SCO компаниясының тарихы және қолданбалы бағдарламаларға қатысты мәселелер

Software company based in Santa Cruz, California
the original SCO company

The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO,

While SCO operating systems were often the basis of vertical market software offerings by others, SCO had long desired to create additional horizontal market software applications for its operating system product as part of further popularizing it. The portfolio primarily comprises SCO Lyrix, a word processor; SCO Professional, a spreadsheet; and SCO Integra, an SQL based relational database. The first two were developed by SCO, augmented by a 4GL called Accell from Unify Corporation. Linking them together was the SCO Manager, which has a character based but multi windowed interface. It provides desktop tools such as mail, calendaring, and chat; an expandable menu system; and a clipboard mechanism for transmitting information between applications. Early 1990 also saw the release of Microsoft Word version 5.0 for Xenix and SCO Unix, which was also available as part of SCO Office Portfolio. It has functionality equivalent to Word for DOS, This was followed in early 1991 by Word 5.1 for SCO Unix, which has graphical user interface support. As part of adapting Word to Unix, SCO made various enhancements for multiuser support and workgroup related features. And in mid 1990, SCO made its Word for Unix available for AT&T 3B2 and AT&T 6386 systems. This resulted in problems when, in July 1990, Lotus Development Corporation sued SCO for copyright infringement, as one of several such actions that Lotus took against its imitators and competitors. The suit was settled out of court a year later; in a victory for Lotus, SCO agreed to stop all sales and licensing of SCO Professional and instead recommend that customers use 1 2 3. In the end, SCO had neither the market share nor the sales ability to compete on applications with the major players in that area such as Microsoft and Lotus.

Besides Microsoft, venture capitalists owned about 20 percent of SCO by 1991, meaning that the Michelses owned a majority of the company, It had the goal of building the next generation commodity computing platform around the MIPS processor. Microsoft's role was to supply a version of OS/2 for the processor SCO created a top level business unit within the company to focus on the ACE work and the expected market resulting from it. But almost from the beginning, the ACE consortium was challenged by the difficulty of large, powerful companies with disparate interests working together; one German executive from a non member company called ACE an "eier legende Wollmilchsau" (egg laying woolen milk pig). By November 1991, SCO's work was reported as six months behind schedule. At the same time, indications were reported in trade media, the business press, and the general press that the ACE project as a whole was in trouble. In April 1992, a year after the start, the project fell apart; SCO publicly acknowledged that it had abandoned work on the Unix for MIPS and had withdrawn from the consortium, no longer confident that the project would succeed or was even necessary given improvements in CISC processor speed from Intel. Only some of the heavy engineering expenditures that SCO had spent on ACE were recoverable; Larry Michels said, "We learned a lot out of ACE. We learned the hard way." In 1992, Software Magazine wrote that SCO had long been "the only major player in this market," but noted that Univel and SunSoft were both introducing Unix on Intel products. Both of these were from better financed companies. PC Magazine, in a lengthy review the following year of different operating system choices for the Intel architecture, wrote that SCO had a dominant position in the Unix on Intel market.

In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited, a software company in Cambridge, UK, best known for its X. desktop product, which formed the graphical basis of Open Desktop. In December 1994, SCO bought Visionware, of Leeds, UK, developers of XVision. The roles of the two companies were different but complementary, as one former SCO UK employee has succinctly summarised: "IXI specialised in software that ran on Unix and made Unix easier to use. Visionware specialised in software that ran on Windows that made Unix easier to use." In 1995, SCO combined the two development teams to form the IXI Visionware, Ltd. subsidiary. Later in 1995, the merged business unit was subsumed more fully into its parent and became the Client Integration Division of SCO. In May 1997, the Client Integration Division released the Vision97 family of products: XVision Eclipse (a PC X server), VisionFS (an SMB server for UNIX), TermVision (a terminal emulator for Microsoft Windows), SuperVision (centralised management of users from Windows), and SQL Retriever (ODBC and JDBC compliant database connectivity software). The VisionFS product was developed from scratch by the Cambridge development team; the other products were developed by the Leeds development team and were mostly new versions of the existing Visionware products. The SCO Unix channel based sales model did not work well for the Vision products,

