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Linux Business Caldera

United Linux Dead 322

Posted by michael from the no-business-like-sco-business dept.
DesScorp writes "ZDnet has a story about the impending demise of United Linux, with former general manager Paula Hunter stating that 'the legal entity still exists but I turned the lights out'. While a couple of reasons were given for UL's demise, most of the blame was firmly laid on the shoulders of SCO. As a member of group, their lawsuits killed off any real product development. SCO apparently refused to resign from UL, and Hunter said that 'As long as they remained a member, it remained impossible for us to begin new projects'. Which brings up the question, couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?"
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United Linux Dead More

United Linux Dead

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  • Dead? (Score:5, Funny)

    by spezz ( 150943 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:01PM (#8068194)
    Man, I hadn't even heard it was dying. Where were the early warning trolls?

    • Re:Dead? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you'd have been paying close attention, you would have noticed it was born dead.

      There were no early warnings because there were no intermediate steps.

    • Re:Dead? (Score:5, Funny)

      by sik0fewl ( 561285 ) <xxdigitalhellxx&hotmail,com> on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:16PM (#8068388) Homepage

      Let's see.. here it is. [slashdot.org]

      Seems to be the only one.. and he was "just kidding"

    • Re:Dead? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:17PM (#8068394) Journal
      In any case -- TurboLinux is essentially gone, I haven't heard a peep about Connectiva in at least a year and no one has cared about Caldera Linux in five years. That basically leaves SuSE, which has a new, bigger club to wield against Red Hat now.

      I'm sure the SCO business didn't help but it's not like United Linux was going anywhere anyway. Meanwhile, I notice Bruce Perens and Eric raymond have both showed up to flog their new pet schemes. ;-) I'll go cheer on the "What about Gentoo?" zealots instead.

      • Re:Dead? (Score:5, Informative)

        by pr0c ( 604875 ) * on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:27PM (#8068529)
        "Otter: TurboLinux is essentially gone, I haven't heard a peep about Connectiva in at least a year"

        TurboLinux recently released TurboLinux 10 just a few months ago, they aren't gone.. they've been fairly active too.

        Connectiva just recently released Conectiva Linux 10 TP2 2 days ago.

        Both of these distros are not dead! They have pretty up to date packages and all!

        • Re:Dead? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Otter ( 3800 )
          I definitely was unfair to Conectiva, at least. For a small distro, their hackers (Kojima, Tosatti, the KDE guys) make a lot of extremely valuable contributions. Still, the impact they have outside of South America is minimal and I haven't heard much about the distro itself in a while. And in years of reading mailing lists, bug reports, IRC, I've never encountered a TurboLinux user.
          • I've never used or encountered a user of either actually that I can recall but I do regularly visit distrowatch to stay up to date.

            The user base may be small for these two distros but the distros themselves are active at least. In my experience people who use smaller distros are quiet about it. It seams like they like what they have and are knowledgeable about it so they need no / little support. That's probably as a result of the majority of the user base being developers or something close to it.

    • Not dead - just renamed - DLWG (Score:5, Informative)

      by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:21PM (#8068460) Journal
      They just reincarnated as Desktop Linux Working Group [serverpipeline.com]. No SCO this time...
      • I'm still waiting for the "No Homers" club... ;)
      • That's a totally different beast, actually. UnitedLinux was a standardized server distro, and as such was about as far removed from doing anything with the desktop as you can be while still running a modern OS.

        DLWG may include the same players, and that should be no surprise as those are the distros that have shown in the past that they recognize the need to work together, but that doesn't make it the same thing.

    • United Linux is Dying (Score:5, Funny)

      by irix ( 22687 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:52PM (#8068784) Journal
      It is official; Netcraft confirms: United Linux is dying

      One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered United Linux community when IDC confirmed that United Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that United Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. United Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

      You don't need to be Kreskin to predict United Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: United Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for United Linux because United Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for United Linux. As many of us are already aware, United Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

      SCO is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time SCO developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SCO is dying.

      Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

      SCO leader Darl states that there are 7000 users of SCO. How many users of TurboLinux are there? Let's see. The number of SCO versus TuboLinux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 TuboLinux users. Connectiva posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of TuboLinux posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Connectiva. A recent article put SuSE at about 80 percent of the United Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SuSE users. This is consistent with the number of SuSE Usenet posts.

