The Lindon, Utah-based company’s CEO Darl McBride outlined 10 reasons why the company believes its Unix operating systems can continue to compete with Linux, and outlined its Fusion project to converge OpenServer and UnixWare.
The fact that this year’s SCO Forum event coincided with LinuxWorld in San Francisco may have meant that SCO was preaching to the converted, but McBride issued an open letter entitled Long Live Unix to ensure the company’s message got to the masses.
It listed the reasons why SCO believes its Unix operating systems are more than a match for Linux, including its belief that SCO OpenServer 6 costs less than enterprise Linux once support subscriptions are taken into account, as well as the maturity, reliability, security, and backward-compatibility of Unix.
While the anti-Linux rhetoric was toned down compared to recent SCO Forum announcements, McBride could not resist a dig at Linux’s lack of warranty and the supposed fragmentation of the Linux operating system. Linux distributors… are attempting to get ISVs locked into a specific flavor of Linux, thereby forking Linux with every new version of the product, he wrote.
Little mention of copyright infringement was made however, despite SCO’s previous high-profile claims that Linux contains elements of its Unix System V code base, or its legal battles with IBM Corp, Novell Inc, and Red Hat Inc.
While our lawyers are protecting Unix in the courtroom, SCO is clearly focused on winning in the marketplace with superior technology and better value, McBride wrote. Evidence of technological development was delivered in June with the release of OpenServer 6, the fifth generation of SCO’s entry-level Unix operating system.
OpenServer 6 is now being updated with Maintenance Pack 1, which adds support for multi-core processors as well as upgrades to the latest version of the Mozilla browser, and Java and web services updates.
SCO has also released OpenServer 6 Education Curriculum materials in order to boost educational use of OpenServer, as well as new support bundles and implementation services, including assessment, porting, deployment, and training.
Meanwhile, SCO also looked ahead to the future direction of its Unix operating systems based on the 64-bit System V Release 6 code base under a project previously referred to as Project Diamond and now known as Project Fusion (not to be confused with either of Oracle Corp’s ongoing Fusion middleware or PeopleSoft integration projects).
SCO’s Project Fusion will be a single code base that will support both 32-bit and 64-bit applications on Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s extended x86 processors, merging SCO’s OpenServer and UnixWare operating systems into a single product. SCO said Fusion will also integrate server-virtualization capabilities in the kernel, and said it plans to provide the first public demonstrations of the technology during 2006.
SCO also announced that it will be reselling Cymphonix Corp’s Network Composer network management appliance. In addition, it said it has promoted its vice president of engineering, Sandeep Gupta, to chief technology officer, and appointed former Oracle and IBM executive, Tim Negris, as its senior vice president of marketing.