Novell's 1993 acquisition of Unix System Laboratories had never really worked out, and by late summer 1995 Novell was looking for a way out of the Unix business. On September 20, 1995, Novell announced the sale of that business to SCO, coincident with a licensing arrangement with Hewlett Packard. As part of the deal, SCO said that it would merge the SVR4.2 based UnixWare with the SVR3.2 based OpenServer, creating a new merged product code named "Gemini". Gemini would then be sold through SCO's channel and reseller operation. Some 400 Novell software engineers had been working on UnixWare, mostly in an office in Florham Park, New Jersey; almost all of these engineers joined either SCO or HP

As Doug Michels later reflected in 2006, SCO seized on the idea of buying the Unix business from Novell for three reasons: "for one, we got all the talent from Bell Labs that had created Unix; two, we got the moral authority around Unix; and three, we got rid of all the crazy historical licensing problems" dating from Unix's origins within AT&T. The effort was motivated in part by threat of Windows NT threat taking advantage of splits among Unix providers when 64 bit systems arrived in common use. Both companies were also doing porting work to Merced using the early version compilers available. But little progress had been made on actual implementation, with sources for only a few components having been exchanged by the two companies. The collaboration failed for both business reasons – HP and SCO had differing perceptions of the marketplace – and technical ones – an inability to produce a common binary Unix for Intel product that could run existing applications from both companies' user bases. As an InformationWeek story later wrote, the three way deal had been a "complicated plan" that was "confusing from the start".)

During the mid to late 1990s, many in the computer industry believed that Intel's under development 64 bit architecture, known as IA 64 and code named "Merced", would dominate the marketplace once released. SCO needed a well funded hardware company to ally with; the earlier 3DA initiative with HP had failed, When IBM proposed an alliance, SCO jumped at the chance to further bolster its entry into the enterprise space. Along the way, there would be stages of earlier deliverables. This would be aided by IBM including its middleware and some AIX technology into 32 bit UnixWare, and conversely some UnixWare technology would be incorporated into future versions of AIX. Part of the motivation for Monterey was another attempt by Unix vendors to show a clear advantage for Unix in the high end enterprise space against Microsoft's latest NT offering, now being branded as Windows 2000 and scheduled to be available for Merced as well. in part because IBM was playing catch up in the Merced space. One SCO executive said that Monterey was "probably the biggest deal SCO has done." By October 1999, a year after the announcement, the work in progress Monterey was said to be up and operational on early silicon versions of Itanium, as Merced was by then officially called, and able to run both 32 bit UnixWare binaries and 64 bit natively built binaries on it. A few months later IBM released a major upgrade to AIX, but instead of it being associated with Monterey, it was called AIX 5L with the 'L' indicating an affinity for Linux. IBM's decision to shelve Monterey left the SCO product line without a 64 bit Unix solution. Itanium was further delayed, and when it did come out, it failed to succeed in the marketplace; so Project Monterey was a failure from multiple perspectives. Then in an attempt to deal with the growing popularity of Linux as a low cost operating system, during 1999 SCO began offering consulting services for Linux. To meet the demand, SCO added more staff. The results broke a four year streak of SCO losing money. The company also had the best cash position in its history, with some $62 million in that form or in short term investments. The stock promptly jumped by 7 points, The increasing popularity of Linux solutions had resumed taking its toll as well. In particular, Linux posed an existential threat to SCO OpenServer's low end marketshare; As a result, by mid 2000, SCO's market position, and the company itself, was rapidly collapsing. The split was intended to highlight Tarantella as a product independent of SCO Unix,

On August 2, 2000, following several months of negotiations, SCO announced that it would sell its Server Software and Services Divisions, including UnixWare, to the Linux company Caldera Systems. The deal was complex, involving cash, stock, and loans, and difficult to evaluate monetarily, but based on the price of Caldera Systems stock at the time it was worth around $110–114 million. This layoff included 40 employees in Santa Cruz itself. However, the two companies' support organizations did get combined during this time. Finally on May 7, 2001, SCO completed the sale of its Server Software and Services Divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, to Caldera Systems. At that time Caldera Systems changed its name to Caldera International, and the remaining part of SCO, the Tarantella Division, changed its name to Tarantella, Inc.

