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More Monterey Proof and Caldera's Hopes for Linux & UnixWare
Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 05:11 PM EDT

Readers are sending me more proof that Monterey was indeed always intended to run on POWER. Here's an article from 1998 that I thought I'd highlight, because it not only confirms that point, but it adds a couple of interesting details that I had not remembered:

IBM is hooking up with Intel, Santa Cruz Operation, and Sequent to develop a new Unix operating system, although analysts are skeptical of its impact. The new version of Unix, code-named Monterey, will merge with parts of IBM's Unix operating system (called AIX), some of SCO's UnixWare (a popular version of Unix for small businesses), and a bit of Sequent's PTX technology. The OS will run on Intel's 32-bit and upcoming 64-bit processors as well as IBM's Power family of chips.

It's expected to reach the market in about 18 months, around the time when Merced is due. . . .

IBM and Intel are also setting up a development fund to persuade software companies to develop products for the new system. No financial details were released, but the firms said the investment is in the range of tens of millions of dollars. . . .

Jean Bozman, a software analyst with IDC, noted that SCO has been casting about with partners for some time in an effort to collect the required resources to move to IA-64. . . .

But Bozman pointed out that SCO's success doesn't entirely mean Microsoft's loss, since Microsoft owns between 11 and 14 percent of SCO.

I had forgotten about Microsoft's partial ownership back then. But the bit about IBM's development fund brings out that IBM invested millions in Project Monterey. They had every reason to want it to succeed.

The article also makes very clear that SCO was in trouble from Windows NT, and that the lack of UNIX unity was costing them customers. One analyst, quoted in the article, says that it was too late for Project Monterey to mean anything. The lack of Unix unity for so long just made it possible for Microsoft to say that NT was easier.

But, SCOfolk might say, maybe Project Monterey was supposed to run on POWER, but that doesn't mean you could donate code to Linux. That is the question before Judge Kimball, but for background, as it happens, there is an article in Linux Journal dated August 22, 2000, an interview Don Marti did with Ransom Love right after Caldera bought SCO's UnixWare, and it reveals why Caldera did it and what they wanted to do next, and as you will see, what they wanted to do next was all about Linux. In fact, Love was talking about open sourcing UnixWare as much as he could, rather than protecting its code from eyeballs, and he wanted to create a kind of merged Linux-UnixWare combo OS, to give Linux more oomph than it had at the time. UnixWare was a value proposition "for a period of time."

Hey, wait a sec. Isn't giving more oomph to the Linux kernel exactly what IBM now stands accused by SCO of doing? See a disjoint? How does it hurt a Linux company, which Caldera, now calling itself SCO, then was, for IBM to help Linux scale, particularly when Caldera was telling the world that was their goal too?

Here's a bit from the Marti interview with Ransom Love, "Ransom Love's Secret Master Plan for Linux and UNIX":

I ran into Ransom Love at SCO Forum 2000 while an earnest IBMer was pinning an AIX 5L button on him. . . . I asked him (Linux freak to Linux freak) about his secret plans for his newly acquired SCO flock. . . . If he's sure about nothing else, Ransom is sure that Linux is the UNIX-on-Intel standard. "Partners and OEMs need high-end today, and UnixWare can fill that role today." . . .

The three big server OS contenders, Ransom says while holding up three fingers, are Solaris, Linux and Windows. Dismissing the Windows finger with a flick, since Linux has it beat handily, he moves on to the big challenger, Solaris, which scales all the way up to Sun's not-quite-big-iron Enterprise servers. Since Linux doesn't go up that far, UnixWare "continues to deliver a value proposition for a period of time.". . .

As Linux "forks" - hopefully through a proliferation of compile-time options, not a real fork, Ransom hastens to add - the high-end parts will end up participating in some sort of technology-sharing arrangement with UnixWare.This represents the spawn of Linux and UnixWare, an über-OS with a yet-to-be-determined licensing policy. Ransom says you'll be able to see the source code, but parts will be open source, and parts will be "viewable source" - you'll be able to read it, but not modify and redistribute it.

