The SCO Group, or the Dead Man Walking
October 2nd, 2007 4:09 am

During the day, I’m a Jaded, 20-something, Network Engineer in a small, mild-mannered company. Up the stairs from me, work the three programmers. Last week, while upstairs filling our coffee cups, I was explaining to a coworker the upcoming death of SCO, when, unexpectedly, the head-programmer walked out from behind his corner-cubical to say, “You need to get all the facts, SCO still owns all the work they’ve done on OpenServer.” My story begins.

Several years ago, a linux provider called Caldera acquired the Server Software and Services division of the Santa Cruz Operation, or Old SCO. With it, they obtained certain rights to Unix and UnixWare. They changed their name to The SCO Group, to sound more convincing. They then decided to diversify their business plan by suing, or threatening to sue every linux vendor and customer under the sun for violating “their” Unix patents with code contained in linux unless they were to purchase a license that allowed it (SCOsource). They’d never shown any actual evidence that any code was infringing, but, never-the-less, there were companies that saw it as justified to buy SCO products when outfitting their own servers. We were one of those companies. The cases that SCO were involved, and their respective Wikipedia entries are as follows:

A very prestigious list of lawsuits indeed. That is, until it was shown in court that new SCO didn’t actually own the Unix source they claimed to. On August 10th of this year, in the case of SCO v. Novell, the presiding Judge Dale Kimball ruled not only that Novell had retained its copyrights or Unix and UnixWare but that SCO was to pay a to-be-determined amount of their income from their two largest (read: only large) sales of SCOsource licenses: Microsoft and Sun. With interest, this amount could reach roughly $30 million. According to my calculations, that’s actually quite a bit more (we’ll call it $20 million more) than SCO’s cash on hand. Seems to me they’re in a bit of a pickle.

I’m brought back to the end of my first paragraph. Do I have my facts straight? I think so. I understand that SCO stills claims to own all the after-”purchase” work done on their OpenServer, but what good is that when progress had been slow and you owe three times the cash you have on hand? Am I misguided, or shall I say it again? We have a dead man walking.

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Posted in Linux, Technology, Uncategorized by lastdeadmouse
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Kevin Hise
October 2nd, 2007 7:37 pm

There may be some (admittedly slim) chance that Microsoft is willing to “purchase” a license for software that SCO (didn’t then and still) doesn’t own, in order to further SCO’s FUD campaign. Eh?

Jim S.
October 2nd, 2007 7:40 pm

Old SCO, the Santa Cruz Operation, bought Xenix from Microsoft and sold it as a UNIX on PC hardware. They later released SCO UNIX and then OpenServer. This was like Sun selling their flavor of UNIX. It pre-dated and was completely unrelated to the Novell deal.

So, the head programmer is right. TSG does own the code written by SCO. They got smacked down in court for trying to lay claim to UNIX-like code written by others, including Linus.

I guess a loose analogy would be like a realtor losing their license but keeping their own home.

Sid Boyce
October 2nd, 2007 7:58 pm

I think you are bang on, the wriggling is just death throes. Your head programmer’s utterance was saying precisely nothing. OpenServer was going nowhere and that’s why the flurry of lawsuits started. My guestimate is that the SCO people outnumbered the Caldera people and forced the change from what should have been a successful Linux Company to an OpenServer company, hoping to somehow upstage Linux. That gamble failed, everything else has failed and OpenServer is a zombie, so the die-hards that still run SCO’s products will be on their own when Darl announces soon that the “new” SCO is a mobile platform provider or reading from his hints, that they will solely be licensing the code to the companies he says he’s engaged in talks with.
May be you could hold your fire for a while, then tell the head programmer he was right that SCO owns all the work they’ve done on OpenServer as was - i.e a dead and buried product.

john
October 2nd, 2007 8:08 pm

i’m guessing that you’re about right. on the other hand, those evil people are really sneaky too.

lastdeadmouse
October 2nd, 2007 8:58 pm

1. No, that already happened, haha. Part of the revenue SCO owes to Novell.
2. All work on Unixware was derivative. Much of this derivative work was used in their development of what was renamed to OpenServer, but yes, they own OpenServer, which hasn’t come to far.
And to the rest, word.

sarah
October 3rd, 2007 12:55 am

hey, just discovered this blog. am liking you and your writing. more please!

Wesley Parish
October 3rd, 2007 3:53 am

The Santa Cruz Operation - the original SCO - owned the code they developed in turning Xenix into OpenServer. Xemix was a Seventh Edition Unix SCO ported to Intel 8086 on contract to Microsoft, just one of several - Andy Tanenbaum developed Minix on IBM’s PC/IX, which was another such Seventh Edition Unix ported to Intel 8086. Open Server was a Unix System V Release 2 or 3 development, ported to Intel 80286 and 80386, iirc - I once considered OpenServer for an i80486 box I had, but the cost was prohibitive - it would’ve been cheaper to buy a source code license for rtmx - and rtmx was then a 4.3BSD derivation, with the AT&T license encumberances … ;) rtmx also had the most informative brochures I’ve ever seen from a software house, so take it as a heartfelt recommendation … ;)
So, The SCO Group - not the Santa Cruz Operation - which bought the OpenServer and UnixWare server OS lines from the Santa Cruz Operation, does own the copyrights on the OpenServer developments that changed it from a vanilla SVR2/SVR3 port to i80×86. But owing to the SCOSource fiascos and the absurd litigation, they have scuttled their remaining relationships with their former OpenServer customers beyond salvage.

Cheaper to switch wholesale to WhiteBox or CentOS Linux, and maintain a couple of RedHat boxen to get the renowned RedHat support. Tell your friend the head-programmer that.

I R A Darth Aggie
October 3rd, 2007 7:13 am

I guess a loose analogy would be like a realtor losing their license but keeping their own home.

Except that their home was purchased on a sub-prime ARM loan, and the payments just got ratchted up above SCOX’s ability to pay. Can you say “foreclosure”, or in this case “Chapter 7 bankruptcy (liquidation)”?

Jim S.
October 3rd, 2007 7:46 am

I may have misunderstood. Was he saying:

A) SCO won’t die because OpenServer is a viable product that will keep them going.

or;

B) They did not lose the rights to OpenServer with the IBM suit ruling?

B is correct, A is not.

W. Anderson
October 3rd, 2007 5:08 pm

I think your opinion and analysis are correct in theory, however theory has never been always predictable. If Microsoft were to - say tomorrow pay SCO group $120 million for their mobile software business, SCO would indeed not only be alive, but free to continue their ridiculous rampage another year, or as long as Microsoft or any company they designate to pay SCO for vapour services doles out the cash.

That is the reality of today in USA. Microsoft, if determined will go to any length - short of using “all” their $55 billion cash to such efforts against GNU/Linux - Free/Open Source, IBM and others to get their vengance, no matter what the costs to their reputation, the truth, legal business practices or anything else.

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