The sale of the company's Unix assets and renaming of what was left marked the end of an era for not just SCO but the town of Santa Cruz as well. The staff going to Caldera moved into the 400 Encincal building while the newly named Tarantella occupied the 425 Encinal structure. Some of the feel of the SCO offices was carried forward in coworking facilities later set up in Santa Cruz by two former SCO employees. New products were promoted with mock film posters. whose credits included having designed the "flying toasters" cover of the Jefferson Airplane's 1973 live album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland. From its earliest days through to its last ones, The Santa Cruz Operation was known for reflecting the casual ambience of its namesake town.

Beginning in 1987, SCO hosted an annual Summer conference for the international Unix community. Called SCO Forum, it was held on the University of California, Santa Cruz's scenic redwood forested campus overlooking Monterey Bay, drew some 2000–3000 attendees, and lasted for much of a week. Featured speakers over the years included Douglas Adams, Scott Adams, Dave Barry, Clifford Stoll, John Perry Barlow, Linus Torvalds, Andy Grove (Intel), Michael Swavely (Compaq), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), and Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems). Musical entertainment included concerts by Jefferson Starship, Tower of Power, Roger McGuinn, Jan & Dean, The Kingsmen, The Surfaris, and Deth Specula. Due to its useful content and its relaxed, fun atmosphere, SCO Forum became known as one of the best such conferences to go to in the industry and was viewed fondly by those who attended.

Following the first live Internet concert in 1994, SCO continued in that tradition by sponsoring and producing a series of live Internet webcasts from the popular Santa Cruz night club Palookaville. These webcasts demonstrated the use of UnixWare 7 as a real time audio and video webcasting server utilizing RealAudio and RealVideo technologies from RealNetworks.