So, I gather it was not a "high crime" or "misdemeanor" in Caldera's eyes back then to merge Unix and Linux code, then? That might explain how we find Caldera employees and SCO employees donating code to the Linux kernel on company time. Again, the question that must come up is, was there a clean room division between Caldera's Unix coders and their Linux coders? What about at SCO? If not, think of the possibilities.

The article goes on to say that Caldera couldn't afford to keep UnixWare alive as a proprietary product, and so that's one reason Love hoped to open source it. Marti even asked Love if they purchased any patents with the UnixWare buy, and Love said he didn't even know. "That wasn't our intent." If they happened to, he said there was no reason they couldn't be put under a free license.

That was then, and this is now, but can IBM be faulted by SCO for donating code in 2000 to Linux, when they themselves were doing the same thing at the time in question? Remember, SCO was then called Caldera, and they were a Linux company. A Linux company desiring -- prior to new management who would like to rewrite the history of the company -- to open source UnixWare.


  


More Monterey Proof and Caldera's Hopes for Linux & UnixWare | 196 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
corrections here
Authored by: xtifr on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 05:42 PM EDT
if needed!

---
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to
light.

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT Stuff
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 05:42 PM EDT
With links built like this:

<a href="http://example.com">link description</a>

Remember to set post mode to HTML Formatted, and to Preview your work.

---
--Bill P, not a lawyer. Question the answers, especially if I give some.

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Monterey Proof and Caldera's Hopes for Linux & UnixWare
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 06:06 PM EDT
Patent answer:

The answer to the patent question is, no, they didn't. Tarentella kept all its
patents when it sold its OS operation to Caldera.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO/Caldera personality disorder
Authored by: rweiler on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 06:07 PM EDT
This is kind of old news as new SCO has been doing this personality switch since
this whole fiasco started. When they are Caldera, the Linux company, they have
no knowledge of anything that might have happened between old SCO and IBM
regarding Unix. When they are old SCO, the Unix company, they have no knowledge
of what might have happened between Caldera, IBM, and United Linux. In the
extremely unlikely event that any of this gets to a jury, I don't think anybody
is going to be any more impressed by new SCO's dual ignorance of their own
business operations than the jury on the Ebhard/MCI case. SCO's approach is
certainly more novel, but it isn't any more persuasive.

---
Sometimes the measured use of force is the only thing that keeps the world from
being ruled by force. -- G. W. Bush

[ Reply to This | # ]

IBM was just trying to be helpful ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 06:10 PM EDT
when donating AIX and Dynix to Linux in contravention of its contracts with
SCOX.
IBM should be pardonned because its intentions were good and Ransom Love would
just, uh, ... love it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Public pronouncements versus the law
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 06:15 PM EDT
I guess the way tSCOg might try to justify their litigation, in spite of the
public statements from 1998-1990, is to say that they routinely say things in
public they do not mean. After all, they can point to all kinds of
pronouncements made by Darl Mc Bride over the last couple of years as clear
evidence of that. Thus they might claim:

"Lying to present our company in a positive light is the American way. The
shareholders would be justifiably upset if we did not strive to maximize
shareholder value. Our prior lies are irrelevant to our current legal
claims."

"Here are some documents we found that could (in isolation) be regarded as
meaning what we would like them to mean. Since what we say publicly is
meaningless and irrelevant, these documents provide sufficient justification to
give us a ticket in the litigation lottery. Of course, we are probably lying
now but, even if our claims are absurd, it is in the interests of all the legal
firms involved to give us that chance."

[ Reply to This | # ]

What are we even doing here?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 06:25 PM EDT
Wow! Time and again we find ourselves (at least I do) asking the question, what
are we doing here. How is this case even possible?

While we may never truly know the real reasons for this case public scrutiny has
certainly destroyed whatever secret case SCO hoped to develop. Had the case been
launched without public fanfare and fud, and the SCO boys kept their mouths shut
from the beginning and they might have actually been able to create the
perception of a real case and perpetrate their fraud more effectively. They
could have hit us with a $49 or even $99 license fee and perhaps at that point
more people would have been intimidated into buying a license. As it is their
grandstanding and grandiose schemes encouraged the community to react faster
than anyone would ever have thought possible.

