“It’s a rather difficult mission to shop for an operating system for a server. When most people think of server OSes they think of Unix, and when they think of Unix they think of SCO, the company that owns the Unix source code. But there are so many more choices out there, the least of which offers a dearth of advantages over SCO’s Unix products. Having said that, let’s explore the Unix world and take a look at what it has to offer the server and workstation market.” Read the article at TheJemReport.
Comparing Server OSes: Why SCO UNIX Is A Bad Idea
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Dunno about that. In my IT pit people align SCO Unixware along with Intergraph, DEC and other pastgone companies. Most are more likely to mention Solaris first, then HP/UX and AIX before mentioning SCO. That’s if they’ve even heard of SCO.
That word does not mean what you think it means.
same here and im a student i thought solaris was only UNIX< then i heard AIX<then HP DEC, never new SCO did one or even existed till i came into linux world and they stated to make their own distro
Snake
Geez, Red Hat’s security sucks?!? HAHAHA…mmm…. I think Red Hat sucks in general but that’s just me. I always thought GNU/Linux was more scalable than the BSDs were. I guess I was wrong then. Let’s see what happens to SCO’s stock price, now.
Regards,
Mystilleef
BSD would be so much better if it just had a decent installer. It’s a shame really.
If anyone knows of a BSD distro with a decent installer please post the link. Thanks!
SCO has never been a major contender in the Unix market even before opensource had it’s own OS platforms. People that needed reliable servers turned to the big iron systems from SGI, Sun, IBM, and DEC. x86 based computers were never viable highend servers and not even viable middle of the road servers until recently. Even now SCO Unixware and OpenServer are NOT even CLOSE to being highend server capable except in their board of director’s over-inflated egos.
The systems that used SCO were generally very low load database type servers that served legacy type serial text only terminals. Point of sale systems and autodialer systems. THat’s generally all they do even today. Stable yes. Highend or innovative? Never.
I don’t mind the BSD installer personally, though it isn’t quite as easy as most other OSes. The thing I would like to see the BSDs get is more hardware support. I would switch to FreeBSD from Linux completely if I could get my compaq triflex ide controller to work 100% (generic don’t count). I would also like to see drivers for netgear’s fa511 pcmcia ethernet card though I am willing to just by one of the supported ones.
I had never used a BSD before and decided to download FreeBSD 5.1. The installation process was easy and I had it up and running with KDE in under an hour.
Hey…I remember back when MultiTech was beating the crap out of Hayes in terms of quality and such, all of a sudden Hayes had a big patent lawsuit going over a stupid “+++” command….
Deja vu? I hope so: Hayes didn’t last long after that…..
I’ve been working on a proposal to implement a paperless office for a doctor in a hospital. After quite a bit of research, I decided that Sun was the way to go. They have some really cheap Intel severs right now, which is important because I’m trying to underbid competitors. The OS is already installed out of the box, which saves me time for real stuff like coding, and since one of the requirements for this was to last and be supportable for the forseable future, the fact that Solaris is not going to be phased out for something like Linux sold me. Of course military grade security is nothing to sneeze at when your talking about a wireless network of private patient information.
This article seemed like more of a dig on SCO than anything else, and has the appearence of relevancy only because of SCO’s legal battles. Calling UnixWare and OpenServer useless makes his bias obvious. Furthermore, his focus on a small amount of hardware it’s compatible with seems unfair, since Solaris for i386 has scant hardware support, and the other proprietary Unixes really only support the hardware they run on.
As far as what Mr. Matzan says about scalability, the definition I hear repeated far more often than any other is the ability to expand a single system and fully utilize it, not the number of different types of systems a piece of software runs on. He focuses on the fact that the proprietary Unixes really only run on hardware type, and so he defines them as not very scaleable.
And as for security, he assumes that a lack of published information on a website means a lack of security.
Personally, I will smile when SCO bites the dust, but to berate their products while supplying no evidence doesn’t indicate a level of objectiveness one should find useful. FUD is bad, no matter which side of the coin it comes from.
in the first paragraph, instead of saying “…really only support the hardware they run on.” it shoudl read “…really only support the hardware the company supplies.”
