On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 17:19 -0500, Paul M Foster wrote:
> Ach! You make statements like this, as though everyone knows what you're
> talking about. And how do you know what Caldera's strategy was? I've
> never heard this one. Nor have I heard how IBM dashed it in a day.
That's because people talk of May 2003 and later, ignoring all the
history of 1999-2001 that happened a good 2 years before the actual
filing of the lawsuit.
Project Monterey was founded by IBM and SCO in 1999. It stipulated a
64-bit UNIX, one for Power, one for IA-64 -- to IBM and SCO,
respectively. It stipulated a non-compete clause for each.
Caldera was looking for a good shot of marketshare. Everyone agreed
that SCO was no longer the dominate commodity UNIX flavor, it lost 70%
of its marketshare to Linux in 1998 alone. But Monterey was the boost
SCO needed -- a high-end UNIX that would, even on just sales in the low
thousands, would net tens of millions of dollars and keep SCO a niche,
but "high-end" player. So Caldera bought SCO, in the hope that
Monterey/IA-64 would give it a stable cash flow, until its Linux
solutions became profitable.
In 2001, IBM released Monterey for Power, AIX 5L. It withheld the
source code from Caldera-SCO, because it saw Monterey/IA-64 as a
competitor to both Monterey/Power and its new Linux/x86 offerings. That
was _exactly_ what the terms of Monterey were designed to prevent. IBM
then started to work on Linux/IA-64, in clear, further violation of the
non-compete. Overnight Caldera's entire reason for buying SCO was
toasted.
Now many say SCO was dead anyway. I don't believe that, even just a few
thousand units of sale would net $10,000 in licensing fees for the types
of systems Monterey/IA-64 would be sold for. But even if you believe
this, there was no reason for IBM to break SCO like it did. It was a
big company pushing around a small one. SCO had the right to the
Monterey code, and the right to make their own fate.
Alas, Caldera-SCO, a very pro-Linux company, tried to keep its Linux
efforts going in the hope of profitability. Once IBM really went full-
force into Linux, and Caldera neared no funds (not even after the ~$300M
settlement with MS over DR-DOS), Caldera-SCO devised a new plan. They
would sue IBM in the hope IBM would buy them out. After all, since IBM
was really going full-bore with Linux marketing, they figured IBM would
go for the rights to UNIX.
It backfired. First off, although the "meat" of the March 2003 filing
was in the final summary of items #49-55 on Monterey, most Linux
advocates read the earlier items which were very flammatory. They
accusations were required to state how IBM violated the non-compete,
that they transfered value into Linux, harming SCO. They were _not_
claiming any SCO IP transfer into Linux.
The Linux world went nuts, IBM didn't settle, and the rest is history.
SCO is over as a software company when IBM didn't settle. SCO tripled
the damages and added SCO IP transfer in the May 2003 addendum. To
date, SCO has _yet_ to get a single, positive ruling on these addendums,
but they _have_ received _numerous_ positive rulings on the original
Monterey investigations.
And SCO has _only_ sued companies that have _contractual_ obligations
with them, and _not_ over their IP in Linux. It's a 100% smokescreen.
Because SCO v. IBM, SCO v. Autozone, SCO v. Chrysler are about contract
disputes. They are not SCO v. Linux, that's the smokescreen. Again, if
SCO makes it to trial, and they are aiming for a trial by jury in Utah,
you can be sure IBM will be found guilty on some counts. Because even
if they found some legal way to weasel out of Monterey, IBM was still
unethical.
It's a lesson to many other pro-Linux companies and IBM's customers too,
don't get in IBM's sights. Right now IBM customers are being prevented
from buying HP Linux/x86-64 solutions instead of IBM AIX/Power. And IBM
continues to be one of the smaller players in actual donations of real
community software to Linux -- it's a marketing player. That's why I
call it the "Linux Quiz Show," because people think IBM spent $1B on
Linux, another $100M on Linux, etc... -- when they are spending 99% on
it on just porting their own proprietary software to Linux. Only about
$50M has been donated in various projects, like Eclipse, in total.
I've been warning people about the _real_ lesson on SCO v. IBM. How we
should _not_ be associating with SCO v. IBM, and how SCO v. Linux has
_nothing_ to do with SCO v. IBM. And if you don't believe me, I felt
some real vindication with Ransom Love, Caldera co-founder who left well
before the lawsuit, verified everything I was saying was true some 6
months later:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1492264,00.asp
"Love: That's right. There were many reasons we bought SCO: its then-
strong reseller community; its incredible installed base of
replicated business where Linux could play well; its engineering
talent; its global support infrastructure; and what we then thought
of as the future of our product base—Project Monterey.
Love: We were really excited about Monterey as the next product step
for Caldera/SCO. With it, we would move a combined Unix and Linux to
a 64-bit platform. We were counting on it, and senior IBM executives
had assured us that they wanted Monterey.
Then, IBM decided to name it AIX 5L (on August 22, 2000, 20 days
after Caldera had bought SCO), and they wouldn't release [Monterey]
on Intel. That became a real problem for us. SCO had depended
entirely on Monterey on IA-64 for the future of our Unix and Linux
product lines. IBM did offer some payment for our development
troubles, but it was insufficient."
SCO's now an evil company, lobbying our government against our free
rights to digital assembly. Yes, they must be destroyed. But IBM is no
saint in this, and they largely destroyed any chance Caldera-SCO, a very
good Linux company far more than IBM has been to date, had at funding
themselves with a product that IBM itself today sells as a better, but
proprietary, solution than Linux. All Caldera-SCO wanted was to sell
its own UNIX alongside Linux, just like IBM. The irony is absolute.
And this _real_ lesson is greatly lost in the rabid attitudes of Linux
bigots.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org ---------------------------------------------------------------- Community software is all about choice, choice of technology. Unfortunately, too many Linux advocates port over the so-called "choice" from the commercial software world, brand name marketing. The result is false assumptions, failure to focus on the real technical similarities, but loyalty to blind vendor alignments.
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