Chart of SCO's Answer to Novell's Counterclaims (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Chart of SCO's Answer to Novell's Counterclaims (Groklaw)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 19:21 UTC (Fri) by rm6990 (guest, #30921)
In reply to: Chart of SCO's Answer to Novell's Counterclaims (Groklaw) by mmarq
Parent article: Chart of SCO's Answer to Novell's Counterclaims (Groklaw)

I don't think they anticipated Novell becoming a Linux company and defending Linux the way they have. Although, if you read the publically available correspondence between Novell and SCO, you will see Novell was defending Linux even before they aquired Ximian or SUSE.

I think SCO was banking on Novell's co-operation. They probably saw it as a win for both companies....Novell getting license fees through SCOSource and SCO getting a big pay-off from IBM. IBM and Novell didn't see things the way SCO did though.

Anyways, SCO's "cash cow" (if you could call it that) was always OpenServer, an OS developed completely independant of Novell and not subject to any royalties (except, of course, the royalties for using Unix System V code, just like AIX and Solaris). Unixware was never very popular and Unix System V was dated technology. I don't see how SCO (old or new) thought they could sustain a company on these products. Even tSCOg is pushing OpenServer right now.

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Chart of SCO's Answer to Novell's Counterclaims (Groklaw)

Posted Sep 17, 2005 17:24 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

hmmm... belive it dosen't change anything!

Better,... belive that with an agreement like that with Novell, they didn't had to pay royalties for OpenServer either.

Bottom line... they had to sell right and good, their Unix products, and not resort to licencing as a mean of income. It was clear thought that OpenServer had a very short but fauthfull list of good costumers as had Unixware,(who had more is irrelevant) their business was declining slowly.

They were not only unable to make a dent in the Solaris, AIX or HP-UX, as they were more positioned in the low end of the market, but they were also unable to grow it, and i belive, the original SCO was convinced they could.