[humorix] SCO Sues To Become Relevant

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

SCO Sues To Become Relevant
Guest Analysis by Pete Mawse
May 22, 2003

The announcement by SCO last week that it intends to sue
everyone who has ever uttered the word "Linux" is the
latest in a series of desperate measures by SCO to be
noticed.

In the early 80's, SCO noticed how Microsoft took an
obscure operating system called "Quick and Dirty" DOS, and
resold it as the highly successful MS-DOS. SCO decided to
try the same strategy: they got an obscure OS from
Microsoft (Xenix), and resold it as SCO Xenix.  They
managed to sell a dozen copies.  Scratching their heads,
they noticed that Microsoft had changed the name of QDOS
before it became successful.  It was obvious they needed to
do the same, and SCO Unix was born.  The strategy worked.
The company sold 125 copies in the first year alone, a 10x
improvement over the sales of SCO Xenix!

But things were not going so well.  They were still being
outsold by Solaris, AIX, Digital Unix, Ultrix, HP/UX, and
even Lu/nix on the Commodore 64.  Meanwhile, customers were
not happy with SCO Unix because it wasn't enough like real
Unix. If Unix were a car, they said, SCO Unix was like a
driving motorized  wheelbarrow through a mosquito-infested
swamp naked with both hands tied behind your back.

After a marathon 2-week strategy session, SCO decided to
address those customer concerns by buying the Unix name.
SCO acquired Unix Systems Laboratories, then owned by
Novell, and declared that SCO Unix is now real Unix, so
there, Nyeh nyeh!   SCO also acquired Unixware from Novell,
which it tried to sell alongside SCO Unix.  The seven
customers who bought Unixware returned it for reasons
ranging from "It was the wrong size" to "That color is sooo
last year".

In the meantime, Ray Noorda and Ransom Love founded a Linux
company, Caldera.  They decided to target "Linux for
Business".  Business responded with a resounding "What the
hell is Linux, and why would I want to buy it from a
two-bit fly-by-night company that sells it in
retina-singeing green boxes?"

Over the next few years SCO would put out a number of press
releases blatantly ignored by the public.  Their customer
base slowly trickled away.  Caldera, on the other hand,
went ahead full-steam with their "Linux for Business"
campaign.  "Linux for Business" ensured that they would
have low mindshare not only amongst geeks, but also amongst
businesses, who would say, "You want me to buy an operating
system that doesn't give me anyone to sue when it fails?
Pfft, I'd sooner buy from SCO."

None of this, however, deterred Caldera from developing
their flagship product, Caldera OpenLinux. (In those days,
the use of the word "Open" preceding a product name ensured
a 25% increase in sales.  This meant that Caldera sold 3.75
copies of OpenLinux in 1997, instead of the 3 they
otherwise would have sold.  SCO also used this trick to
inflate their sales: They had renamed SCO Unix to SCO
OpenServer several years back, netting them 14 additional
sales).

Then a turning point came in 1998, when a noted investment
bank said to a group of Wall Street insiders, "Sorry, we've
just run out of dot-com IPOs, but how about some Linux
IPOs?  They're just as good...".   The Wall Street insiders
ate it up, and Linux became the hottest buzzword since "New
Economy".  It didn't even need to begin with a lowercase
"e" or end in ".com".

Customers started asking for Linux.  SCO became extremely
agitated.  "Geez, what is wrong with you people?" ranted
the company CEO.  "First you wanted us to be more
Unix-like, so we gave you Unix, the real thing, now you
tell us you don't want that, you want Linux, something
which only pretends to be like Unix, and contains no Unix
whatsoever.  DID YOU HEAR ME?  IT HAS NO UNIX WHATSOEVER.
It's a fake!  An inferior product.  If you want to use it,
I can only conclude that you are a deranged imbecile who
must be trying to compensate for being less then
well-endowed both intellectually and in other areas.   Oh,
and by the way, I'm pleased to announced "LXrun", a tool
that allows you to run Linux applications on your "SCO(R)
OpenServer(TM) server".

In spite of this, SCO customers began dropping like flies.

The Caldera OpenLinux development team introduced its
crowning achievement, the first GUI Linux install from a
major (?!?) Linux distributor.  Named "Lizard", this new
install was so easy to use that it actually let you play
Tetris while it was installing.  This actually backfired
when a large portion of the sysadmins at the five companies
who purchased OpenLinux 2.3 were canned for allegedly
playing games on the job.

