Jay Talbot’s Ramblings

I’m writing this in response to your article entitled Long Live UNIX: An Open Letter from Darl McBride, President and CEO, The SCO Group.

I’m really a nobody. I’m not a bigwig. I’m not a millionaire. I’m not a politician. I am, however, an IT professional and having worked with SCO Unix for the last 5 years, makes me a bit of a novelty when it comes to your products. Let me say that it has not been a pleasure working with your products. I find them limiting and cumbersum to work with. Now, on with the show.

SCO OpenSever 6 has nothing to do with “development” on your part as it includes Apache Web Sever, MySQL, and many other promanent Open Source Software (OSS) packages. These products were included with your latest OS at NO COST to you. Considering many of these packages call for the acceptance of the GPL, does this mean that SCO Group has changed their tune about the lagality of the GPL? I won’t speculate the answer.

Now let’s take a look at your points against Linux, shall we?

1. OpenServer 6 Costs Less - OpenServer 6 offers very aggressive pricing. The purchase price for SCO OpenServer 6 is priced from $599 to $1399 which includes the license to the product, software fixes, and access to SCO’s online knowledge base. Customers pay once for the product and run it for as long as they like.

Linux vendors, on the other hand, seem to have a “bait and switch” pricing model. The initial attraction to Linux was a price tag of zero cost. Yet, they typically charge customers from $349 to $2,499 every single year. Calculating the cost of running Linux over a five year period of time, that same customer pays from $1,745 to $12,495.
Since the Linux license itself is “free,” are you really happy to be paying annual subscription fees that are, in effect, higher than SCO’s price for both licenses and software fixes?

Wow! That sounds really convincing. But let’s take a look at things a little closer. You have pretty much described the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ™ pricing structure. What Mr. McBride fails to mention here is what you get for your fees. With most of the non-basic plans, you get 24/7 techsupport, unlimited access to software fixes and security updates, and it’ll run on several different archetures. This is on top of access to SOURCE packages so you may customize and patch your own system as needed. What a concept! The customer being able to fix it themselves. Of course, SCO Group doesn’t want you to look at that part, because it looks much less evil. Another less evil thing Red Hat does is make the SOURCE packages for their Enterprise Linux publicly available. White Box and CentOS are built off of Red Hat’s(tm) publicly available SOURCE packages and are suitable FREE alternatives to RHEL(tm), if you don’t need all the extra support. They obviously forgot to include other distributions such as Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) and Debian, and many many others.

What Mr. McBride seems to be missing here is that the “free” in Linux is the freedom of choice and the freedom of the SOURCE. Cost comes with every computer system, from the simple workstation to the 1,024 node cluster, there will always be expenses.

2. SCO Has a Superior Kernel - SCO OpenServer 6 includes the UNIX System V Release 5 (SVR5) kernel, the result of more than 25 years of high-end development work that has created a proven track record of stability and reliability. With our latest release, OpenServer provides support for up to 32 processors, 64 GB of memory, terabyte file sizes, and full support for multi-threaded applications. Linux is still young from an operating system perspective. I would challenge any kernel out there to match us head-to-head. While Linux may appeal to some as the sleek, new “racer” on the track, the experienced IT professional will truly see the real power under the hood when they test the UNIX kernel and the tried and true power of UNIX combined with the new capabilities of SCO OpenServer 6.

That’s quite a challenge. According to the RHEL Overview, the RHEL AS version does not impose restrictions on the number of processors or the amount of RAM that can be in the installed system. Multiple processors can be used across most Linux distributions, and as such, many don’t limit the amount that can be used. There are, however, hardware limitations beyond the reach of the Linux Kernel and thus can’t be blamed on Linux itself.

Another thing that Mr. McBride is forgetting here is that unlike SCO Unix, Linux can scale and cluster quite nicely. There is also efforts to make Linux a real-time OS. Either through forgetfulness or by less innocent ways, Mr. McBride forgot to include this information.

3. OpenServer Has Better Security - IT managers rank security today as one of the most important decision factors in selecting an operating system. According to technology risk management firm mi2g, SCO OpenServer is one of the most secure operating systems in the world. A study confirmed that SCO UNIX platforms had the lowest number of vulnerabilities of any operating system they had studied. SCO OpenServer 6 has all the latest security protocols and encryption systems.

and then goes on to say….

