The end is near for SCO (hopefully)

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 05/08/2009 09:41 AM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On May 8, 2009, at 7:37 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
>  =20
>>> Point.  But by the time period, 1990 or so, they were all heading =20
>>> out  the door and were gone by 1994.  Exceptions are Minix, which =20
>>> was never  commercial, and QNX, which found a niche in embedded =20
>>> systems.
>>>
>>>      =20
>> Venix was still releasing its version up through 1994. Both Linux =20
>> and FreeBSD were available in 1994.
>>    =20
>
> Linux and FreeBSD are, like Minix, not commercial products (although =20
> there are commercial products built on them).
>
> The last Venix release was in 1994.  Never mind that Venix was pretty  =

> much designed for Digital hardware (DEC PRO, Rainbow, etc).  So while  =

> VenturCom was never a hardware vendor, Venix was still effectively a =20
> hardware lock-in.
>  =20
Go in today's data centers and see how big corporations use Linux. Why=20
would Red Hat and SuSE produce Enterprise verisons if it is not a=20
commercial product. If we go back in time a bit, many of the early ISPs=20
used BSD variants (such as Net BSD) because at the time it was much more =

stable than Linux and had a more efficient network stack. Minix and=20
Coherent were certainly never more than personal experimental projects.  =

But, in the mid-1990s, while SCO did have the market share of x86 based=20
Unix (and Unix like) systems, there were other options - including Venix =

that was working fine on PC hardware. Actually, my daughter worked for=20
Venturcom a few years ago when it was headquartered in Cambridge, but=20
they subsequently moved, and are now part of Citrix. It really does not=20
matter, but SCO certainly had competition throughout the 80s and 90s.=20
But, they focused heavily on the corporations by providing a good=20
support network. I was with a company that did use Venix on their PCs,=20
and another that did use SCO, and I actually ran a copy of SCO=20
(installed from diskettes :-) at home for a short while until I replaced =

it with Debian. One of the things that held the BSD product line back=20
was the AT&T litigation, which IMHO, also helped Linux since most people =

were under the misconception that Linux would be free of encumbrances.=20
Actually, had AT&T prevailed at that time, it would have affected Linux=20
and possibly OSF/2, Minix and Coherent. I think one reason why SCO was=20
not successful more recently is the products divergence from the Unix=20
traditions.

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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