SCO and OpenServer 6

At http://www.darlmcbride.com/, SCO's CEO explains why he thinks OpenServer 6 is better than Linux.

He makes some valid points, but misses the big picture. He should know better himself: if technical superiority meant anything in the real world, then Unixware would have been SCO's best selling product. Of course it wasn't, and was always a mighty small wedge of pie on SCO's own sales charts.

Darl says that OpenServer actually costs less than Linux. He bases that on the support model pricing of companies like RedHat. Sure, that's true: if you buy support for Linux, you pay for it every year, and that's much more than the simple base price of SCO's product.. but Darl conveniently forgets that plunking down the $1,399.00 or so for OpenServer 6 entitles you to nothing but the media and a license key. You get no support from SCO, and even have to pay extra for some updates that might be included in (for example) RedHat's support fees. There are also legions of folks capable of supporting themselves with Linux: they truly do pay nothing. So there is truth to what Darl asserts, but it's not as simple as he tries to make it.

If I were Darl, I'd go the RedHat route. Give the product away, while at the same time making it just a little difficult to obtain totally free, and sell yearly support at different levels. It doesn't even have to be open source; few customers really care about that. This strategy would put SCO head to head with RedHat et al. and the rest of his arguments might have some traction with some customers. Existing customers who are now phasing out SCO just might stick around if that were the sales model for Openserver 6.

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.