Unfortunately for Linux, mi2g also confirmed that the Linux operating system has become somewhat of a hacker’s paradise. In a study conducted only seven months ago they found that overall, the most vulnerable operating system for manual hacker attacks was Linux, accounting for 65.64% of all hacker breaches reported.

Really? What Mr. McBride fails to mention is that these statistics are 2 years old. (Did you know that roughly 1/3 of all statistics are bunk? lol!) He also fails to mention that many of the vulnerabilities are in third party software, not the kernel itself. In this article, they state that Ubuntu (a Debian based GNU/Linux distribution), responded as fast as SCO Group did to the OpenSSL vulnerability. Manual hacks are by far the least used method of hacking a system. The majority of hacker attacks are scripted, not manual.

4. SCO Has a Customer-Driven Roadmap - Customers expect to see a published roadmap of product development. Linux development plans and schedules are generally as unknown as they are unpredictable. Contrary to that approach, SCO believes in a solid, public, and planned roadmap based on the tried and true methodology of listening to customers, evaluating technology and bringing it to market in a timely manner. SCO is committed to deliver on its roadmap promises — on time and on target.

Linux will likely continue to face challenges about its development methodologies and roadmaps as long as it continues to be a loosely organized set of volunteers who develop what they want, when they want.

Yeah, uh huh, ok. All we’ve pretty much seen is litigate, litigate, litigate, and litigate some more. Is that your road map? It doesn’t look very secure to me. I’m going to venture a guess that he means Linux the kernel and not GNU/Linux the OS. Mr McBride tends use the term interchangably which could confuse people and help blur the lines in his favor. The different Linux Distributions have their own road maps, and work at their own pace. I would also say that the Linux kernel development is probably one of the most complicated development processes I know of. This is probably why Mr. McBride assumes that it’s loosely organized, when it is more tightly wrapped than ever. You can’t make blind accusations with nothing to back them up.

5. OpenServer 6 is Backward Compatible - In listening to our customers, we’ve received the strong message that backward compatibility is essential. Backward compatibility is almost non-existent for Linux customers. Linux has a “community” of contributing volunteers, and while some would say this is a boon for Linux, I would characterize it as a bane because channeling all of these contributions into another point release for Linux inevitably causes problems. Who is checking for compatibility across thousands of applications, drivers, hardware and peripherals? Who is verifying backward compatibility? When a new upgrade of Linux is required, software vendors and end users most likely have to upgrade their application as well.

Yet another bad assumption. Usually, the incompatability happens with major version changes like upgrading from the 2.4 to 2.6 kernel. Also, what Mr. McBride is not saying here is that many of the incompatabilities are due to new technologies being introduced, and leaving out old code to work around. This makes it less bulky and more lean than most OS’ who boast backwards compatability. It is also less resource intensive since you don’t need a that extra layer for said backwards compatability. Usually, those that oversee the different projects make sure their programs are forward compatable, meaning easily updatable and maintainable code. Usually a recompile against the new kernel, compiler, and libraries would fix any incompatabilities. If not, you report the bug to the project and it gets fixed. What a concept.

6. SCO Allows You to Focus on Your Core Competency - A popular animation on the Internet features a guy named Steve, the Linux Super Villain. During the course of the 60 second animation, he describes his work
with Linux stating, “First you have to config it, then write some shell scripts, update your RPMs, partition your drives, patch your kernel, compile your binaries and check your version dependencies…”
While the animation is designed to be humorous, it’s not far from the truth. If you’re adopting Linux, get prepared to go into the operating system business because that’s exactly the path you will be taking.

One of the primary reasons customers choose SCO is that they don’t want to be an operating system vendor. They want to be free to manage their businesses, and leave the operating system details to SCO and our army of resellers, support engineers, and product development personnel.

Yes, I find that cartoon funny as well. Mr. McBride assumes businesses don’t want to get under the hood, or tweek things, much less fix things on their own. Chances are, if you choose a full service Distribution like RHEL(tm) or Suse Linux, you won’t have to go it alone. As a matter of fact, you wouldn’t have to even if you chose a Distribution that has less support options because the Linux Community is there to help. Who wouldn’t want an army of geeks at their fingertips ready to help?