      Due to the troubles of SuSE, abysmal sales and so on, SuSE went out of business and was taken over by Novell who sell another troubled OS. Now TurboLinux is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

      All major surveys show that United Linux has steadily declined in market share. United Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If United Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. United Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, United Linux is dead.

      Fact: United Linux is dying

    • Re:Dead? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tony-A ( 29931 )
      Where were the early warning trolls?

      They were labeled "SCO".
      Figure that whatever SCO touches will be dead without further notice.

      • Quick! (Score:3, Funny)

        by Tokerat ( 150341 )

        Figure that whatever SCO touches will be dead without further notice.
        Push Microsoft at them, quick!

  • SCO being a member of United Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:01PM (#8068202) Journal
    ...is like Madonna running a mirror for suprnova.org [suprnova.org], isn't it?

    Or to put it another way, why would SCO join an organization designed to standardize the way in which their IP rights are violated?

    Unless of course they have no IP claims to begin with. Which they don't. And we know that. And so did SCO, at one point in time.

    I don't understand why that fact alone doesn't throw this whole case out.
    • SCO joined UL before the lawsuits began.
      • But that's my point... doesn't their membership in UL necessarily obviate any IP claims they have on Linux?

        IANAL, but isn't it like how you have to actively defend your trademark, or you lose all your rights to it?

        • Re:SCO being a member of United Linux... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          No.
          They still support their version of linux just fine. It's the fact that they say IBM put their proprietary code into linux, and that has nothing to do with the fact that they do in fact use Linux.

          Think of it this way. Cokeacola sells coke (proprietary formul) and Dasani (water). Someone takes part of the formula for coke and sells water with the formula they took. Coke now claims they own water, but they don't stop distributing it.

          • Re:SCO being a member of United Linux... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:27PM (#8068524) Journal
            But they want everybody who uses Linux to pay up, including the people who used the distros produced by the other players in United Linux, even though those distributions were free when SCO joined United Linux.

            I think the better analogy is this: CocaCola sells cola. Pepsi and Royal Crown come along and they start selling cola too. Then they all decide to create an organization called United Cola to work on better, um, making their colas taste the same (or something.) Then CocaCola later decides to sue Pepsi and Royal Crown for making cola!

            They can't do that! Their joining United Cola gave tacit approval to Pepsi and Royal Crown to make cola.

            You can't just bait people like this. People start investing in Pepsi and Royal Crown based on CocaCola's implicit consent. Factories are built, delivery trucks are bought, etc.

            There was a time to say "No", and SCO instead said "Yes." So let's move on.

            • > They can't do that! Their joining United Cola gave tacit approval to Pepsi and Royal Crown to make cola.

              Ahhh, but Coke wouldn't have joined the group if they had known that the key to Pepsi's success lies in the fact that they stole the recipe for Sprite years ago and incorporate key ingredients from it into the Pepsi formula. Hell, if it wasn't for that theft, Pepsi never would have been able to compete as a soft drink and Coke wouldn't have had to join such groups in order improve their product

      • Re:SCO being a member of United Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Java Pimp ( 98454 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:07PM (#8068290) Homepage
        SCO remained a member (volunarily) after the lawsuits began.

    • HOW THE HELL IS THIS INSIGHTFUL? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:08PM (#8068301)
      "SCO is bad", now mod me up assholes.

    • Remember.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by msimm ( 580077 )
      Before there was the SCO Group there was Caldera/SCO and these two groups where very different.

      Jan 2000 [archive.org]
      Jan 2001 [archive.org]
      Jan 2002 [archive.org]
      Jan 2003 [archive.org]
      And of course present [caldera.com]

  • Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cipster ( 623378 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:01PM (#8068204)
    couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?"

    That would depend on the agreements they had signed. It might have just been easier for everyone else to pull out and just reform a different group at a later time.

  • is this SCO's fault? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by andih8u ( 639841 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:02PM (#8068214)
    Novell pulled SUSE out of it already. Was that due to SCO or did they just not want to be part of it anymore?

  • Until I see someone post the inevitable +5, Funny "Netcraft confirms:" post...
  • ...as of May, 2003 (seems to have disappeared [sco.com] since then) was this:


    Q: How does this action affect SCO's involvement with UnitedLinux?
    A: SCO is a founding member of the UnitedLinux consortium. With that said, SCO
    Linux Server 4.0, Powered by UnitedLinux sales will be suspended with this
    announcement. SCO will continue to fulfill its obligations to the UnitedLinux consortium.