Caldera had another problem.  While it had preached "Linux
for Business" for years, and while businesses were now
actually buying Linux, they weren't buying from Caldera.
That company with the stupid red hat was eating their
lunch.

Caldera needed to do something to win mindshare.  What if
they took on Microsoft?  Then maybe they could win the
hearts and minds of hard-core geeks.  But what could they
sue them for?  Then they decided to buy a product that came
with litigation against Microsoft already included --
DR-DOS.  "DR-DOS?" asked skeptical company insiders.
"DR-DOS!" exclaimed the believers.  "We can always use it
in a kiosk, or set-top box or something."  So Caldera went
ahead an sued Microsoft on grounds that Windows 3.1
deliberately made DR-DOS unstable, in spite of the fact
that nobody uses Windows 3.1 anymore, and even fewer used
DOS of any kind.  Microsoft lawyers tried to keep a
straight face as they quietly settled out of court for a
reported $150 million in cash and scratch tickets.

Then, in a stroke of great timing, Caldera went public the
week after the Nasdaq bubble started to burst.  In spite of
this, they managed to double their share price (although
they didn't get the 700% launch that previous Linux IPOs
enjoyed).  So with a pile of cash, and a way-overvalued
stock, Caldera decided to look for a decent company with
synergy to acquire.  They found SCO instead, as the good
ones were already taken.   SCO sold operating systems for
the PC and had almost no marketshare and had bought a
dead-end product from Novell (Unixware).  Meanwhile,
Caldera sold operating systems for the PC and had almost no
marketshare and bought a dead-end product from Novell
(DR-DOS).  So at least there was synergy.

In an attempt to further alienate their customer base,
Caldera announced that  future releases of OpenLinux would
actually contain the SCO kernel, because Unix-like kernels
are a basic commodity.  "This would be like Butterball
buying Hormel, and announcing that Spam would now be the
official main entree of Thanksgiving dinner," said Dr.
Jacob Jacobson, professor of Information Technology
Analogies at MIT.

When Caldera discovered that its OpenServer line outsold
its Linux line 3-2 (no, that's not a ratio, those are
actual sales figures), they changed their name back to SCO.

This brings us to the current situation.  After the
company's unsuccessful "We're a player, dammit!" campaign
caused 10% of their customer base to flee [1], SCO decided
to resort to that time-honored American business tradition,
litigation.  After all, they had already taken on
Microsoft, so they figured they could take on IBM.  They
sent IBM a letter oozing with legalese that said, "All your
AIX are belong to us."  After IBM blatantly ignored them,
they've decided to take on the entity that actually cost
them all of their lost revenue: the customers who failed to
buy or even notice SCO/Caldera products, but instead bought
a competing Linux product.

I had a chance to sit down with a member of SCO's legal
team, Mr. Swin D. Lerr, Esq.  Here's a portion of our
conversation:

Me: "But didn't your CEO once state that Linux has no Unix
code in it?"

Lawyer:  "Well, let me ask you this, your bank probably
claims to be  hassle free, right, but is it?  The same goes
for Linux and Unix."

Me: "Huh?"

Lawyer: "Let me spell it out for you, we know Linux has
Unix code in it, we put it there.   After all, what else
could integrating the best features of Unix and Linux
possibly mean?"

Me: "Well then, how can you possibly sue for that?"

Lawyer: "How the code got there is irrelevant.  The only
thing that matters is that the code is there now.

Me: "What about the allegations that Microsoft put you up
to this?"

Lawyer:  "There is absolustely no truth to those rumors."

Me: "It seems awfully suspicious that they are the first to
pay up... no questions asked."

Lawyer: "They're scared of us, after all we beat them once
before."

Me: "From what I hear, the general consensus is that SCO is
cash-strapped and desperate and that's why they are doing
this."

Shyster: "Nonsense, SCO and Caldera have run for years
without cash, why should now be any different?"

So there you have it, SCO is not doing this for Microsoft,
they are not doing this for the money, they just want some
customers.  If their sales force can't win any, then maybe
their lawyers can.

Pete Mawse is an analyst with the Blartner Group.


[1] The "We're a player, dammit!" campaign caused one
customer to write a nasty letter saying, "I'm offended at
your use of the word "dammit", dammit!

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