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Linux Business

SCO Releases Linux OS for Itanium 2 191

Posted by timothy from the oh-there's-room-alright dept.
GreyPoopon writes "Computerworld has an article referring to SCO's announcement of Enterprise Linux for the Itanium 2. Base installation starts at $999 for up to four CPUs. My favorite quote: "With its new system, SCO is a little late to the Linux on Itanium 2 market." I would think being late would be the least of their worries right now. I personally consider this to be my daily dose of comedy. Newsfactor has a better article."
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SCO Releases Linux OS for Itanium 2 More

SCO Releases Linux OS for Itanium 2

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  • what? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheQuantumShift ( 175338 ) <monkeyknifefight@internationalwaters.com> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:18PM (#5746326) Homepage
    what's this Itanium I keep hearing about?

  • The most anticipated release ever! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:21PM (#5746364)
    RMS's favorite distribution is now available.

  • hm (Score:5, Funny)

    by glenkim ( 412499 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:21PM (#5746368) Homepage
    Isn't there some way to tell them, fuck you, stay away from our OS? Stupid double-edged sword of open source...
    • not using/paying for SCO products and recommending that others also not do so is probably your best bet

    • Re:hm (Score:2)

      by sporty ( 27564 )
      Amend the license. Freely distributable.. except to sco. SUCK IT!
      • A)It would no longer be Free software
        B)It would not be GPL, GPL specifically bars this type of clause
        C)Why bother, they are doing a good enough job of shooting themselves in the foot, no need to help.
        • Really. Someone would have to have an unusually severe case of cranial-rectal inversion to think that $999 was a reasonable price to pay for an OS that you can buy for $80 or less off the shelf or download for free.

          • Re:hm (Score:2)

            by haggar ( 72771 )
            We paid more for RHAS 2.1. S far, the RedHat support has sucked ass, in almost all the support cases we logged with them.

    • Re:hm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:59PM (#5746714) Homepage Journal
      I think Linus could revoke their right to use the Linux(tm) trademark. If he were so inclined...
      • That is correct. I'm not sure it's a good thing though. RMS and the FSF have generally been of the stand point that anything that restricts freedom is bad, even if it restricts the restrictors.

        We could start an FS black list though and have the FSF revoke the rights through copyright to use GPLed software that they own the copyright to. That includes trademarks, documentation, etc..

      • Re:hm (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:35PM (#5747990) Journal
        Yea, thats a good idea. Lets limit who can access Linux. Maybe we should have it where you have to get a license to make changes, that way we can keep them out. Or maybe we should just not let them have the source to begin with, so they can't change it. Or maybe, just not let anyone look at it, unless they sign a statement saying they won't release it to anyone else.

        Congratulations, you just invented Windows.
    • I'm sure there is some way, legally, or at least from a boycott point of view. But this seriously undermines the whole "freeness" aspect of Linux. Basically, what you're saying is Linux is free to all... except those guys we don't like. That's not free, now is it?
    • Who CARES if sco wants to charge $999 for linux? IF they can pull that off, MORE POWER TO THEM.

      Why is it everytime someone charges money for something everyone freaks out?

      The whole point of this whole open source/free software is that, within certain licensing constraints, anyone is FREE TO DO what they want with the software, including make money.

      Seriously.. I hate SCO as much as the next guy (if not more), but give it a rest.

      How has sco harmed you by offering this package? Oh, they haven't?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:21PM (#5746373)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Buy SCO! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:22PM (#5746384)
    Fund the death of Linux!

  • Baghdad Bob Lives! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:23PM (#5746389)
    SCO releases brand-new Linux for brand-new CPU! DoubleClick now in charge of privacy! AOL now the Good Guys for suing spammers, and Australia about to ban all spam! Feral robot dogs run amok!

    If Baghdad Bob hanged himself the other day, he obviously made it to heaven, and God must have left the Reality Machine unattended.

  • Another Dose of Comedy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Goody ( 23843 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:23PM (#5746398) Journal
    Q: What's the difference between SCO and a carp ?

    A: One is a worthless scum-sucking bottom dweller, the other is a fish...

  • Someone should hoover up that bastard child, strip out what little proprietary software they have, and re-release it as the AntiSco Linux distribution. $2.99 for a limited time only.
    • The funny thing is that any place that "really needs" something like this probably already has enough real techs to put together their own solution from existing distros/code, or will opt for a more "main-line" (read RedHat/IBM) solution.