    Truly, a masterful side-stepping of the question.

  • Slightly off topic (Score:5, Informative)

    by jlechem ( 613317 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:04PM (#8068236) Homepage Journal

    I live in Utah and we have a little weekly paper calld the Salt Lake City Weekly. This week they had an article on the whole SCO debacle. It can be read here [slweekly.com]. Not a whole lot on the UL effort but an intereting read into the shennagings going on here. I just was reading it on lunch at work and came back to this.

  • SCO ploy to get "Linux Dead" in news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:04PM (#8068241)
    Come on, boys, that trick is as old as the hairpiece on Darl's head.
  • I'm afraid that the "United Linux Dead" is in danger of being truer than merely the UL organization's demise. SCOffing is quite popular, and well deserved, but that doesn't make SCO and their ilk any less dangerous.

    Divide and conquer is a cliche for a reason: it works.

  • plans for future (Score:5, Funny)

    by Savatte ( 111615 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:05PM (#8068254) Homepage Journal
    well, if they are dead, they should open source the code.

    oh wait...

  • Didn't see this one coming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:05PM (#8068262) Journal
    I'm pretty sure that 'united' doesn't mean 'backstabbing'... It's about the only thing they could do and keep some shred of dignity for the partner companies...

    Simon

  • Don't worry United Linux... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Howard Dean can offer an inspiring concession speech. [abde.net]

    BWAHAHAHAHA!!

  • Re: United Linux is Dead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DoctorPepper ( 92269 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:06PM (#8068271)
    Which only goes to prove the old adage:

    "One rotten apple spoils the entire bunch".


    • A better adage:

      Put a tablespoon of wine in a barrel of shit and you still have a barrel of shit.
      Put a tablespoon of shit in a barrel of wine and you have a barrel of shit.

  • Alternative Group (Score:4, Funny)

    by Seek_1 ( 639070 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:06PM (#8068273)
    Why didn't the other members of UnitedLinux simply form a new, 'identical-except-for-litigating-scum' group.

    They could call it "UnitedAgainstSCOLinux"... or maybe just the "NoSCOs Club"?

  • The replacement is already here (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) * <bruce@perens.com> on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:08PM (#8068296) Homepage Journal
    The UserLinux project is United Linux done right. Debian base, broad membership rather than just 4 companies, equal partnership for all, nobody locked out. Please check out the planning wiki at http://userlinux.com/ . We will coordinate our release with that of Debian "Sarge".

    Thanks

    Bruce

    • Bruce, you're trolling. How about a "this is sad, but we've created UserLinux as a viable alternative"? That would at least be a little more sensitive to those who might have an emotional attachment to United Linux.

    • Please check out the planning wiki at

      Am I the only one who reads "planning wiki" and thinks of some witch doctor type creature from Scooby Doo with a laptop covered in penguin stickers?

    • Debian is working on a release that replaces the Linux kernel with NetBSD.

      RedHat retains nominal control over RPM, the packaging format for most commercial distributions.

      Gentoo goes forward in bringing BSD practices to Linux.

      We need a single organization, not tied to a specific distribution, to handle these issues. UnitedLinux was too commercial, the LSB too weak, but just imagine Linux and NetBSD kernels in standard configurations, with both GNU and BSD userlands, established as standards (which the

      • This is simple to fix, and the way this can be fixed is something you should keep in mind in general because it is helpfull in many similar situations.

        If it's a true standard applicable to systems other than Linux, the BSD communities will follow it. We didn't follow the LSB because it was a standard specific. We won't follow a new LSB-with-teeth for the same reason.

    • Re:The replacement is already here (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PetiePooo ( 606423 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:47PM (#8068709)
      The UserLinux project is United Linux done right.

      *cough* *c SHAMELESS PLUG!!! ough* *ahem* Err... excuse me.

      Bruce, don't get me wrong, I like you and the work you do. I've got you on my friends list. I'll probably fiddle with UserLinux when it comes out. But this is close to inexcusible.

