caldera Network Desktop 1.0, it attracted a lot of enthusiastic attention. And they contributed code back to Linux in the 1.x kernel days. (Not surprisingly, they made Linux play well with NetWare.) When it comes right down to it, the grand drive to make Linux a desktop OS for "non-geek" users started with Caldera.

If Caldera's no longer a particularly geeky company--and they certainly don't seem to be--that's a casualty arising from the combination of making their primary goal usability for enterprise-scale business users and being a public company. (Red Hat so far has placed using entirely non-proprietary solutions at a higher level than making enterprise customers happy, and has moved toward a business model that supports small-business and individual users.)

Even so, Caldera still has the potential to be an important company in the Unix/Linux and open source world, depending on what they do to integrate the UnixWare technology. A cynic would say their track record suggests they'll blow that potential, but that might not be the case. Look at what the article said about UnixWare-based POS systems that might switch to Linux--who would they be expecting to lead them in that switch?

This "Who cares about the CEOs" attitude is mystifying to me, and I'm a card-carrying, Nader-voting bleeding heart. If you are playing in a field with big businesses--and operating systems are definitely such a field--you'd better be able to play like a business.

Re:This guy is a troll. And a bore.

[spudnic]

Yeah, but he does have a really cool name! ;)

Re:wtf...

[ZeroZenith]

Tribes 2

Ransome should be kicked out by the shareholders

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I've worked for Caldera years ago : these guys are going to be trading pink slips [nasdaq.com] very soon, and Ransome deserves most the blame for it (the rest of the blame go to dipsticks Benoit and Pomeroy and some others): they were the biggest Linux vendor when RH was only a small software shop, and they could own the Linux desktop and server space instead of them by now : instead they let RH shaft them over RPM. Of there is also meltdown of Caldera's QA/test department, the SCO buyout and of course, Ransome's approving of Microsoft FUD [zdnetasia.com] and Ransome's latest blooper on per-seat Linux licenses [slashdot.org].

Love never understood the OpenSource movement or the GPL, and probably never understood how to run a company either. It's amazing Caldera has been around for so long with the CEO consistently doing the Wrong Thing [tm].

What is it about the Wasatch Front?

[wiredog]

Novell, WordPerfect, and Caldera were, or are, all headquartered there. Does that area just have some attraction for doomed companies? Or is it that a move to that area dooms the company?

Re:What is it about the Wasatch Front?

[spudnic]

Novell is far from doomed. I see NetWare servers at a majority of my large clients. For a simple, robust, worry free file/print server environment it's hard to beat.

Re:Ransome should be kicked out by the shareholder

[sjvn]

Troll alert! Troll alert! Anyone who whines about everthing that's wrong with a company he used to 'work' for and can't even get the names straight is a jerk who probably never came closer to Caldera than say as much as rms agrees with Ransom Love's open source philosophy.

Steven

Uhm, I smell Microsoft???

[jailbrekr2]

I didn't know that Microsoft was offering specialized training in marketing.....

We believe we can save 20 to 30 percent with Linux on the desktop, but there's a difference between running Microsoft on the desktop and how we see customers running Linux. We people running Linux desktops managed by Volution, or running Windows on the desktop and accessing Linux through Tarantella. But as the Internet becomes a more pervasive business model, Linux will become a thin client, or a customised client. We are moving away from monolithic clients to a desktop operating system that will be more customised to fit the business need.

Linux is not ready to be a general purpose desktop OS, due to its inherent complexity and lack of "stupid user" utilities and such, but to state that Linux will be relegated as a thin client, or as a client managed by Volution, stinks of FUD.

*sigh*

Re:Uhm, I smell Microsoft???

[Budster]

Doesn't Novell own like 51% of Caldera?

haha "Stupid User" or BDU-enhanced utilities (Brain Dead Users). Man I can't wait for "WipeMyAss v1.0"...

Microsoft XP - the Microsoft experience - LOL - where's the acid, I need a break from the dia-books of how it I should reconsider shutting down.