“That word does not mean what you think it means.”
My name is Inigo Montoya.
You killed my father, prepare to die!
/g
What a biased article. He neglects to mention that SCO developed all the major Unix scalability technologies (SMP, NUMA, RCU, JFS). SCO Unix is a fertile breeding ground for new technologies, and if Linux kills SCO, the innovation would stagnate.
//What a biased article. He neglects to mention that SCO developed all the major Unix scalability technologies (SMP, NUMA, RCU, JFS). SCO Unix is a fertile breeding ground for new technologies, and if Linux kills SCO, the innovation would stagnate.//
Uh…no. Sequent developed RCU. Sequent was then bought by IBM. JFS was invented by IBM. SCO did not invent these technologies despite what they want that average uninformed user to believe. SCO is claiming that by using these technologies in Unix that it is a derivative work which they now own. It really is not a derivative work though. It is a seperate work contributed to two different codebases. IBM owns the copyrights to them. They belong to IBM.
Weren’t you the one who claimed to have signed the NDA and actually read the source code? I think if that was really true you would have seen the IBM copyrights since they are still in both. I guess you are just a troll as we all suspected.
Why do you call anyone you don’t agree with a “troll”? I have seen the evidence and believe me, the courts will have no mercy. Open source is going to get struck down, hard. Any software distribution method with no IP guarantees was bound to fail eventually… as for IBM owning RCU and JFS, that’s an interesting question, but its for the courts to decide… and believe me, if you had seen what I had seen, you would agree with SCO. It is far more wide-reaching than just RCU, or just JFS… we’re talking about the exact Unix methods and concepts duplicated right from SysV into Linux.
NUMA is an SGI technology. I forgot to mention that. It seems that SCO is suing for technologies they never even invented. They want to take credit for other companies inventions. Now they want to license Linux and steal all the code that was created by volunteers.
//Why do you call anyone you don’t agree with a “troll”//
It’s not a matter of not agreeing. It’s a matter of you being wrong. It is fact that Sequent invented RCU. It is fact that IBM invented JFS. It is fact that SGI invented NUMA. You are saying otherwise. So you are wrong. You claimed to have seen the actual code yet you don’t know these things? That, in my book, makes you both a liar and/or a troll.
NUMA is not an SGI technology either, ccNUMA is -they developed it with stanford. NUMA itself is a concept like SMP or MPP.
You are a troll so please stop with the BS, OK? And no you have not seen the evidence, if you had you are now liable because you signed the NDA, so that means you can not open your mouth to even discuss whether you have seen it or not, hence the whole non disclosure on an non disclosure agreement.
JFS for starters is an IBM technology, and no it it is not up to the courts to decide if it is or not, OK?
Actually the NDA gave me limited rights to talk about what I saw, I talked to my lawyer. Which all you Linux users should be doing right now… maybe IBM engineers developed JFS, but it was still under contract with SCO. SCO owns Unix, and they get to decide who can use what code. It is not up to Linus to add whatever he fancies.
//NUMA is not an SGI technology either, ccNUMA is -they developed it with stanford. NUMA itself is a concept like SMP or MPP.//
The point of the matter was that SGI’s implementation of Non-uniform Memory Access was used for Linux. NUMA is the name of the project.
http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/
//Actually the NDA gave me limited rights to talk about what I saw, I talked to my lawyer. Which all you Linux users should be doing right now… maybe IBM engineers developed JFS, but it was still under contract with SCO. SCO owns Unix, and they get to decide who can use what code. It is not up to Linus to add whatever he fancies.//
You are totally clueless. IBM engineers did develop JFS. There is no maybe. There was never a contract for JFS. You don’t get it. SCO is only claiming to own JFS, RCU, and NUMA because they were developed indepedently of SCO but added into AIX (IBM) and IRIX (SGI) respectively. SCO believes that they now own the code because it was introduced into UNIX. They believe this to be a derivative work. The problem is that they didn’t take SCO’s UNIX and create something based on SCO UNIX and then try to claim it as their own. They have licenses for UNIX. They only added things to their versions of UNIX for better performance.
