SCO Group: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The SCO Group, formerly called Caldera Systems and Caldera International, is a corporation that was initially associated with the Linux and open source movement and manufactured workstation and server Linux distributions. After acquiring Santa Cruz Operations Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies the company changed its focus to UNIX. Later on Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group to reflect that change in focus.

History

Caldera Systems, based in Utah, was founded in 1994 by Ransom Love, and received start-up funding from Ray Noorda. Its main product was Caldera Linux, a Linux distribution mainly targeted at business customers and containing some proprietary additions.

In 2000, Caldera acquired several UNIX properties from the Santa Cruz Operation, including OpenServer and UnixWare, proprietary operating systems for PCs that would be expected to compete directly with Linux.

In 2002, Caldera joined with SuSE Linux, Turbolinux and Conectiva to form United Linux in an attempt to standardize Linux distributions. Later that year, CEO Ransom Love left the company and was replaced by Darl McBride.

Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group in 2002.

In 2003, the company fundamentally changed its business and product strategy. After announcing its legal claims against various Linux users and vendors, (see The Linux Wars below), the company suspended sales and development of its Linux related products. Attention was shifted to the Unixware and OpenServer UNIX products previously acquired from the Santa Cruz Operation. A new division called SCOsource was created to license the companies intellectual property.

• SCO UnixWare, a modern UNIX operating system. UnixWare is a direct decendant of Unix System V Release 4 and was originally developed by Univel, Novell and later on Santa Cruz Operation.
• SCO OpenServer, another UNIX operating system, which was originally developed by Santa Cruz Operantion. SCO OpenServer was also known as SCO UNIX and is a decendant of XENIX. SCO had previously announced that they would discontinue OpenServer and move existing users to their UnixWare platform, but later on they decided to reverse that decision.

The SCO Group is currently involved in a dispute with various Linux vendors and users. In this campaign SCO tries to convince the world that Linux violates some of SCO's intellectual properties. Although some people are sceptical about their claims, SCO initiated a series of lawsuits and claims that, if upheld by the courts, will probably define the future of both Linux and Unix. The success or failure of the claims will also have a profound effect on the financial future of The SCO Group, itself. SCO has, to date, made little headway in this dispute.

A detailed discussion is at The SCO - Linux Wars.

See also: SCO v. IBM, Red Hat v. SCO, SCO v. Novell, SCO v. AutoZone and SCO v. DaimlerChrysler.