4 ms·

Regarding #1 that is mashing together two separate products into 1. (I worked for SCO.) The history is that Microsoft were producing Xenix - a port from AT&T.

Regarding #1 that is mashing together two separate products into 1. (I worked for SCO.) The history is that Microsoft were producing Xenix - a port from AT&T. Eventually they decided to stop doing that work themselves as DOS, OS/2, Lan Manager and similar were of interest. (Note though that they ran their email infrastructure on Xenix - it was part of their operational business.) Xenix was handed over to a father and son company in Santa Cruz. They called the company Santa Cruz Operation so that in phone calls to Microsoft, the Microsoft folks would think SCO was a branch office not a different company. Xenix was updated, ported etc, eventually being called SCO OpenServer. That "SCO Unix" did not have SVR4 in it. Heck it could barely do multi-processor and similar. In 1995 Novell (owners of the AT&T Unix at that point) then "handed" SVR4 over to SCO, with the result being called SCO UnixWare. That was the SVR4 derivative. SCO did this to get into the enterprise space, and couldn't do the engineering to bring the Xenix derivative there. Later in the 90s there was a game of musical chairs as Intel announced the Itanium, and all the Risc chip and Unix vendors formed consortiums. SCO was part of one with IBM named Project Monterey. It was supposed to have some Linux compatibility, but as time progressed IBM cared more about Linux (and AIX) while SCO couldn't keep up with the engineering commitments. In 2000 all the Unix stuff (OpenServer and UnixWare) went to Caldera. Well it would have but the deal was so complicated (it was pseudo licensing with money and royalties going back and forth). Heck Caldera only really wanted OpenServer. The SEC went "huh" a while later, so a new deal happened in 2001. There was also a tech downturn, so a simpler deal was done. All that was left of SCO was Tarantella hence the company rename. Caldera renamed themselves to The SCO Group a while later. The grounds for suing IBM were around Project Monterey, although as far as I know neither side did all they should have. And then since IBM had gone in on Linux, SCO Group decided to sue claiming IBM had put Unix code into Linux. Novell got involved because the details of "handing" over mattered.

kragen 10y ago
Thank you for clarifying! Were you around when stuff moved over to Caldera? Were there SCO people who moved to Utah, or who became Caldera employees in California? My condolences on having had such a shitty thing happen to such a beautiful company. I don't ever remember SCO Unix being a particularly great Unix, but it was pretty solid, and the company was awesome; it's a place I would have been proud to work if I'd had a chance.
- rogerbinns 10y ago
  I was around during the transition but I'd always been on the Tarantella side (I was an architect of the product) and so didn't work on the Unix side directly. Heck our division customers were overwhelmingly running Solaris with Linux picking up in the 2000's. The Unix side of the business was rapidly shrinking. 1999 was a banner year because everyone had to go out and upgrade their operating systems so they could claim y2k compliance. 2000 was the end of a tech bubble, and also saw a tech downturn. This lead to drastically reduced sales. Throw in Linux getting increased adoption (remember that IBM promised to spend $1 billion on it which gave a lot of credibility), and that SCO's UNIX products no longer had particularly relevant sweet spots in the market. I don't know of anyone who moved to Utah. The people in California became part of Caldera but I don't know exactly how that was legally structured. Also SCO had folks all over the US and world. At the peak it was ~1,100 employees and $250m annual revenue. SCO was a good company and many people liked working at the company because they liked many of their colleagues. Employee turnover was quite low because of that. It also had bad points, but what doesn't? SCO Unix (OpenServer specifically) was great but not from a technological viewpoint. However the vast majority of users were not techies - they were dentists, receptionists, pet cemetery workers etc. OpenServer came by default with a gui that let those regular folk get things done in a friendly way. See my sibling comment about why Caldera wanted OpenServer. And SCO did have some firsts. It was also very good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It was the first company to offer Internet in a Box. You installed the system, and now were on the Internet (as a server). We were the first to ship a browser (licensed Mosaic). We shipped by far the most copies of Netscape. At one point Pizza Hut started allowing orders over the Internet. It was more of a proof of concept rather than massively used and widespread. But SCO was behind that too.
danieldk 10y ago
Heck Caldera only really wanted OpenServer. Why did Caldera only want the more dated OpenServer? Did they plan to provide consulting services to existing OpenServer users?
- rogerbinns 10y ago
  The reason why SCO was successful was because of how it is used. Imagine it is 1991 and you have a dentist's office you want to computerise. You go to a local VAR (value added reseller) and they would come in and install a complete solution. It would consist of a Compaq "server" ($5k), several terminals, com port cards for the server, a tape backup system, and some dental office management software. Oh and a $1,000 copy of SCO Unix. The VARs typically marked up what they sold by 15%, which is how they got paid. Two related bits of trivia - at one point the only software that existed for managing pet cemeteries ran on SCO OpenServer. And most McDonalds (I believe US only) had OpenServer in each branch. By the late 90s SCO had 15,000 of these VARs. Caldera wanted to essentially substitute Linux for OpenServer into that setup, and make $1,000 per copy of the OS rather than $25. The VARs realised they could supply Linux themselves which is why Caldera had no traction doing that, and doubled down on SCO OpenServer and the existing installed base. Hence the company rename too - it was all SCO products. UnixWare was touted as Enterprise ready. It did multi-processor well, had sophisticated filesystems (Veritas), could do clustering (Non-Stop) etc. But at the time most who wanted "big" Unix went to one of the RISC vendors each of whom had their own Unix. If they wanted to go Intel (which wasn't credible until the Pentium Pro) then the competition was Windows NT.

