Ransom Love Speaks of Unix, GPL and the Lawsuit (eWeek)
This is awkward to me, I don't know what's going on inside SCO today, and I don't want to throw stones on either side. I, however, no longer have any investments in SCO. When news of the IBM lawsuit broke, I sold the last of my stock. I no longer have any relationship with the company." (Thanks to Denice Deatrich).
Posted Sep 26, 2003 14:26 UTC (Fri)
by moxfyre (guest, #13847)
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It makes me see the old Caldera in a new, more positive light when Love notes that they originally wanted to open-source all of the Unix code. Also, it's interesting to hear about the historical rough spots in the relationship between SCO and IBM...
Posted Sep 26, 2003 14:27 UTC (Fri)
by southey (guest, #9466)
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Posted Sep 26, 2003 14:40 UTC (Fri)
by jstomel (guest, #14271)
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Posted Sep 26, 2003 15:45 UTC (Fri)
by james (subscriber, #1325)
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That's my understanding, as well.
I'm still intrigued by the suggestions both that IBM could cancel Monterey for x86 and that it did: or, at least, that it could prevent Caldera / SCO from "productizing" it for x86.
Monterey was certainly portrayed by both
IBM and
SCO (links from the Wayback Machine) as a joint venture between IBM, SCO, and others.
I mean, look at it from the old SCO's point of view. You're going into partnership to develop the next version of your main product. You'd expect to get similar rights to use the results.
The most plausible explanation that I can come up with is that the x86 port was in a much worse condition than the Power and IA64 ports. And the most likely reason for that would be drivers.
Monterey for Power has a limited set of hardware that it has to work with, all of which had proven AIX 4 drivers to adapt. (Monterey used AIX as a starting "framework", and the AIX kernel is an IBM invention with Unix code). IBM and Bull (an AIX licensee) were both planning AIX on Itanium machines, but again, the hardware would be limited, known, and supplied by themselves.
The x86 port would have needed new drivers for a suitably large amount of x86 hardware, tested to Unix levels of reliability, from third party suppliers.
It certainly seems plausible that the x86 port would drag behind the others, and that once IBM had got AIX 5L out of the process, they'd lose interest. And it sounds quite possible that SCO decided that without IBM, they didn't have the resources or business case to fix the x86 port.
I'm guessing, of course. I have no inside knowledge of the development process, or how advanced the x86 port was.
But at least my reading of events makes sense! The story we're slowly getting out of SCO, and the lack of comment from IBM, just are not plausible and not credible.
Posted Sep 26, 2003 16:47 UTC (Fri)
by djabsolut (guest, #12799)
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Posted Sep 26, 2003 18:59 UTC (Fri)
by josh_stern (guest, #4868)
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Posted Sep 26, 2003 17:06 UTC (Fri)
by southey (guest, #9466)
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Wow. I'm fairly impressed by what Ransom Love has to say. It's certainly more thoughtful, knowledgeable, and balanced than the spin coming from SCO these days. Ransom Love seems pretty smart
Love says: IBM did offer some payment for our development troubles, but it was insufficient.
Clearly not enough but helps clear the air and make new flames for the fire.
So IBM already paid them off?
I think he means that IBM offered to help deffray costs that went into the failed project monteray, not that IBM tried to buy them off for porting AIX code to linux.
So IBM already paid them off?
So IBM already paid them off?
James
... The most plausible explanation that I can come up with is that the x86 port was in a much worse condition than the Power and IA64 ports ...
So IBM already paid them off?
another plausible reason is that IBM saw that Linux's capabilities would soon overtake Montrey's and/or Linux was cheaper to support and extend. Ergo, no point in flogging a dead horse.
IBM's motives are fairly obvious, IMO. IBM did not So IBM already paid them off?
need coding help or technology from SCO. Rather they wanted to
consolidate around a popular application and system API so it would
be especially easy for them and third parties to translate code and
tech skills to their high end hardware. They were interested in
SCO's customer base, not SCO's technology. Once they figured out that
Linux was better for this purpose than the yet to be born Monterey,
their decision to pull the plug on Monterey and back Linux fully was
a no-brainer. Understanding that IA64 was not going to take the
business world by storm no doubt cemented this decision. I didn't
have a negative opinion of Ransom Love as a person either before or
after reading the interview, but his level of business naivete is
somewhat surprising.
Never said anything about paying 'for porting AIX code to linux'. Rather that IBM did or tried to payoff SCO to end this contract. If that is the case then it puts the Project Monteray contact in a different light (both parties attempted to end it or knew that the other party wanted it to be ended). SCO, at least in the initial filing, tried to imply that project monteray was used to make Linux better.
So IBM already paid them off?