Hello Winston!

13 Aug 03 09:25, Winston Smith wrote to BOB KLAHN:

Sorry to rebarf, but that scanned out before I was done editing...

 WS>      SCO existed long before Caldera.  SCO helped on the Tandy XENIX
 WS> project. Gates swallowed SCO for just such an eventuality.  AT&T and
 WS> Berkeley predate them, though....  If Gates has to leverage SCO, it
 WS> means that UNIX is winning and Gates wants in!  (Hmm...  I wonder if I
 WS> have any CP/M and MP/M disks still around....)

The backstory is a little richer than that.

~1980:  Microsoft commissioned some programmers to port BSD to Intel 8086
CPUs at the same time that they were developing DOS, to facilitate internal
software development at Microsoft.  Those programmers incorporated as SCO,
with Microsoft as their only customer.  The other flavors of Xenix
(including IBM, Tandy, and eventually SCO brands) were OEM-licensed from
Microsoft, who created and owned the Xenix trademark.  This arrangement
existed through the 286 and 386 versions, while MS's own programming
resources worked at DOS, OS/2, and eventually Windows.

1991: Novell buys Digital Research to acquire DR-DOS, in the hopes of
keeping DOS alive longer than MS claims it wants it to be.  Novell Netware
rules among DOS clients and MS rules among Win clients (since they are
OS-bundled).

1993: Novell buys Unix from AT&T.

1994: Caldera founded by Novell CEO Ray Noorda, who was run out on a rail
due primarily to the loss of market-share for Netware and criticism over
the timing of the Unix acquisition and the protracted payback timeline.

1995: SCO buys Xenix from Microsoft.  SCO buys Unix from Novell.

1996: Caldera buys "Novell DOS" (DR-DOS) from Novell, which
evolves into Caldera OpenDos.

1998: Caldera Inc. divides into Caldera Systems (Linux market) and Caldera
Thin Clients (client/embedded market).  OpenDos goes to Thin Clients
division.

1999: Caldera Thin Clients renames itself Lineo.

2001: Caldera Systems buys majority of assets of SCO Group and renames
itself Caldera International.

2002: Caldera International returns to the SCO brand, dba SCO.

Gates never needed to swallow SCO.  He was their sole reason for existence
for the first 15 years of their lives and SCO only became autonomous when
Bill decided he was through with them and allowed them to go and take Xenix
with them.  He was already in...until =he= decided to get out.  He was
"in" for twice as long as he's been "out". :)

The ugly truth is that SCO's heyday was when they were in bed with
Microsoft, and they began a gradual decline after they left the nest.  It
was Linux and Unix competition, not MS, that eventually ran them out of
business.  If it wasn't for some former Novell folks thinking that using
the SCO name to compete with MS would get BG's goat, SCO wouldn't exist at
all any more.

.\\ike

--- GoldED 2.50+