kragen 10y ago

Thank you for clarifying! Were you around when stuff moved over to Caldera? Were there SCO people who moved to Utah, or who became Caldera employees in California? My condolences on having had such a shitty thing happen to such a beautiful company. I don't ever remember SCO Unix being a particularly great Unix, but it was pretty solid, and the company was awesome; it's a place I would have been proud to work if I'd had a chance.

rogerbinns 10y ago
I was around during the transition but I'd always been on the Tarantella side (I was an architect of the product) and so didn't work on the Unix side directly. Heck our division customers were overwhelmingly running Solaris with Linux picking up in the 2000's. The Unix side of the business was rapidly shrinking. 1999 was a banner year because everyone had to go out and upgrade their operating systems so they could claim y2k compliance. 2000 was the end of a tech bubble, and also saw a tech downturn. This lead to drastically reduced sales. Throw in Linux getting increased adoption (remember that IBM promised to spend $1 billion on it which gave a lot of credibility), and that SCO's UNIX products no longer had particularly relevant sweet spots in the market. I don't know of anyone who moved to Utah. The people in California became part of Caldera but I don't know exactly how that was legally structured. Also SCO had folks all over the US and world. At the peak it was ~1,100 employees and $250m annual revenue. SCO was a good company and many people liked working at the company because they liked many of their colleagues. Employee turnover was quite low because of that. It also had bad points, but what doesn't? SCO Unix (OpenServer specifically) was great but not from a technological viewpoint. However the vast majority of users were not techies - they were dentists, receptionists, pet cemetery workers etc. OpenServer came by default with a gui that let those regular folk get things done in a friendly way. See my sibling comment about why Caldera wanted OpenServer. And SCO did have some firsts. It was also very good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It was the first company to offer Internet in a Box. You installed the system, and now were on the Internet (as a server). We were the first to ship a browser (licensed Mosaic). We shipped by far the most copies of Netscape. At one point Pizza Hut started allowing orders over the Internet. It was more of a proof of concept rather than massively used and widespread. But SCO was behind that too.

danieldk 10y ago

Heck Caldera only really wanted OpenServer. Why did Caldera only want the more dated OpenServer? Did they plan to provide consulting services to existing OpenServer users?

rogerbinns 10y ago
The reason why SCO was successful was because of how it is used. Imagine it is 1991 and you have a dentist's office you want to computerise. You go to a local VAR (value added reseller) and they would come in and install a complete solution. It would consist of a Compaq "server" ($5k), several terminals, com port cards for the server, a tape backup system, and some dental office management software. Oh and a $1,000 copy of SCO Unix. The VARs typically marked up what they sold by 15%, which is how they got paid. Two related bits of trivia - at one point the only software that existed for managing pet cemeteries ran on SCO OpenServer. And most McDonalds (I believe US only) had OpenServer in each branch. By the late 90s SCO had 15,000 of these VARs. Caldera wanted to essentially substitute Linux for OpenServer into that setup, and make $1,000 per copy of the OS rather than $25. The VARs realised they could supply Linux themselves which is why Caldera had no traction doing that, and doubled down on SCO OpenServer and the existing installed base. Hence the company rename too - it was all SCO products. UnixWare was touted as Enterprise ready. It did multi-processor well, had sophisticated filesystems (Veritas), could do clustering (Non-Stop) etc. But at the time most who wanted "big" Unix went to one of the RISC vendors each of whom had their own Unix. If they wanted to go Intel (which wasn't credible until the Pentium Pro) then the competition was Windows NT.