Today 2.4.0 SMP kernels run on SMP IA-64 platforms (e.g. 4-way) reliably. I'm using such systems for heavy-duty software developement. We had a demo using an 8-way IA-64 machine last Summer.

Many SCO and Caldera employees directly contributed to the development of enterprise scale Linux, before, during and after Caldera made its purchase of SCO's Unix division.

Jun U Nakajima, sometime in 2001, went to work for Intel, and even today he is successfully performing the same job he did when he was employed by Old SCO and then Caldera, improving the scalability of Linux on the new Intel processor platforms. In 2002, Jun U Nakajima and Venkatesh Pallipadi, also from Intel, presented a paper to a USENIX conference. As with all the Linux kernel work, the result of all the above work has been incorporated into the main Linux branch at the discretion of Linus Torvalds.

But what Caldera did do, as described in a Caldera white paper dated March 8, 2001, with the then new tag-phrase of "Linux and UNIX are coming Together" by Dean R. Zimmerman, a SCO writer, was to try to merge the best features of both operating systems. Early on there's a line that fits perfectly with open source gospel. "For a programmer, access to source code is the greatest gift that can be bestowed." And then, getting straight to the point, Caldera declares: "Caldera has begun the task of uniting the strengths of UNIX technology, which include stability, scalability, security, and performance with the strengths of Linux, which include Internet-readiness, networking, new application support, and new hardware support. Caldera's solution is to unite in the UNIX kernel a Linux Kernel Personality (LKP), and then provide the additional APIs needed for high-end scalability. The result is an application 'deploy on' platform with the performance, scalability, and confidence of UNIX and the industry momentum of Linux."

Isn't this exactly what SCO is accusing IBM of doing? In SCO's March filing, SCO states, "Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car. To make Linux of necessary quality for use by enterprise customers, it must be re-designed so that Linux also becomes the software equivalent of a luxury car. This re-design is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment."

Isn't this what SCO had said they were doing? I don't see any significant difference. Do you?

Maybe it'd be a good idea if everyone who wishes to were to download for safekeeping whatever they find that interests them, because it may be disappearing fast. That's what I just did after I found the white paper on another site [PDF].