Linux shouldn't be on the desktop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's drop the stupidity of the old PC client/server model. Although that model is much more sane with Unix, it still isn't very scalable or low-maintence.

A thin client, or hybrid thin-client approach is the answer in most corporate environments. We all saw what a city in FL is doing in terms of Linux on the desktop - served apps, much lighter weight clients. This is cost-effective and reliable.

For the home user, yes, Linux on the desktop is a great idea. But it can't be a replacement for Windows on the home desktop - that's throwing hard work at a bad idea. Instead, the focus should be on hiding the user from the complexities of application installation, etc. Windows fails at that. My dad has no idea how to install applications, or why he would want to. We can't be successful if Linux on the desktop is as hard as Windows on the desktop.

Of course, for tech-heads, Linux on the desktop is still viable. But we're not most people.

Re:Linux shouldn't be on the desktop!

[Remote]

For the home user, yes, Linux on the desktop is a great idea. But it can't be a replacement for Windows on the home desktop - that's throwing hard work at a bad idea.

Why that? Could you elaborate on this? I do have a ligitimate interest in knowing people's oppinion on this subject. Thanks.

Re:This from...

[joe-cecil]

*sigh*
That makes me nostalgic for the days when I programmed COBOL on SCO Unix & XENIX.

All on a spanky-new Wyse-30.
MMM. green.

Thin Client babble

[Cephas Keken]

"But you sell a desktop version of Linux?

We believe we can save 20 to 30 percent with Linux on the desktop, but there's a difference between running Microsoft on the desktop and how we see customers running Linux. We people running Linux desktops managed by Volution, or running Windows on the desktop and accessing Linux through Tarantella.

But as the Internet becomes a more pervasive business model, Linux will become a thin client, or a customised client. We are moving away from monolithic clients to a desktop operating system that will be more customised to fit the business need.

The challenge of the desktop is evolving. The traditional monolithic desktop is not for Linux but the evolving thin client desktop is ideal for it. Something like 80 to 90 percent of personal time is now spent in the browser, and as the Internet becomes predominant use of desktop, applications will follow. As the desktop becomes the browser, you will see Linux become the predominant platform on devices that connect to the Internet. "

Users don't like thin clients, and first person
who says users like what you tell them to like
has never had a user.

It's nice to see that scodera is banging there
collective head agains't the same wall half the
industy is...and they are still convinced that the door that was sealed over when terminals
went away is there...and gonna open any day
now...

Linux no good for desktop

[quamper]

But we just had an article a few days ago that claimed Linux does work as a desktop!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/13/1248 23 3&mode=thread

"Thin Client"

[fm6]

Is it just me, or does the way Love (and others) calls a graphics terminal a "Thin Client" make you nauseous? First, the terminal doesn't have any real intelligence, so how can you call it a client? Second, do we really want to move back to the old time-sharing model, where you can't do anything without the approval of computer center (an ancient term we'll probably have to ressurect)? There's a reason we used to call them "The High Priests of a Low Cult."

Re:"Thin Client"

[sparkz]

What exactly is your objection to this term?
It's too thin to be a client? So what would you call a thin client?
do we really want to move back to the old time-sharing model, where you can't do anything without the approval of computer center
In a working environment, yes. What objection can you possibly have to this approach?

There is no need for a seceratary to have a machine which can do any more than create documents. Sure, developers need a decent machine to work on.
When you're older, you'll learn to differentiate between the two, and realise that nobody's taking your toys away from you without good reason.

Updater rocks and UDI

[johnjones]

Caldera was my first distro (-;

then I moved to the then spanking redhat 4.2

then back again to caldera

they have had some really good engineers and they seem to have got the update thing much better worked out than redhat

they produced this nice app that I could install that updated things without haveing access to the web right then and there as was directory based and had a nice frount end god I am going to PAY for that ! (as in $$$ rather than pain in redhats solution)

that and the potental to really make things work with the UDI project (hosted on sourceforge)
UDI allows drivers for Solaris SCO and linux to work from one base

oh for that to work !
imagine to support unix and likes all you have to code is one driver how many vendors would do that ?

