Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times) [LWN.net]

Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times)

Posted Jun 12, 2003 21:06 UTC (Thu) by josh_stern (guest, #4868)
In reply to: Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times) by error27
Parent article: Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times)

I don't really know what motivates people to bash based on little or no
factual information. But I think that non-bashers were somewhat cool
to the way in which per-seat licensing kept popping up at various
places in Caldera's business model. The was justifiable, healthy
skepticism about whether that model was ultimately viable for an open
source company, and hence skepticism about Caldera's commitment
to open source.

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Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times)

Posted Jun 12, 2003 21:42 UTC (Thu) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

The 'The' starting the last sentence above should have been a
'There'. Sorry about the typo.

Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 2:13 UTC (Fri) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

There's a difference, though. You're talking about licenses, and I'm talking about an OS. I'll agree that Caldera had some unorthodox views of open source and free software licensing, and in the effort of seeking middle ground between open and proprietary worlds they made a few mistakes, but at all times Caldera was a pro-Linux company.

Will SCO's Suit Chill the Penguin? (E-Commerce Times)

Posted Jun 13, 2003 2:59 UTC (Fri) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

I'm talking about one key factor for why they had less than stellar P.R. with the
Linux/open source community. That factor was intimately intertwined with with
the community's general lack of trust. In retrospect, the community was kind of
correct because the owners of company took it in a number of different
directions when they decided that was a better way for them to make a buck
(embedded DOS alternative, proprietary Unix, etc.). I'm not disagreeing with
the points that people may have a) treated Caldera unfairly and b) shortchanged
or been unaware of their contributions. But I'm saying that there were things
about Caldera that always set them apart from the other Linux companies in a
way that made them seem less committed to both Linux and the direction in
which the bulk of the community wanted Linux to go.