For my part I am pleased if only because it brought together a community of
truly wonderful people. I have appreciated the opportunity to read so many
interesting and intelligent comments made by so many interesting and intelligent
people. I have been a reader since the beginning but not a poster as I have very
little to add on a technical or legal side. However I am truly appreciative of
the efforts put in by PJ et al. The open source community and perhaps the world
will find themselves in your debt. Not for helping to win this case, I think IBM
would have/will eventually prevailed anyway. What you have done is to help make
the term OSS a publicly understood and accepted term. You have started the
snowball rolling down hill more effectively than anything else has done. Who
would have ever thought that one woman, with a slingshot would fire the round
bringing down the ogre and maybe shattering the window on rebound.

BrianA

[ Reply to This | # ]

More and more proof, Re: More Monterey Proof and Caldera's Hopes for Linux & UnixWare
Authored by: martimus on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 06:38 PM EDT

This is just further icing on the fact chain that is the public historical record of SCO and Caldera/TSCOG (even if it was somewhat obscured before the lawsuit started). I don't know what further complaints TSCOG will try to level against IBM, but stealing bread from little old ladies (somewhat obscure TV reference) comes to mind. I hope the judge can finally wrap his arms around this information and start down the path of foreclosing TSCOG's wild (and as demonstrated here at Groklaw, false) accusation trail. One day soon, I'm sure.

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Monterey Proof and Caldera's Hopes for Linux & UnixWare
Authored by: kberrien on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 07:08 PM EDT
Every time PJ posts one of these Monterey memory lanes, I can only think. If
there was this much stuff, these many quotes in public, imagine what the private
records IBM must have.

Just the correspondances along! Heck, there is probably stuff with signatures.

Good luck SCO....

[ Reply to This | # ]

Maybe the development fund is one of the real issues
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 07:34 PM EDT
The article doesn't say that IBM invested millions of dollars, just that it set
up a fund to provide millions. If the fund was to help convince developers to
port their products to Monterey, then that money was inaccessible once Monterey
was cancelled.

Was SCOX assuming to get money out of this development fund (either directly by
porting software or encouraging their VARs to port their products and then
selling them more OS licenses) and then disappointed when this revenue source
went away?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Ransom Love
Authored by: RedBarchetta on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 07:59 PM EDT
I've read some disparate remarks about Ransom Love over the course of this fiasco, and I'm not so sure he is a bad guy. Remember, he was the one that warned Darl not to take on the F/OSS community.

What likely happened is that Yarro, the "skilled businessman", as his cohorts put it, wasn't pleased with Love's easygoing, cooperative personality. It collided with Yarro's abrasive, greedy nature (it probably also collided with his litigious plans). Funny, when I read Love's words, it's as if he were Gavin Newsome's twin brother (Mr. Newsome is currently mayor of SF, and is mostly well liked by the city he serves). For God's sake, he even looks like him.

Yarro needed someone with more teeth; someone who could talk mounds of bovine excrement, and not even bat an eye. Someone with ego the size of NYC, unshakeable bravado, and ability to lie comparable to Jason Macer or Jamie Ballie.

He didn't need to look farther than Darl McBride; he couldn't have picked a better sociopath.

---
Collaborative efforts synergise.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Yet more evidence
Authored by: codswallop on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 08:14 PM EDT
In it's complaint SCO says
56. By about May 2001, all technical aspects of Project Monterey had been substantially completed. The only remaining tasks of Project Monterey involved marketing and branding tasks to be performed substantially by IBM.

57. On or about May 2001, IBM notified plaintiff that it refused to proceed with Project Monterey, and that IBM considered Project Monterey to be “dead.”

In spite of what the SCO revisionists now say, IBM's cancellation of the marketing plan and decision not to sell the Itanic version were what Ransom Love was talking about when he said he thought about suing, but was Monterey itself cancelled? Truth_in_government on Yahoo found some articles that clear up some of the mysteries.
Ransom Love interview "According to Ransom Love, then CEO of Caldera (the company which subsequently became The SCO Group), in a September 2003 eWEEK.com interview, "We were really excited about Monterey as the next product step for Caldera/SCO. With it, we would move a combined Unix and Linux to a 64-bit platform. We were counting on it, and senior IBM executives had assured us that they wanted Monterey."