      United Linux was, to my understanding, a corporate response to RHEL ES/AS, the "server" products. My understanding of UserLinux is that it is a grassroots response to RHEL WS, the "desktop" product. Of course, any Linux can be used to run server apps, but the point is UserLinux's target is the desktop. United Linux had plans of certifying the "big iron" apps like Oracle, SAP, etc., that large corporations feel they need support for. How long before I'll be able to get Oracle to support their latest datacenter DB product on UserLinux like I could right now on RHEL AS? I'm afraid it'll take more than a grassroots effort to compete with Redhat's server lineup...
    • So your going to use Sarge as a base and then forever split from Debian's base Right? Because if your going to stay synced with mainline Debian I don't see how this is going to be a useful project that stays current, especially when you consider Debian's horrible installer.

      btw from your white paper on Fedora

      "I fear that a volunteer developer would be making himself an unpaid employee of Red Hat rather than a member of a real community."

      Couldn't disgaree more with this FUD. Fedora is completely Fee and GP
    • Hey Bruce,

      So here's my question - okay - correct me if I'm wrong here - so we have the whole issue of KDE not being put into User Linux because KDE is not as commercial friendly as GTK. You can release a program under GTK and not open the source. People seem to rally behind that principle.

      Yet, whenever some important software project is ported or achieved, people scream for the source. I'm not asking whether your choice to exclude KDE is right or wrong - rather, aren't the reasons behind GTK going

  • New birth of a good idea? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by i_want_you_to_throw_ ( 559379 ) * on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:09PM (#8068316) Journal
    couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?

    The agreement as it was written was probably done before anyone had any idea that SCO was going to act in such a bizarre manner.

    Since SCO wouldn't leave, this would be about the only way to create a new United Linux without Darl McBride tainting it.

  • United Linux Dead? (Score:5, Funny)

    by squidfood ( 149212 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:11PM (#8068341)


    Is this a support group for vampire geekheads?
    Not to be confused with Linux Dead United, the zombie penguin football team.

  • Create a new distrobution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shuz ( 706678 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:13PM (#8068361) Homepage Journal
    So UL died. Financial chaos insues. Just create another distro based on what you learned. I find that Linux distrobutions are successfull based on the research that was done to them. Debian has apt and has official packages controlled and standardized. Redhat pushes ease of use with a corporate twist. SuSE has european nations in its grasp and has a little of column A and a little of column B in it, a well balanced distro you might say. Slackware is the tried and true throw everything in and let the user sort it out "hackers" distro. Though its become a lot more friendly to use and is evolving nicely. United Linux wanted to take all the ideas and somehow work them into one. Thier goal was to make a standard set of packages what would work seamlessly together and be user friendly. They wanted to create a set of rules to follow when adding non-official packages and work on schemes to make packages work together and not break each other be accident. There goals have never been met by any distrobution to date. I still see hope for what they were trying to do. Just move on and do it under a different name. Rework management AKA reorganize and try again. The little distro the could so to speak. /rant off
  • Which brings up the question, couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?"

    Depends on the by-laws of the organization. But it should be easy to re-form the group without SCO.

  • Troll Mod This! (Score:3, Funny)

    by s4m7 ( 519684 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:18PM (#8068407) Homepage
    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: UnitedLinux is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered UnitedLinux community when
    recently IDC confirmed that UnitedLinux accounts for less than a fraction of 1
    percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft
    survey which plainly states that UnitedLinux has lost more market share, this
    news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. UnitedLinux is collapsing
    in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in
    the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict UnitedLinux's
    future. The hand writing is on the wall: UnitedLinux faces a bleak future. In
    fact there won't be any future at all for UnitedLinux because UnitedLinux is dying.
    Things are looking very bad for UnitedLinux. As many of us are already aware,
    UnitedLinux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of
    blood.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    SuSe leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of SuSe. How
    many users of Caldera are there? Let's see. The number of SuSe versus
    Caldera posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there
    are about 7000/5 = 1400 Caldera users. Connectiva posts on Usenet are about
    half of the volume of Caldera posts. Therefore there are about 700 users
    of Connectiva. A recent article put TurboLinux at about 80 percent of the UnitedLinux
    market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 TurboLinux users.
    This is consistent with the number of TurboLinux Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of SCO, abysmal sales and so on, TurboLinux
    went out of business and was taken over by SCO who sell another
    troubled OS. Now SCO is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet
    another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that UnitedLinux has steadily declined in market share.
    UnitedLinux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If
    UnitedLinux is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. UnitedLinux
    continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this
    point in time. For all practical purposes, UnitedLinux is dead.