…and about Linux users talking to a lawyer…
Linux users are not responsible even if there was tainted code in the kernel. Distributers may be held responsible but end users cannot be. It’s just the way the law works in the US. Get a clue already.
Santa Cruz Operation? Definition of Scalable?
That article was pathetic. I really get tired of these new OSS guys that TRY to act like they know what they are talking about.
I think that is what SCO have been through. Not much innovation on the SCO Unix itself. Actually we got SCO Unix running on one of our server but it just the old technology which Windows can do better than that.
It look like SCO more focus on legal issues and stock exchange rather than on development. That is why their technology is far behind the others. What they are doing might be the best way for them, CLAIMING LINUX IS THEIRS BECAUSE OF THEIR UNPROVEN 80 LINES OF CODE INSODE IT.
They also claim JFS, RCU, NUMA etc is theirs because it was developed base on their Unix SC. Can you imagine what is going to happened if you use SCO Unix and develop new technology on it? IT BELONG TO SCO SINCE YOU ARE USING THEIR SCO UNIX!!!!. What a craszy world of SCO.
“we’re talking about the exact Unix methods and concepts duplicated right from SysV into Linux.”
A method is patentable. A concept is an idea and ideas are not patentable.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/whatis.htm
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html#patent
As quoted by Bill Gates in the article “Gates on Linux, IPs, GPL, SCO and More” listed here on OSnews and hosted here
http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleI…,
“The SCO suit is largely related to trademark and copyright.” [issues]
Linux is not called “Unix” and thus avoids any Unix related Trademark infringement with SCO.
This means the issues mostly involve alleged copyright infringement. A copyright is infringed by “cutting and pasting” someone elses work and attributing it as your own. Copyright infringement can be avoided by rewriting someone elses work in your own words. Depending on the level of similarity, a rewrite of someone elses code may not be considered ethical in some cases, but it would still be legal.
Besides, people with intelligence and the truth have no need to be loud. The SCO group, its CEO, and now even Bill Gates, are quite loud about the subject.
“Actually the NDA gave me limited rights to talk about what I saw, I talked to my lawyer. ”
LOL good one, since when is SCO making custom NDAs for 15 year olds. LMAO… I do not think you are of legal age to sign the NDA to begin with.
“. maybe IBM engineers developed JFS, but it was still under contract with SCO.”
You obviously have no idea what JFS is, the open source JFS contributed to Linux by IBM is based on their OS/2 JFS implementation. I believe AIX does use variants of JFS as do some other IBM OSs, since JFS was a inhouse development. So theoretically SCO claims that they own OS/2 now?
>>Linux is not called “Unix” and thus avoids any Unix related Trademark infringement with SCO. <<
Sherbert please go away, you make yourself the fool the more you post.
SCO does NOT own the UNIX trademark. It never has. Open Group owns it. UNIX trademark can be applied to ANY OS code base that passes Open Group’s rather stringent and expensive testing suites. It doesn’t have to be even remotely related at the source code level to anything SCO owns or thinks it owns. If RedHat, IBM or any of the other companies with deep pockets were to spring for UNIX testing and Linux passed, there is not a single thing SCO could do about it.
Please stop spreading your lies. Nothing you have said about copyrights, patents, and IP has been more than a half truth. You have NOT read the NDA, and if you had you’d not be at liberty to discuss what’s in there in any kind of detail.
SCO has yet to prove ANYTHING in a court of law, until then their tactics are prosecutable as extortion, libel, and slander. In Germany SCO was slapped with a gag order because of thier FUD. The only reason they have yet to be issued a gag order in the US is that no one is, so far, taking them seriously, including the one company that has a stake in doing so: IBM. IBM has even ignored SCO’s supposed “revoking” of the code base license of AIX. If IBM’s lawyers are THAT confident, considering IBM’s incredibly conservative legal stance in the past, they definitely know something that we undoubtedly don’t about the tech and legal issues behind AIX.
As far as Bill Gates’ opinion is concerned, he and his buddy Balmer havn’t stopped spreading the same half-truths and lies that you are spreading since they first named Linux their number one enemy. Gates doesn’t understand the people and philosophy behind open software any more than you do.