      With the way SCO's been behaving, it (their stuff) should be called "Open-Sores Software", because SCO's really irritated the OSS community with their actions.

      • Flashbacks of the Feb 7th 2000 Foxtrot where the brainy younger son wants to install Linux on the "iFruit" computer and the mother says "No, I don't want any of that open sores software on my computer, Yuck!" rant I would have posted a link but you need a subscription to see back issues. /rant
        • rant I would have posted a link but you need a subscription to see back issues. /rant

          I suppose that they found out that giving everything away for free was so ... 1999. (This must be fairly recent, as I was browsing through the old archives only six months ago.)
    • Not sure if it'd be worth the bother... SCO's "enhancements" (if you can call them that) generally suck anyway. I'd rather just see a parody distro of SCO than anything attempting to be usefull...

      Besides, RedHat, Gentoo, and SuSE are way better (as well as being alot nicer) Although the whole RedHat/Pink Tie thing is a bit annoying...

      Hopefully SCO will just die soon.

      Rushfan

  • Understatement (Score:3, Funny)

    by endeitzslash ( 570374 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:26PM (#5746432)
    SCO's suit, which requests "not less than $1 billion" for damages, has been a source of great controversy in the Linux community.

    No [slashdot.org] controversy [slashdot.org] on [slashdot.org] Slashdot [slashdot.org] certainly [slashdot.org].

    Nosirree [slashdot.org] Bob [slashdot.org].

  • 1000 bux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sstory ( 538486 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:28PM (#5746451) Homepage
    A thousand dollars for a linux install, eh? These SCO people must know something I don't. Seriously, can anyone tell me what would justify paying that?

    • Re:1000 bux (Score:3, Funny)

      by tomhudson ( 43916 )
      No, no ... that's $1000 for the software and a license for 4 CPUs max. If you want them to install it, that'll cost you more!. Or if you want to install it on multiple machines, you need to buy more licenses.

      What a hoot!

    • Re:1000 bux (Score:3, Funny)

      by ralico ( 446325 )
      Probably something that is illegal in 49 states, Nevada the exception.

    • Re:1000 bux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by skroz ( 7870 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:44PM (#5746590) Homepage
      A thousand dollars for a linux install, eh? These SCO people must know something I don't. Seriously, can anyone tell me what would justify paying that?
      I don't know, ask RedHat [redhat.com]. I personally think it's a fine idea from their perpective if they can sell it, but that's another issue.
      • If you look at the link you provided, you can find that you get more than just a software with a "4-CPU license" like SCO. (CPU licenses for Linux, what a load of @#$% from SCO. Why would anyone pay for that?)

        From the TOS for RH AS:
        (4) one year of the following Support Services for each Installed System: installation support, configuration support, advanced configuration support, systems administration support, high availability clustering support and 24x7 emergency support for Severity 1 Issues (as defi

    • Re:1000 bux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by elflord ( 9269 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:53PM (#5746671) Homepage
      A thousand dollars for a linux install, eh? These SCO people must know something I don't.

      They know that someone who has a quad CPU Itanium 2 can afford to spend $1000. SCO don't need to come up with something that the average slashkiddie considers to be a good price, they only need to come up with a complete product/support solution that is better than the competition.

  • Only 4GB RAM on multiproccesor Itanium 2? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 1984 ( 56406 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:28PM (#5746455)
    For the newfactor article:

    "The company's base edition of Linux Server 4.0 software is licensed to accommodate up to 4 Itanium 2 processors."

    OK, so it's good for a to 4-way system before you have to pay more money. But later...

    "It supports 4GB of RAM..."

    If you're paying out for a 4-way Itanium 2, wouldn't you (typically) want to handle more than 4GB RAM? I imagine there are applications that benefit from a 64-bit CPU but don't use much RAM, but I thought the core market was people using large amounts of data?

    Or does it support more RAM and this article's just not great?

    • Perhaps. However, people also buy such systems for the memory bandwidth. Infact, I would expect that to be more likely to be the case than there being any real interest in exploiting the larger register size.

      • Re:Only 4GB RAM on multiproccesor Itanium 2? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:56PM (#5746689) Homepage
        Umm, last I checked, a 64-bit processor doesn't give you a wider bus automatically. That's purely a function of the attached bus itself. In fact, in the RDRAM architecture, the bus is actually really *narrow*, it just runs at very high clock rates (IIRC, in the Ghz range these days, with packets that are 8 bytes wide). So, no bandwidth is probably not a key factor in the decision to buy an Itanium-based machine.