    Fact: UnitedLinux is dead

  • SCO - "I'll just get me coat" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jimmi_bob ( 744320 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:20PM (#8068445)

    the title of the SCO website is SCO grows your business [sco.com]. unless of course you rearrange the word unix, put an 'L' in front, and give it away for free.

    also found this link [computerworld.com] - SCO says "Linux hurts US". is this company into sadomasochism?

  • Sometimes dying is a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dominion ( 3153 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:24PM (#8068485) Homepage
    I've been involved in a lot of activist and community projects, and the one thing I've learned is that sometimes it's not a bad thing that a project ends.

    The worst thing is to stay together when everybody in a bitchy mood and one person's causing trouble and the project really isn't going anywhere.

    Usually it's better to quietly end the project, say your farewells, take some time off, and then start new.

    Food for thought.

  • i think its quite simple (Score:4, Interesting)

    by relrelrel ( 737051 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:24PM (#8068489)
    SCO can be blamed for this, but when it comes down to it UL wasn't making any progress for ages before this, it had a big hype then didn't do anything, I think all the partner companies realised it wasn't working, this SCO crap just finish it all off.
    • I agree. I never quite grokked UnitedLinux. Basically everyone worth mentioning except Red Hat joined forces to combat Red Hat, but didn't do a thorough or convincing job of it. Perhaps if they had merged instead of creating a consortium, and picked a better name, it might have been taken seriously and made a good alternative to Red Hat.

      It's hard to blame SCO for the downfall of something that never made sense to begin with. SCO, in its typical scizophrenic form, thought they could make a good product

  • Lawsuits (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alizarin Erythrosin ( 457981 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:26PM (#8068510)
    "Which brings up the question, couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?"

    Probably fear of being sued. You know, SCO and their new lawsuit business model. Probably would have also spun it into something about the others knowing their claims are right or something.

  • From the article... (Score:3, Informative)

    by atari2600 ( 545988 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:27PM (#8068525)

    SCO's Linux reversal isn't the only change, though. SuSE Linux, whose software formed the foundation for a version shared by all four companies, has been acquired by Novell. Along with that acquisition will come an endorsement from IBM, the loudest Linux advocate, in the form of a $50 million investment in Novell.

    So you see - there are other things too that matter(ed) here.

  • Have you ever heard the words "anti-trust"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BritGeek ( 736361 ) <[moc.agozdam] [ta] [zib]> on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:30PM (#8068555)
    In one of the extracurricular activities associated with my real job, I represent my company on the Management Board of an open standards consortium, where many of the same questions have been discussed. There are two issues:

    1. What are the rules of the organization WRT to initiating new work? Popular choices are typically: majority vote, super-majority vote (usually 75%), n-1 (one can vote against), or unanimity. All of these models have been used by different organizations. If their model (like WSI's, I believe) opts for unanimity, then SCO could indefinitely block anything new going on.
    2. What are the rules for kicking members out? The usual provisions are for non-payment of dues only. Generally, there are no other options, as anti-trust law forbids more or less any discrimination against a company just because they are being generally obnoxious. So, if the UL board voted to kick SCO out (on any basis other than non-payment of dues), it would be a wonderful opportunity for Darl to sue someone else (both UL itself, and most likely the individual Directors), and as an anti-trust issue, conceivably the DOJ could investigate.

    Based on that, UL very likely had no choice but to shut down.

  • for anyone that is not aware, this is the group that was supporting *BSD all that time.
  • this letter [osaia.org] linked from the article I mentioned in an earlier post. the letter is from SCO to members of congress, quoting the last paragraph:

    "we take these actions secure in the knowledge that our system of copyright laws is built on the foundation of the constitution and that our rights will be protected under law. we do so knowing that those who believe 'software should be free' cannot prevail against congress and the ruling of seven supreme court justices who believe that 'the motive of profit is the

  • What will this do to Oracle support? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by camt ( 162536 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @02:41PM (#8068656) Homepage
    Oracle had a nice agreement [oracle.com] whereby if you had any issue at all that affected the operation of your database, they would troubleshoot it to the end no matter if the cause turned out to be an OS issue; provided that you:

    1) Maintained an active Oracle support contract and
    2) Maintained an active support contract with one of the UnitedLinux vendors.

