"How should existing UNIX
vendors deal with the rise of Linux?" For now, though, let's focus on SCO as a case
study."
"Where they stand now: SCO is, in terms of volume, the world's largest distributor of
UNIX Unlike virtually every other UNIX vendor, their OpenServer and UnixWare run
on commodity Intel hardware, not proprietary RISC chips. This had been the key to
the company's rapid expansion, and it places them more directly in competition with
Windows, NetWare, and Linux than, say, Sun, which retains the benefit of their own
high-end hardware."
"The problem: SCO's low-end offerings are positioned as low-end file/print/web
servers. At this level, what advantage can they offer over Linux systems? Just the
Tarantella-based WebTop administration system, the CDE (if for some ungodly
reason you consider this an advantage over KDE, GNOME, or XFCE), and the SCO
brand name (which does swing a lot more weight than the Linux name in many
corporations). As Linux becomes better-known, better-trusted, and easier to use,
UnixWare's advantages at the departmental level quickly go out the window. Linux
also continues to improve at a pace far faster than any other OS on the market today.
On top of that, companies which insist on a non-open- source solution will be able to
get Windows 2000. Win2k supports the same theoretical scalability as UnixWare (32
processors), aims to improve reliability, and offers a brand name that certainly dwarfs
SCO's. In the next two years, we'll see a dramatic drop-off in sales of UnixWare, I
absolutely guarantee it."