SCO was a target of one of the most publicized security hackers of the 1980s and 1990s, Kevin Mitnick, who broke into the company's systems in 1987. SCO's staff detected his intrusions and engaged in exchanges with him that allowed them to track his activities. After about a week of this, it appeared that the intruder was trying to modify or copy Xenix code. Authorities having been notified, the phone line Mitnick was using for the intrusions was discovered and he was arrested. On September 22, 2012, the SCO Alumni Association hosted the SCOGala Reunion party at the Cocoanut Grove, which included the first SCO Follies since 2001. Some 500 former employees, friends, and family attended the event. Year Title Description 1985 Star Trek Scripts in hand, early SCO employees go where no company has gone before. 1986 unknown 1987 unknown 1988 Cheers Sometimes you want to go where no one knows your login name. 1989 Larry Wants an Ad Exasperated with Bruce Steinberg's hairbrained ideas, Larry Michels asks employees to submit concepts for a new ad campaign. 1990 Late Night with Doug Michels SCO licenses the "Late Night" format from GE with Doug as host. Guests include the XENIX Colonel, Michael J. Foxplus (promoting "Backup to the Future II"), SCO's own Princess of Purple, and (direct from the mail room) "Elvis". 1991 KODT SCO launches a cable television channel that requires a telethon to raise funds for the equally cash strapped organization (operating under the banner of "almost" public television). 1992 Archaeological Dig The year is 2100 and the world has only recently recovered from a catastrophic era known as "The Corporate Wars". Drs. Dave Loman and Jane Greenleaf are recovering artifacts from the original SCO site in New Santa Cruz. The archaeologists are working under the supervision of an overbearing AI known as the NED 9.0.1 Project Management System, and Michelle Michels, descendant of the founders of SCO. With a little hacking, a kinder, wackier NED makes for a much less stressful work environment. 1993 How to Succeed in the Software Business Job applicant Grace Hopper joins the company via social engineering. With the help of a book on the software business, Grace hopscotches across the SCO org chart with stints in Manufacturing, Support, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing. Meanwhile, VP and co founder Doug Michels is rescued from a car crash and imprisoned by a deranged ex SCO employee named Annie Wilkes. Grace is ultimately made CEO, but turns it down for a better job. This show includes the infamous "Die Hard" video by late Follies action director Peter (Israel) Rosencrantz. In the current climate, it's hard to picture a CEO giving permission for employees to parade through the building carrying automatic weapons, let alone appearing in the video himself. But Swedish born Lars Turndal sat for an hour with guns trained on him by some wacky Americans as if he'd been doing it all his life. 1994 The Phantom of the Operation Software engineer Eric T. Claudin runs afoul of evil VP Edwin Vincent Leach, who is bent on SCO's destruction. Disfigured in a hot tub "accident" arranged by Leach, Eric becomes the Phantom, a dark figure obsessed with saving the firm. Once again, then CEO Lars Turndal proved he was a real sport and consented to appear in his second (and last) video, one that roasted the executive team for trying to censor the Usenet feed. Brian Moffet produced the stained glass style panorama that opens the show. 1995 FCS Can Wait For the uninitiated, FCS is "First Customer Ship," the magic goal of the product development cycle. Based on the films "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" and Heaven Can Wait," Engineering manager Jo Pendleton is hurled into the great void ahead of schedule. Bodies must be swapped and Heaven & Earth must be moved so that Jo can complete her project of a lifetime, "SCO DoomBugger". 1996 UNIX Won't Die After a series of high profile incidents involving glitches in the UNIX operating system (namely Apollo 13, Three Mile Island, and the Exxon Valdez), James Bond tracks the SPECTRE of his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld into the hallways of SCO. Along for the ride is the mysterious Tilly Masterson (sister of the woman who was suffocated in paint by the nefarious Goldfinger). Software engineer Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley ("a schmuck from Legal") have stumbled onto the UNIX plot and are suspicious of Bond's presence. This show was the first to include digital compositing (a couple of laser beams and explosions). These early steps were taken on a Miro DC20 video card and Adobe Premiere purchased with pooled funds. Bill Welch created these effects and Mike Almond provided the opening Star Wars animation using Caligari TrueSpace. Thereafter, nearly all the effects for Follies were created digitally. 1997 Taming of the CEO A Shakespearean romp where Viola Murch, a top female director who despairs of ever becoming a VP, decides to disguise herself as a man. She learns that the top floor is a far stranger place than she imagined. This show included a mock preview for a show called "Sliders" about parallel SCO universes. This marked the full use of digital effects and compositing. Mike Almond was responsible for creating such 3D items as a phalanx of Imperial Stormtroopers and a streaking Millennium Falcon. 1998 A Solstice Carol The story of Ezekiel Kludge, a crusty longtime SCO manager who re discovers the true meaning of SCO. 1999 The Wizard of OCS IBM engineering manager Dorothy Gale is transported into the wacky world of OCS, where she meets a Marketeer who wants to lose his brain, A Salesman who wants to get rid of his heart, and an Engineer who wants to get rid of his life. 2000 Willy Wonka and the Software Factory
Support specialist Charlotte Bucket dreams of visiting SCO's Software Factory and Willy Wonka, the "Chief Geek" who no one has seen for years. It's an adventure populated with Corpa Lorpas, Waffling Precompensators, Paleoatavistic Patch Pellucidators, and Everlasting Spamstoppers. Not to mention Fizzy Linux stocks. And some arrogant, selfish, and greedy adult children get their comeuppance as well. 2001 Fiddler on the 425 Roof The "final" SCO Follies occurred shortly after Caldera Systems purchased the Santa Cruz Operation. Thus the show's theme is change, with Caldera Systems as the Cossacks. The show opens with the "Dawn of Spam" sequence adapted from Stanley Kubrick's classic odyssey. The mood of the "Linux Company" finale was subsequently overturned when the radically downsized, later named "SCO Group" turned against Linux. 2012 Raiders of the Lost Archive When two members of a secret SCO organization are murdered, the SCOllegium assigns a team of ex SCOites to find out who is responsible.