7. SCO Owns and Warrantees its Products - SCO owns the OpenServer 6 operating system that it licenses to its customers. SCO also owns the UNIX operating system technology that has been licensed to thousands of firms over the years. Alternatively, Linux distributors ship an operating system for which they have little control and no ownership. In fact, the General Public License, which governs the use and distribution of the Linux operating system, makes it clear that Linux conveys no warranty to end users. From the standpoint of intellectual property rights, SCO OpenServer 6 is backed by a company that warrantees its products.

What SCO Group doesn’t want you to know is that they really don’t warranty their own software against data loss, etc., just like M$ and other software/OS venders. It’s a standard End User License Agreement (EULA) clause, and yes, it’s even found in the GPL and other OSS licenses. It’s a standard procedure, but they won’t tell you that.

8. SCO is Unifying its Code Base - Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Forking is exactly what is happening to Linux. The grand promise of Linux was that it wouldn’t fork or fragment into multiple Linux operating systems. A noble sentiment, to be sure; but Linux distributors have ensured exactly the opposite. They are attempting to get ISVs locked into a specific flavor of Linux, thereby forking Linux with every new version of the product.

Again, he’s leaving out some information here. He’s refering to GNU/Linux the OS, as opposed to Linux the Kernel. Distributions are not “forks.” They are a specialized or general set of specific tools built to work with the Linux Kernel. Vender lock-in is not a priority, much like SCO Group would want you to believe. If a program didn’t come stock with your Distribution, there are many ways to go, from using unofficial yum/apt/up2date repositories to downloading the SOURCE and compiling it. Vendor lock-in is not an issue.

9. SCO UNIX: Legendary Reliability - Customers value and trust a vendor whose products provide reliability and stability year after year. A good operating system is like a strong building foundation, you may not think about it everyday, but you’re glad it’s there.

Some of the world’s largest and most well-known companies trust SCO to run their business. One large SCO customer has chosen OpenServer as its operating system of choice in thousands of locations due to this
legendary reliability. Their method of deployment was recently described to me this way: “We put the server in a closet, lock the door, and hide the key. We never have to touch it again.” I believe this is a key competitive advantage for OpenServer.

Would you really trust 25+ year old technology to be as fast and reliable as they claim? Better yet, would you trust a company who has attempted to base a business model on litigation with no real evidence to back up their accusations? Not only that, but they did it to their customers. I’m going to guess that the company that threw the SCO box in a closet isn’t running anything really important on it. We have to reboot our SCO boxes every other week or they have “problems” crashing, dropped sockets, etc… We run them pretty hard, but coming from a company that boasts stability and the like, it sure makes for some headaches.

10. SCO Has an Award-Winning Support Team - Customers of OpenServer 6 have access to a support team that knows the product inside and out. They have decades of experience with our product line and are available around the world and around the clock. In addition, the SCO support team has access to the very development engineers who created the product. This cannot be said of Linux distributions. For most customers who have an immediate need, SCO can respond much faster than Linux because our support staff is in-house and has direct access to the developers to answer all customer questions.

Conversely, when Linux customers run into problems and need professional technical support they really have only two choices. First, they can turn to the Linux distributor who played a big role in packaging the product but had nothing to do with its core development. Or second, they can turn to the Linux volunteer community. These volunteers were not paid to develop the product; and they received nothing from the Linux distributor, there’s no obligation for that volunteer to support the product. Would you really want to trust the backbone of your business to the likely unpredictable response times of this Linux “volunteer fire department” support model?

Actually, I would trust a volunteer over a paid employee anyday. The reason being, in volunteer environment, there’s no motivation to say “You need to buy such-and-such upgrade to get that fix.” Volunteers support products they believe in and they do it because they love it, that’s their motivation. Money is generally not always a factor, especially in OSS circles. Mr. McBride is sadly mistaken as all he’s seen since he started his IT career are dollar signs, even more sadly in litigation. His history says a lot about who he is.

Well, I guess that’s all of his points and I really don’t have much more to say on this topic. These are my views and opinions, with a few Google and Wikipedia searches mixed in. All links are subject to their owners and I have no association with any companies I’ve linked to or mentioned here-in. Time to move on now.

Long live Linux and long live OSS!