        The odds are good they either want 1) really excellent floating point performance (something I hear the Itanium is good at), 2) better performing native apps, because, theoretically, the compiler can optimize better with more registers and the ability to statically schedule multiple operations simultaneously (although we'll see how that plays out in practice), or 3) the ability to access large amounts of RAM.

        Note, the second point I listed is a bit of a red herring, since I'm not aware of any really good IA-64 compilers yet (other than maybe Intel's), and I'm sure the practice of optimizing for the IA-64 is still developing.

    • Re:Only 4GB RAM on multiproccesor Itanium 2? (Score:5, Funny)

      by MmmmAqua ( 613624 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:53PM (#5746668)
      ScoLinux was going to include some old UNIX tech to support 16Gb of RAM until ScoSource threatened to sue them for $1Bn.

      SCO's CEO was quoted as saying, "We're not in any danger of going out of business, we just want to stop these thieving bastards from taking our precious thirty-year old source code, dusting it off, polishing it up, refactoring it - actually, just writing new code from scratch, but 'Linux' sounds sort of like 'UNIX', so it *must* be descended from ScoSource IP - and selling it as their own."

      He then removed his rose-colored glasses, glanced at a recent SCO SEC filing, and muttered, "Oh, shit."
    • Why would anyone shell out money for a first generation 4-way 64-bit system with expensive processors and a proprietary OS when there are much more reliable alternatives from Sun, IBM, and HP? This is an extremely competitive market; what does SCO have to offer that more established brands don't?

      And before anyone jumps on me about their OS, consider this: if their Linux distro doesn't use any proprietary technology then you can download the source and roll your own system, which cuts them out of the loop.

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by drgroove ( 631550 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:29PM (#5746460)
    SCO Group, inheritor of the intellectual property for the Unix operating system, has sued itself for more than $1 billion, alleging that SCO misappropriated their own Unix technology and built it into Linux.

    The suit, filed Thursday afternoon in the 3rd District Court of Salt Lake County in Utah, alleges misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition, breach of contract and tortious interference with SCO's business, the Lindon, Utah-based company said. SCO also sent a letter to itself on Thursday demanding that if it doesn't meet various demands, SCO will revoke it's own license to ship its version of Unix, in 100 days.

    "We are alleging we have contaminated our UnitedLinux work with inappropriate knowledge from Unix," said Chris Sonfag, senior vice president of operating systems at SCO and head of the company's SCO source effort to make more money from its intellectual property.

    Analysts saw the move as a desperate one for SCO, a company that hasn't been profitable in its current incarnation.

    "It's a fairly end-of-life move for the stockholders and managers of that company," said Jonthan Unice, an Illuminato analyst. "I mean, hell, they've already gone ahead and filed suit against IBM - but, this is really over the top."
    • Sadly, not totally a joke to sue yourself in our legal system.
      There was that one guy that sued himself. He was a prisoner, and sued himself for causing himself to be locked up and violating his human rights. The angle? Since he was incarcerate, he was a ward of the state and the state should pay. Case was thrown out.

  • More info on SCO.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by nacs ( 658138 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:31PM (#5746479) Journal
    More information on SCO, it's lawsuit, the many boycotts against it and why they aren't exactly the ideal company can be found here [pclinuxonline.com].

  • $999 for a four-cpu system ain't bad (Score:4, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:40PM (#5746557) Homepage
    I mean, to buy those CPUs retail would cost about $2000, so this is a really good deal.

    (Wait ... what's that? this is JUST for the OS? Bugger off. That's insane.)

  • From the too bizare and stupid to be real dept. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mxmasster ( 118546 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:42PM (#5746573) Homepage
    See this is all part of the strategy... sue IBM for infringing on your IP, so everyone will buy your product so that they won't be liable.

    But wait, release a GPL product with your IP embedded in it... doesn't that mean that your IP is now GPL?

    Boy am I confused, so SCO is suing IBM for writing software that they are now selling for themselves and benifiting from.

    Where can I buy tickets to the court case? I can't wait for this!

    • But wait, release a GPL product with your IP embedded in it... doesn't that mean that your IP is now GPL?

      IANAL, but if I recall correctly, the SCO vs. IBM issue is about trade secrets and contract violations, not about copyright or patents. Therefore the GPL clauses about patents and copyright are irrelevant in this case.

