EWeek has an interview with Ransom Love, Caldera’s co-founder, wherein he gives some interesting background to Caldera’s original aims, the immediate aftermath of the SCO acquisition, the beginning of the feud with IBM, and his views on the GPL. He thinks the lawsuit is a bad idea.
He wouldn’t happen to be a spy as well would he?
From the article:
“SCO MAY actually believe that they’ll drive a business with Unix licensing alone.”
I think that MAY is a typo and shouldn’t actually be there.
Love’s interview seems honest to me. The fact that he has totally divested himself of SCO holdings means the cord truly has been cut. I commend him for that, for having some morals and business sense at the same time. Reading the interview though, I just kept getting the feeling that he really wanted to come out and just say what a bunch of ignorant fools they are now at SCO.
I really wish some former engineers or others at SCO/Caldera would come out and speak up about this. Sure, I bet there are NDA’s in place when many were terminated or left, but I just can’t believe that stuff hasn’t leaked out yet. Either, former workers are not following the case and have moved to the Unabomber’s former hideout in Montana or they have been brainwashed into believing the garbage SCO puts out.
In the end, I hope SCO goes down in flames. It is a disgrace what they are doing and basically they will never have a decent business operation again because of all the bridges they have burned.
Love: I’m not privy to the information they have.
How could he not be privy to SCO’s actions, he works for them…!
Michael Lauzon
Founder & Lead Project Manager
InceptionOS Project
http://www.sf.net/projects/maxlinux/
[email protected]
How could he not be privy to SCO’s actions, he works for them…!
Umm… correction, he used to, he left in 2001, as stated in the article. He no longer has any ties to them. I have the feeling he is rather upset the company he founded is headed in a bad direction. He seems very concerned about their future.
It only goes to show there are no saints in Big Business. The open source community should be cautious of big business. Most of them don’t believe in fairness, openness, standards and good business practices. Qualities the open source community is trying to encourage.
SCO is in a hole and they can’t do anything about it. They havn’t proved anything they have stated, and what has leaked, has been put down so quickly. They are a bitter company, and they are just taking it out on everyone when they should be trying to make something out of what they have, or hey, how bout something NEW.
SCO can’t make any new products. they fired all their software guys to hire more lawyers, who don’t konw anything about UNIX, LINUX or even the old BSD vs ATT case.
I always had the utmost respect for Ransom Love, he sometimes would say the most god awful things and make me do a double take and say ” I cant believe he just said that ” For the most part dont confuse McBride with Ransom, Ransom was in the business because he loves business and he loves oppurtunities, McBride just wants to make money and he could give two craps less how he makes that money. For the time Ransom was in charge of Caldera, Linux was an up and coming business and for the most part he managed to keep their heads above water. In other words, the industry wasnt ready for Linux but Ransom wanted Linux to be ready for the industry. If Ransom had stayed as CEO of Caldera/SCO the company would have totally taken a different path and probably would be very successful today.
Does anyone find RANSOM’s name ironic or even prophetic? I mean of his successor.
Very true… but right now, Linux needs these big backers (and their resources) for an extra push in the direction of everyone’s common foe (MS). I say let them scratch our backs…and work with them as much as they’re willing to.
As long as it stands, the GPL will ensure that no one can retract the momentum they’ve helped set in place.
Very true… but right now, Linux needs these big backers (and their resources) for an extra push in the direction of everyone’s common foe (MS). I say let them scratch our backs…and work with them as much as they’re willing to.
I believe MS used to call that “riding the bear”.
If anyone hasn’t noticed, IBM filed more charges against SCO
http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/for5/200309261148DOWJ…
Today alone, sco stock is down 2.59 or -15.03% from the opening price to 14.64
I think SCO’s bubble is bursting – especially since SCO hasn’t issued press releases lately (Which is what Darl seems to think is the key to having a successful business)
They’ll be in litigation through brancruptcy and after. SCO is putting the nails in its own coffin.
Ever remeber the very early Caldera Caldera OpenLinux distribution which used a desktop called “looking glass”. Does anyone know what happen to it? is there source out there. IMHO it was a great desktop for the time and was very lite on resources.
If it look at Caldera way back in the early days, it was one of the first to push Linux as a general purpose desktop operating system. If there is one thing we should than Ransom Love for, it would be for the “Linux Desktop” vision that he help start.
http://www.stllinux.org/meeting_notes/1996/0118/caldera1.gif
http://www.stllinux.org/meeting_notes/1996/0118/caldera2.gif
http://www.stllinux.org/meeting_notes/1996/0118/caldera3.gif
http://www.stllinux.org/meeting_notes/1996/0118/caldera4.gif
I agree with what he says about the Unix Source Code :
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1300411,00.asp
“Indeed, at first we wanted to open-source all of Unix’s code, but we quickly found that even though we owned it, it was, and still is, full of other companies’ copyrights.”
I asked a question recently on the now-probably-defunct unix.sco.programmers newsgroup about that and got the same answer.
The problem I have with that is that the Computer Science Research Group in the University of California @ Berkeley had exactly the same problem with their code and the AT&T code, and they rewrote everything they could, and asked for contributions from their customers. Read about it in Salus’ Unix book.
Why couldn’t Caldera have released what source code they could, under the BSD/MIT license – as he seemed to think was most appropriate – and asked the UnixWare and OpenServer customers to contribute their rewrites to the project?
Then they would’ve been on top of a roller-coaster – since these things gain momentum – and I suspect they would’ve also been a rather more viable partner for IBM.
As it is, it still is upsetting, thinking that they were one of the early businesses based around selling and maintaining a Linux distro, and now they’ve turned into leeches.
i couldnt make it past the first page without thinking this guy is as full of shit as ever
does anybody remeber that this guy was forcibly ousted from unitedlinux?
i remember an interview from then and he was all ‘i dont know what i’m going to do… looking forward to spending time with family and all…’
seems hes trying to worm his way back in.
does anybody remember that this guy was forcibly ousted from unitedlinux?
Forcefully ousted? Please should reference to such an accusation. Ransom Love left voluntarily, HOWEVER, he could have, for all we know, have a falling out with the Canopy Group managers, who wanted to persue the policy that is happening right now.
How about instead of slandering someones good name, why don’t you actually research a little before coming up with fabricted lie and misinformation.
Somewhere I have Caldera’s technology preview which, I believe, just predates Looking Glass and the later OpenLinux 1.2. Caldera sent them to me free of any charges in exchange for letters expressing interest (along with wabi, which runs 16 bit Windows apps on Linux, DR-DOS 7.02 and WebSpyder a DOS browser). I am not sure if source is included in the Linux distros, but if anyone is greatly interested, I’ll go looking for them, contact me.
looks like an ugly version of 4dwm on IRIX, not too original.