Then, according to Love, "IBM decided to name it AIX 5L [on August 22, 2000, 20 days after Caldera had bought SCO], and they wouldn't release [Monterey] on Intel. That became a real problem for us. SCO had depended entirely on Monterey on IA-64 for the future of our Unix and Linux product lines. IBM did offer some payment for our development troubles, but it was insufficient."

This, of course, assumes that IBM's marketing would have made people buy the Itanic, which wasn't very likely. Notice that he doesn't say Caldera took the compensation. The only reason to do that is to preserve the right to sue, so they must have seriously considered it. Truth_in_government then quotes an article about Monterey that talks about it running on the power PC and shows Caldera planning to release Monterey in the second half of 2001. The date of the article is after the close of the Santa Cruz deal.
Software developer Caldera claims it can provide Linux applications with greater scalability and reliability by running them on Unix via a Linux kernel personality. This provides an interface to run Linux applications on the UnixWare operating system, an Intel-specific Unix which Caldera recently purchased from SCO. Drew Spencer, Caldera's chief technology officer, said: "SCO had strong business in bricks and mortar companies, and this is where Linux has not significantly penetrated. At least running Linux applications will give companies a taste of Linux," he added. IBM has similar plans for AIX-5L, although they involve recompiling an application to allow it to run on both Power PC and Intel architectures. D H Brown analyst Tony Iams said the idea sounded great on paper because the Unix kernel is more powerful than Linux. "But I don't know how they will do this without turning Unix into Linux," he warned.

and another article along the same lines.

IBM also introduced AIX5L, its next Unix version, which runs Linux applications with a simple recompilation. The new OS includes management features, such as an addition to Work Load Manager to allow external applications to manage system behavior, allocating more systems resources to high-priority applications. The software also has built-in accounting tools to track resource usage, and cluster management tools. AIX5L runs on IBM's Unix systems based on the Power processor, including the new p620 and p660. The software will be available May 4, included at no additional cost with new servers, and priced at $325 per processor for upgrades. Caldera and SCO introduced a preview release of AIX 5L for Intel Itanium processors, the result of Project Monterey, a cooperative effort between IBM and SCO. The preview release is free; pricing on the final version has yet to be determined. The preview release is due later this week, with the final version due in the second half of this year.
He later posted these links about the short-lived open unix 8 with a Linux personality. He speculates it included Monterey code.

article

article

---
IANAL This is not a legal opinion.
SCO is not a party to the APA.
Discovery relevance is to claims, not to sanity.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Open Letter to SCO.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 27 2005 @ 08:34 PM EDT
I understand that SCO detests Groklaw because Groklaw through its huge user
resources finds evidence that statements and actions SCO made recently
contredict previous statements and actions. This doesn't help the SCO case much,
and makes Groklaw appear anti SCO.

You seem to fail to realize that if SCO provided REAL evidence to the public
that shows beyond doubt that IBM is doing the wrong thing, a majority of Groklaw
would probably back SCO. Yes, you'd get the odd nutcase still going "SCO is
being mean to linux".

To date SCO has done no such thing, but instead given information that was later
prooved misleading by the users of Groklaw.

For SCO to get Groklaw on its side, SCO will have to produce real evidence that
the public can review and cannot be prooven misleading. It will take time for
Groklaw users to trust SCO, but if from now on SCO only states the FULL truth,
and makes no misleading statements, and the statements and evidence can be
prooven true (news articles, press releases, and company documents from around
the time are always good to start with), SCO may see Groklaw swing their way.

Remember, this will take time cause of previous statements, but it will happen,
and only happen, if SCO speaks only the WHOLE truth.

