Caldera International becomes The SCO Group [LWN.net]

Earlier this week Erik Ratcliffe sent LWN a note, saying only to check out the Caldera International website. We did, and found the familiar Caldera logo gone, and a new SCO logo in its place. Caldera International is now, or will be after shareholder approval, The SCO Group. The change reflects where the company's money is made, explains this News.com article. Not in its Linux products, but in the proprietary Unix technology acquired from SCO 2000. A complete rebranding such as this can be expensive, but the company obviously feels that the SCO products will sell better, under their former names. So, SCO Unixware, briefly called Caldera OpenUnix, will once again be SCO Unixware.

What does this mean for Caldera OpenUnix? Well, it won't be called that anymore. The latest distribution, about to enter beta testing, is called SCO Linux 4.0 powered by UnitedLinux. Much of what was once OpenLinux will remain, but elements are changing. Exactly what and how much remain to be seen, but these changes will have less to do with the name change, and are very dependent on the UnitedLinux product. For example, SuSE's YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) program will be integrated with Caldera technology for the UnitedLinux (and SCO) installation and configuration program.

There will be a closed beta of SCO Linux (limited to a small number of testers) followed by an open beta. In this post to the Caldera user's group SCO's John Boland explains the process and how to get registered.

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Erik "The" Ratcliffe: The Unoficial Biography

Posted Aug 29, 2002 18:35 UTC (Thu) by x_nc (guest, #2633) [Link]

Let me give a little background on this Erik Ratcliffe guy...

I first met Erik "The" Ratcliffe back in 1990 on one of the better local BBS's in the Washington DC Metro area. The BBS was "The Enlightened Board" (Hi Bruce!) and was one of the better programming related boards around. A small group of members on it became friends in real space. At the time Erik was working as a Civil Engeneer (master of AutoCAD) and was learning programming in his spare time. In late 1991, Erik brought two 5.25" floppies over to my place and said that I should check them out. It was the boot/root disks for Linux v0.12. He was one of the very first people in the DC area (in fact the entire US) to start using Linux. He also was the first person to get Linux to boot from the HD, writting what now would be called a HOWTO on it. After a few years he was talked into moving to Utah, where he continued to work as a Civil Engeneer. Realizing that he was not likely to advance farther in this field he started looking for jobs in the computer/tech industry. After a little while he landed two interviews, both as a tech support guy. One was with AOL and the other with this relitively new Linux company called Caldera. He was offered the AOL job one day before he was to hear about the Caldera job and asked me for my opinion. I said he should probably wait on the Caldera job. He did and he got the job. It didn't take him long to move up out of this position. Since that time he's co-authored a book on Linux (can't remember the title; search for his name on B&N) and worked in the Linux, OpenUNIX and many other departments as a developer and much more. Now he's some big mucky-muck out there and is probably soon to be a VP of something or other.

All of this biographical information is taken from my memory, thus it has only a 45% chance of being actually correct. Erik will probably send hit men after me for posting this but my intention is to point out that he is really a much more important person than he will admit to being. He desirves kudos and acolades for the many things he's done over the years. Plus, he is a really cute guy. Just ask his wife. ;-)