SCO Road Show

Thu Oct 9 21:55:20 GMT 2003 SCO Road Show

I attended the Boston SCO Road Show today. Attendance was light; probably less than twenty-five people overall and that included at least five from SCO itself. Oh, and one more: a very serious young woman security guard who eyed me suspiciously every time I headed for the men's room. Well, when she's in her fifties, let's see how well she does with six cups of coffee.

The security was unnecessary. Although side conversations certainly did include mention of unhappiness with the lawsuit issues, no one challenged the speakers directly, and while their comments were certainly slanted in favor of SCO's corporate stance, they weren't outrageously inaccurate or even provocative to any but the most die hard SCO haters. These folks seem to honestly believe that SCO has been ripped off, and as I have said here more than once, if code really has been misused, they have every right to sue. As usual, I need to add that just because you CAN do something, that doesn't necessarily mean that you SHOULD, but even in private conversation these folks think they are in the right.

Tee shirts were available proclaiming

GOT UNIX IN YOUR LINUX?

Fact: SCO owns the legal copyright to Unix System V
Fact: SCO owns all claims arising out of violations by Unix licensees
Fact: SCO has proof of direct copying of System V into Linux

It's that last part that we out here are having more and more trouble believing, of course.

But never mind that. SCO is once again talking to its resellers (what few of us are left) and once again telling us that things will change. We've all heard it before, and of course we all want to believe it, but I didn't see any walking on water or raising of the dead.

Perhaps I am wrong: while it certainly isn't dead, the OpenServer product hasn't had a lot of respect in recent years. It wasn't all that long ago that SCO told us it would soon be phased out in favor of Unixware. Apparently the owners of the several million installed systems didn't like that idea, or at least enough didn't to make an impression, because that talk is all gone, and wonder of wonders, they are actually talking about OpenServer having kernel threads, larger than 2GB file sizes, and larger memory models. To the uninitiated, this sounds like an automobile manufacturer announcing the coming availability of air-bags, but you have to understand that they've been trying for years to push people to Unixware where those things have been present for some time now. Also, there supposedly were (and I assume still are) serious obstacles in the base design of OSR5 that makes adding those features more than a little difficult. So this really is interesting and important news, not because of the feature support per se (which can be had just about everywhere but OSR5 nowadays) but because of what it means about the expected lifespan of the product. There's some kick left in the old dame yet, and it looks like she's about to get a new lease on life.

I got a chance to talk with the new VP of Marketing, who seems like a straight shooter with good ideas. I don't envy him his job: marketing at SCO has been nothing short of awful for many years. The refreshing thing is that he seems to know that and wants to do better. I did ask him why the comp.unix.sco.announce newsgroup hasn't seen anything from SCO recently, and he explained that the legal folks don't want much said right now. Probably not a bad idea, I agree, but I asked why that would extend to patch and security announcements, and he seemed to agree that it probably should not, and said he'd look into it. I hope that will come back soon.

I couldn't stay for the whole presentation, although I really would have liked to. The last segment I got to hear was on SCO Authentication, which is a new offering allowing single user identity for HP/UX, Solaris, Linux and of course Unixware and Openserver with Microsoft's Active Directory. For the first time in a while, it seems like SCO might actually be offering something worthwhile at the right time. Too often they have been a day late and a dollar short, playing catchup with the rest of the world. Of course there are plenty of other ways to do this, but this looks pretty well done.

Well, I had to leave to give my daughter a ride to pick up her new car. They (my daughter and her husband) just bought their first home not a quarter mile from us, and of course right then their five year old car gave up the ghost. Maybe just the gods doing their usual "they look too happy, let's punish them" thing. Anyway, they bought a nice little Saab 93, a very good choice, Dad thinks. Let's hope SCO makes some good choices in the next few years too.

Comments?

More Articles by Tony Lawrence - Find me on Google+

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.