Yours Sincerely
Chris Ison

P.S. I use windows, not linux, so I don't have a personal or passionate interest
in the results of the court cases in reguards to linux. However I do have an
interest in how truthful statements made by SCO are, from an investment point of
view.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO didn't have the COJONES to open unix
Authored by: jig on Thursday, April 28 2005 @ 06:01 AM EDT

so the truth is..

sco/caldera wanted to open unixware, but found that they couldn't because they
didn't own all the ip involved. maybe ibm wouldn't let them open source ibm
code, entered into unixware through crosslicensing of aix, dynix, whatever.

hmmm. that's a plausible root impetus of all of sco's ire..

sco wanted to open unix to create a redhat like company, but couldn't because
ibm wouldn't allow it. and they thought that getting around ibm's block would
cost more than their current litigation fiasco. AND, ibm could (and maybe did)
go ahead and contribute the same (ibm owned) ip to a competing product, linix,
but in a different enough context that SCO couldn't use it. Boy, i bet that put
a bee in their bonnet.

fantastical...

or maybe it was just their usual ploy: sue old customers. they had lots of info
on ibm, and had an old contract that they thought they could wring a settlement
out of. plus ibm has deep pockets.

wouldn't it be ironic if all this was started because sco was too lazy to
collect the resources and effort needed to take unix open?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Now we know why SCO needs yet more discovery
Authored by: jazzyjoe on Thursday, April 28 2005 @ 10:24 AM EDT
They know their claims will be shredded completely by the Groklaw Gang in just a
matter of days. With more discovery, at least they have a chance of producing
more claims just to keep the law suit alive.

Discovery isn't their source of evidence, it's their life line.

[ Reply to This | # ]

"Unclean hands"
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 28 2005 @ 10:49 AM EDT
At the very least it suggests "SCOX" comes to court with "unclean hands", in that it appears they (well, old Caldera, but which they claim a successor interest) were doing and activily promoting the very same thing they have tried accusing IBM of.

Hmm...IBM code in Linux, dead. Unix code improperly in Linux, dead. Contract claims in regard to misuse of Unix code in PowerPC, dead. What is this case about again?? What is even left?

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Monterey Proof and Caldera's Hopes for Linux & UnixWare
Authored by: pooky on Thursday, April 28 2005 @ 11:09 AM EDT
So the question is now what exactly is newSCO's complaint about AIX on Power?
It's OBVIOUS that newSCO (ahem Caldera) absolutely intended the AIX 5L OS to run
on Power. Are they now saying that IBM can't use it because IBM backed out of
the project? If so, why did newSCO wait until 2005 to complain to a court about
it? Doesn't fly at all, I don't think the court is going to allow this, if for
no other reason, it has nothing to do with the original complaint which has to
do with Linux.

-pooky

---
Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO had plans to license linux before Darl's arrival
Authored by: haceaton on Thursday, April 28 2005 @ 11:12 AM EDT
"This represents the spawn of Linux and UnixWare, an über-OS with a yet-to-be-determined licensing policy." - Ransom Love

So even Love was talking about the possibility of Licensing Linux code in an SCO "über-OS" before Darl came along. The advancement of Linux made their über-OS wet-dreams impossible so they decided to demand licenses anyway. SCO's been dreaming up this bogus scheme a long time, they're first thought was to make their "own" (contrary to GPL) OS using Linux code. I suspect they thought that that would just be accepted.

[ Reply to This | # ]

You know, PJ
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 28 2005 @ 12:03 PM EDT
After a certain point, you're just beating up on the retarded kid.

I love to watch a helpless victim get pummelled as much as the next guy, but
this isn't even sporting any more.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Andrew Orlowski replies in The Register
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 30 2005 @ 10:52 AM EDT
Andrew Orlowski replies:

" "Project Monterey was the stopgap, in a way, I gather. It worked for the enterprise right away, and it was a path to smoothly move to Linux as it matured," wrote (Groklaw's Pamela) Jones.

There is a serious problem with this hypothesis: it isn't true.

(Your reporter [Andrew Orlowski] bases this conclusion on first hand experience with representatives from IBM, SCO, Compaq and Sequent which included attending four of the week-long SCO Forum events between 1998 and 2001 - reports from which have been cited in the litigation, and widely quoted at Groklaw itself)."

--

[ Reply to This | # ]

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