LOTS I can tell you

the project fails in that it should go after USB and IEEE1394 and not network devices and such imagine just one driver for Apple, Solaris, SCO and linux THAT would be cool just get more than my keyboard to work in USB in SOLARIS would be nice

a world where USB floppy zip Rio camras video HD webcams +the rest JUST WORK with one driver

dreams

john jones

Is it just me?

[thelexx]

Or is Caldera becoming about as irrelevant as a company can get? The thrust of their Linux strategy now seems to be, "Um yeah, it'll run great in our terminal software for Windows users." Also there is this gem:

"As the desktop becomes the browser, you will see Linux become the predominant platform on devices that connect to the Internet."

/em-foghorn That boy, I say, that boy needs to stay outta the sun for a while!

LEXX

What do you get when you merge Unix and Linux?

[The Gline]

Lunatix?

Licensing of SysVRx

[sparkz]

So in the good ol' days, AT&T owned Unix. Then various companies licensed it from them, and that's how the various flavours formed.
IBM licensed SysV from AT&T, and created AIX; HP created HP-UX; Sun created SunOS.

But what *was* the licensing deal? I'm sure we're not dealing with a one-off payment to AT&T.

So do these companies (IBM, HP, Sun, etc) now have to pay Caldera for the use of SysV-based Unices? I've heard nothing along these lines, and surely the big guys would have something to say if it was the case.

So what does it matter that Caldera own SysV? It wasn't written for Intel anyway, and what counts in today's world (for the x86 anyway) is hardware support. The big guys build their own hardware, and their flavour of Unix supports it.

So who really cares if Caldera, or Fred Smith down the road owns the rights to SysV?

Linux and Unix

[sparkz]

In the interview, Michels shows a big misunderstanding in what he has bought.

He seems to believe that he has Linux, and has now bought Unix, and wants to bring these together. This seems - to me - to be the strongest case yet for the popularisation of the term "GNU/Linux", since all he seems to be saying is combining the GNU stuff which comes with Linux distros with "his" Unix kernel.

All he is proposing is GNU/SysV as opposed to GNU/Linux or even GNU/Hurd (if that ever happens).

Unix and Linux

[sparkz]

What the guy fails to understand, is that Linux and Unix cannot co-exist - a system can only run one kernel, be that Unix or Linux.

What he seems to be pushing is a Unix box which can imitate a Linux box if necessary.

Now why would I put my budget towards his solution, and not a GNU/Linux one?

CmdrTaco scores again

[EdlinUser]

A year or so ago CT added a comment to the story of Caldera buying SCO: 'I don't know which company is more irrelevant to Linux' IIRC. Still rings true. I see this post is 12 hours old and just 51 total comments. Nobody cares Ransom.
And I remember many posts at the time jumping on CT for saying bad things about a *Linux* company.

Ransom Loves' History

[ltmdweaver]

Ransom is still a creature of the failed history of the Novell valley. (Wordperfects' failure to focus, and Novell's failure to capitalize) He was a product manager for Unixware, the Windows NT killer that Novell sold off when they could not figure out how to execute. Ray Noorda funded Caldera's (although originally Ransom was not the CEO) efforts as an extension to what had been under the Unixware umbrella and found a way to give him the license for the NovellDOS stuff. He has used the OpenDOS/Novell DOS semi-successfully to distract the MS legal machine.

Others have it right... he is business ($$) focused as opposed to being an OSS (or any other sort of) visionary. His vision is focused on how to make short term money from Linux, and it always has been. Folks like Ransom will probably DESTROY what OSS/GPL and other aspects of the movement are trying to accomplish. Their whole point is to create a cash cow which 'just happens' to hurt MS. He is not interested in forwarding the movement or even using the movement to forward capitalistic opportunity elsewhere in the industry. To folks like him the movement is a totally opportunistic tool for short term profit.