Stallman was right. I really hate agreeing with him, but copyrights were NOT meant to be abused the way the software industry is doing so. The ONLY way to enforce copyrights is for ALL copyrighted materials to be open to public scrutiny. This is the original idea behind copyrights. It allows creative works to be published publically and still keep people from being dishonest and plagerizing other’s work. Software and firmware companies have perverted this idea into not only having 75 years of copyright protection in the US, but also patenting anything under the sun in the US for 25 years. It’s rediculous, against the spirit of the law, and it’s inherently unethical.
While you were on your last sabbatical I have found out that Wrawrat, Archiesteel (who now calls himself the great something or other.) and Abraxis are RIGHT about SCO still
distributing Linux (“Free Beer”) style under the GPL to this very day AND that IBM is now defending Linux using substantially the same arguments they use. (You kind of missed out on the SCO thread where all of this recent information was going on.)
However I did NOT touch the FTP site that the three posters
I mentioned kept directing us to (I STILL won’t touch that with a 100 foot mouse wire!!!) The evidence that I found that SCO is still distributing Linux is on their OFFICIAL SITE at this link.
http://www.sco.com/support/download.html
This latest news has brought my view of Darl McBride back to my ORIGINAL one. This guy must be either be on SHROOMS or something very closely related chemically and simply not realizing that he is still distributing Linux OFFICIALLY, is too buisy engaging in a “pump ‘n’ dump” Enron style stock scam to clear out his public sites of Linux distributions that could ultimately be dammaging even to the legitimate part of his case SCO V IBM, (This is the most common opinion in the Linux community as to the reason for the lawsuit and McBride’s constant speech making and news conferencing it and related subjects.) or IN ON IT!
(I have NOT changed my basic theory of the stolen code, that it is in Linux and that Bilderburg Lou Gerster’s IBM put it there so that they could kill the only thing standing in the way of a re centralized computing scheme aimed ultimately at ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT. Nor have I changed my basic opinion that only an open OS or a full restoration of competition in the Proprietary OS industry can prevent this from happening. I would STILL like to see Mr. McBride get his three bil from IBM IF HE HIMSELF IS BEING HONEST IN THIS and not engaging in numbers two or three as to why he is still distributing Linux on his OFFICIAL SITE and would still like to see Gerstner and any others involved in this at IBM pubished for SOFTWARE PIRACY because in effect they actually pirated not one but TWO operating systems. By stealing the code in the first place they pirated SCO and by placing it in Linux for the express purpose of destroying it they actually Pirated Linux as well. (Yes you can pirate GPL software if we interpret piracy as meang to violate the license agreement that comes with the software. Proprietary code in a GPL product is an express violation of the GPL and therefore software piracy against the GPL product. Like I told Wrawrat, Archiesteele, and the others douring another knock down drag out last night their software is NOT FREE as Richard (500 pounds) Stallman keeps saying it is. The only free software is that voluntarily placed in the public domain and free of all intellectual property law implements such as copyrights, patents, trademarks and LICENSE AGREEMENTS which the GPL OBVIOUSLY IS.
Their software ACTUALLY is PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE weather they want to admit it or not (just licensed on on a small c communistic or more accurately community model rather than having a capitalistic oriented EULA license like Microsoft stuff) and as such can be pirated by violating the license agreement.
I liked this part:
“Looking over the OSes we’ve been talking about in this article, there are a few things that stand out. The first is that SCO’s UnixWare and OpenServer are underpowered, overpriced, and lacking in scalability and security. Furthermore the company is highly unstable, having gone through a long period of financial loss before deciding to blackmail corporate GNU/Linux users with legal threats backed by invisible and baseless claims. To add to it all, SCO refused to respond to any of my queries about product features, leading me to believe that most of their information is mindless propaganda. In short, the company stinks, their products stink, and you’d be insane to buy one of their operating systems for any environment, let alone a corporation with sensitive and important data. SCO may be the “true” Unix, but it’s also the weakest.”
Looks like a blatant misquote here.
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,…