sco under attack?

Caldera , inc. started in 1994 to cater to the business community using open source. One of my first linux installs was with caldera using 37 floppies which came from one of the three distros in the back of a “mastering linux” book. A real fine distro which continued for some time:

http://lwn.net/2000/0803/a/caldera-sco.php3

Caldera and Open Source
Caldera Systems is a leader in--and supporter of--the Open Source movement.
Please visit www.openlinux.org to download Caldera Systems' technologies
that have been open-sourced-including but not limited to-LIZARD, Caldera
Open Administration System (COAS), Webmin, OpenSLP, the NetWare Kernel File
System (NKFS) and the OpenLinux 2.2 port for Sun's SPARC(tm) and
UltraSPARC(tm)-based platforms.

In Aug 2000 caldera announced it “has entered into an agreement to acquire the
SCO Server Software Division and the Professional Services Division”

In 2001 caldera got out of the retail market because of slow sales and intoduced a per-seat licensing agreement for their new product.. GNU called caldera "a parasitic company" while caldera said "the open source movement has no clue about marketing".

“The company made the headlines twice in 2002. In May, Caldera was behind the initiative to launch United Linux, a consortium of four companies (the other three were SuSE, Turbolinux and Conectiva) to create an enterprise class distribution, while sharing a unified code base and pooling some of their resources. Despite repeated claims that the consortium is not anti-Red Hat, many analysts felt otherwise.
The final version of United Linux 1.0 was released in November 2002. By that time, there was no more Caldera as the company renamed itself to 'The SCO Group'. "Caldera to change its name to SCO, reemphasizing its dedication to Linux, and capturing brand recognition of the SCO name", proudly proclaimed the press release. Thus, Caldera's last Linux product became known as SCO Linux 4.0 powered by UnitedLinux. It carried a per seat license and it was only available from SCO's online store for between $600 and $2,200 depending on support requirements (the $600 edition came with no support whatsoever).”
GNU says : "Licensing per seat perverts the GNU/Linux system into something that respects your freedom as much as Windows."

“But of course, all the controversial decisions the company made in the past were nothing compared to the current onslaught against Linux. "Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX and legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user." "For the reasons explained above," continues the letter sent to SCO customers on May 14, 2003, "we have announced the suspension of our own Linux-related activities". The intentions were made very clear -- or where they? Back to the SCO mailing list and another quote from a message by a SCO support representative on the very next day (please note that at the time of writing, SCO's online mailing list archives have yet to be updated to show this message): "SCO will continue to honour and renew support agreements and will continue to provide maintenance in the form of security fixes for [OpenLinux 3.1.1 and SCO Linux 4.0]. SCO has no plans to retire SCO Linux at this time." Maybe some lawyers can conclude that the meanings of the two statements are really equivalent, but for the rest of us, they are just another sign of confusion from a company whose honesty and reliability would make the former Iraqi information minister look like an innocent child. “

sources:
http://lwn.net/Articles/33122/
http://lwn.net/2000/0803/a/caldera-sco.php3

today the sco web site is down and their blaming “Linux Terrorists”

http://216.250.128.197/ also owned by sco does not seem to be affected by any slowdown. sco.com is 216.250.128.12. one would think the whole sub net would be hard to reach

Dig [email protected] ...
Authoritative Answer
Recursive queries supported by this server
Query for 197.128.250.216.in-addr.arpa type=255 class=1
197.128.250.216.in-addr.arpa PTR (Pointer) register.sco.com
128.250.216.in-addr.arpa NS (Nameserver) ns2.calderasystems.com
128.250.216.in-addr.arpa NS (Nameserver) ns.calderasystems.com
128.250.216.in-addr.arpa NS (Nameserver) ns1.canopy.com
ns2.calderasystems.com A (Address) 216.250.130.5
ns.calderasystems.com A (Address) 216.250.130.1
ns1.canopy.com A (Address) 216.250.129.1

I too had my first linux try on caldera linux. they had a nice distro but i agree the practices they used were that of a parasite. can't say im upset about sco.com being attacked. i think they deserve it.

on a related note, from what i understand, they went to germany and tried making them pay because the german government uses SuSE linux. they told them to pay up, and i guess they german government did what this countries should, and said "prove it or get the hell out".

they didnt prove anything and from what i understand they were fined.

anyone know how ken thompson feels about all this? i know he knows what linux is, as he said back in the early days of linux that people had linux mags in the unix labs :)

good article ted, hopefully this will be over soon.