SCO Group
The SCO Group, A Canopy Group company formerly called Caldera Systems and Caldera International, is a corporation that was initially associated with the Linux and open source movement and manufactured workstation and server Linux distributions. After acquiring Santa Cruz Operations Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies the company changed its focus to UNIX. Later on Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group to reflect that change in focus.
History
Caldera Systems, based in Utah, was founded in 1994 by Ransom Love, and received start-up funding from Ray Noorda. Its main product was Caldera Linux, a Linux distribution mainly targeted at business customers and containing some proprietary additions.
In 2000, Caldera acquired several UNIX properties from the Santa Cruz Operation, including OpenServer and UnixWare, proprietary operating systems for PCs that would be expected to compete directly with Linux.
In 2002, Caldera joined with SuSE Linux, Turbolinux and Conectiva to form United Linux in an attempt to standardize Linux distributions. Later that year, CEO Ransom Love left the company and was replaced by Darl McBride.
Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group in 2002.
In 2003, the company fundamentally changed its business and product strategy. After announcing its legal claims against various Linux users and vendors, (see The Linux Wars below), the company suspended sales and development of its Linux related products. Attention was shifted to the Unixware and OpenServer UNIX products previously acquired from the Santa Cruz Operation. A new division called SCOsource was created to license the companies intellectual property.
Products
- SCO UnixWare, a modern UNIX operating system. UnixWare 2.x and below were direct decendants of Unix System V Release 4.2 and was originally developed by AT&T, Univel, Novell and later on Santa Cruz Operation. UnixWare 7 was sold as a a "best of breed" UNIX OS combining UnixWare 2 and OpenServer 5 and was based on System V Release 5.
- SCO OpenServer, another UNIX operating system, which was originally developed by Santa Cruz Operation. SCO OpenServer 5 was a descendant of SCO UNIX and based on System V Release 3.2. SCO had previously announced that they would discontinue OpenServer and move existing users to their UnixWare platform, but later on they decided to reverse that decision.
The Linux Wars
The SCO Group is currently involved in a dispute with various Linux vendors and users. In this campaign SCO tries to convince the world that Linux violates some of SCO's intellectual properties. Although many are skeptical about their claims, SCO initiated a series of lawsuits and claims that, if upheld by the courts, may impact the future of both Linux and Unix. While making numerous public assertions that Linux infringes upon their copyrights, the lawsuits themselves concern contractual issues which are tangential to the issue of whether or not Linux infringes any copyrights. Further complicating the issue is the legitimacy of SCO claims concerning the ownership of SVR4 Unix copyrights. The success or failure of the claims will also have a profound effect on the financial future of The SCO Group, itself. SCO has, to date, made little headway in this dispute.
A detailed discussion is at The SCO - Linux Wars.
List of lawsuits involving SCO