  • Wait a sec... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Arcaeris ( 311424 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:44PM (#5746595)
    What's this? SCO still makes a product? I thought they got out of that business.

  • Gotta love their chutzpah though (Score:4, Funny)

    by ninewands ( 105734 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:50PM (#5746646)
    Quoth the article:
    The SCO® Group (SCO)(Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of Linux and UNIX business software solutions, ...

    but RedHat [redhat.com], Debian [debian.org], SuSE [www.suse.de] and even SGI [sgi.com] got there first.

    More like leading supplier of hot air and frivolous lawsuits.

  • This just in ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:50PM (#5746650) Homepage Journal
    "Okay, if I'm dying, what the fuck do you call SCO on Itanium?" - BSD

  • GPL violations? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 )
    It would be interesting to have GNU or FSF buy a copy and investigate it to see if there are any GPL violations! What might they find?

  • Linux? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:52PM (#5746665)
    Why would I want anything Linux? It is to Unix what a bicycle is to a luxury car. SCO will back me up on that. Wait...

  • supports only 4 GB RAM (Score:3, Insightful)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @03:56PM (#5746692)
    so much for their 64-bit OS.
  • It is a little like the news from Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf [bbc.co.uk] in Baghdad. What planet are these guys living on if one moment they sue someone for allegedely leaking their technology and the next coming out with a release built on the open software technology that they are challenging others about. I mean, well anyone can do a distro even with propietary code. However, there is something called taste and something that has a bad smell amongst the community.

    Privacy International [privacyinternational.org] give their Big Brother awards f

  • PR News Release
    SomeHickTown, Utah. (Apr 16, 2003)

    The SCO Group has released a Linux server operating system for the 64-bit Intel Itanium processor, the company announced Wednesday. A SCO Product Manager was quoted as saying "As our main revenue stream is based on frivolous lawsuits we thought we'd expand further by deploying a Linux distribution based on a failing server technology - how could consumers not be tempted by this marriage made in hell?"

  • From the SCO Information Minister (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @04:02PM (#5746740) Homepage Journal
    "SCO's future on Itanium is immense, burning brightly like a flaming retard. SCO on Itanium supports more than 4GB of RAM. Do not believe the Debian infidels when they say otherwise! We are also the cheapest Linux distribution in the world! Anything you are told by the scheming harbingers of doom is a lie."

    I could go on all day with this thread.
  • What an outpouring of bile against SCO we see here! And how richly deserved!

    Do not give this company the time of day. (As if anybody needed to be told.)
  • From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):

    "SCO does not own Linux. It is a trick by the coalition forces! Oh, and UNIXWare 3, 4, 5 and 6 do exist!"

    More at 11.

  • SCO=? (Score:3, Funny)

    by linuxislandsucks ( 461335 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @04:35PM (#5747017) Homepage Journal
    SCO= Slow CEOs OnBoard

  • Fuck them (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @04:38PM (#5747040) Journal
    They should not get advertisment from slashdot. Microsoft releases some cool products and features and yet they are barely mentioned at all here on slashdot unless its negative because the editors hate them. Same should apply with SCO.

    Cmd Taco and Timothy. If your reading this please do not advertise for SCO. Screw them. Tell them to shove it up there ass unless its something really worthwile or negative.
  • What the hell are they offering that I can't get from RedHat, SuSE, or Debian?

    I know others such as RedHat sell Linux distros with similar price tags, however the vendor makes it pretty clear in these cases that most of it is for support.

  • I don't under the GPL business model (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gqy ( 586227 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @05:10PM (#5747304) Journal
    SCO's Linux Server Base version is priced at $599. It comes with no technical support or any kind of warranty.

    Can someone just make a copy of their Linux software and distribute it for free? Why are people going to buy from SCO directly?
  • ... as if I (or anyone else) actually gives a fuck about anything SCO/Caldera does, ever again.

  • GPL Release of IP? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Harry8 ( 664596 )
    Did SCO just release all of their intellectual property under the GPL?

  • SCO is a little late (Score:3, Funny)

    by ebcdic ( 39948 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:38PM (#5747680)
    That's "late" as in "the late Arthur Dent".
  • Linux does not exist. It is a fabrication of some unemployed geek infidels to slander Microsoft. There are no bugs in Windows, never! Our glorious leader Bill Gates has forbidden bugs, therefore there are none! Do not believe them!

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