    They also have that same deal with RedHat. I was hoping to move from AIX to SuSE Enterprise Server later this year for our Oracle DB server, but now I may be forced to go with RedHat. :(

    Does anyone know how this affects the Oracle deal?

    -- Cameron
  • Let's be positive. We needed a stronger Linux suport group than United Linux

    We need a group that promote linux compatible drivers. We need hardware with a "Works with Linux" Tag. We need someone to protect goberment from de FUD, and someone who can promote some kind of open and voluntary standars so that All distributions become closer and closer.

    So there must be an agrupation of more Linux vendors, distributions and even firms who have interest in the field of Linux. Not only RedHAT or SUSE but also, IB
  • Novell knows SuSE can fly on its own, any excuse to get them out of helping other somewhat unsucessful linux companies is good news to them. I know, Turbo and Conectiva have enjoyed moderate success in Asia and South America, but in the global scheme of things, they didn't have much of a market share.
  • I came real close to installing united linux when redhat discontinued their regular non-AS line. Then I found out SCO was part of united linux, I went with some other distro instead.
  • Yeah, it sucks United Linux is gone, but after this crap, absoulutely no one will have anything to do with SCO as a business. Yeah, us Linux geeks have already given up on SCO, but there were probably plenty of non-technical people that might have blown the whole thing off and went on doing business with them. You can't screw your partners over like this and ever have anything to do with the industry again.

  • Glad THAT'S over (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23, 2004 @03:31PM (#8069244)
    The idea that SCO killed UnitedLinux is about as valid a statement as the idea that it really was a cooperative group. That, too, is about as valid a statement as the idea that UL was more than SuSE's half-finished linux-like product kicked over the fence to an unsuspecting and powerless clientele, whose only choice was to beat it into something they could now sell.

    UL was a bad idea from the start, because one of those companies just doesn't play well with others. We all gave up trying, a long time ago, really, because of the arrogance. UL were just looking for an excuse to break up the whole thing, because it was a pointless exercise from the start.

    Thankfully, Conectiva still has their own linux product, still maintained and untainted by these baroque four-year-old kludges. When RH9 is forgotten, I'll definitely be giving Conectiva a good, hard look. They seem to like technology they didn't invent themselves, seem to work very well with other companies, and really have a deent product .. the best product that no one's ever seen.

    And they moved beyond RPM v3 sometime in 2000.

    If my own experience with the UL bunch gives me nothing more, at least I will have learne denough about Conectiva to know they're a really grat company, and I'll be thankful for the painfully bad project that is UL for at least the opportunity to learn about Conectiva I would never otherwise have had.

    (No, I'm not signing my name. Litigious bastards)

  • whoa! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jonnystiph ( 192687 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @03:49PM (#8069447) Homepage
    Way tooooo much D&D, I saw that as the United Linux Undead. Although slightly interested, I don't think I would qualify, not yet at least....

  • outstretched hand to latin america and africa (Score:3)

    by zpok ( 604055 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @04:06PM (#8069654) Homepage
    OK, this is a great opportunity for other linux groups to offer support and immigration options to latin american and african users.

    Go forth and multiply :-)

  • Almost there! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @04:54PM (#8070211) Homepage Journal
    Now, if we can only kill off the LSB, we stand a chance of getting rid of RPM. Mmm... an "RPM dead" headline on Slashdot, wouldn't that be a lovely thing to see?

    (No, I'm not trolling, I'm serious.)

  • Square pegs....Round Holes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SomeOtherGuy ( 179082 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @05:08PM (#8070374) Journal
    Linux is not comfortable being sold or consolidated....Let it run free and remain free.

    Anyone that has tried to make money selling or sueing Linux has fallen victim to the geek equivelent of being on the cover of SI. A fast and painful death to all who try to pen her in or shut her down.

    Due yourself a favor and dont sell out to "the man". Install Debian or Slackware and come back to reality.

  • Kicking SCO out (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TekPolitik ( 147802 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @07:14PM (#8071538) Journal
    couldn't the other group members have kicked them out?

    Ironically, no. SCO have a proprietary interest in the group, and so cannot be kicked out unless the group has a constitution that provides for this. It doesn't really matter that SCO are doing their best to destroy the value of that interest.

    On the other hand, there was nothing to stop them all quitting and starting a new organisation with the same goals.

  • No great loss really. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @08:30PM (#8072107) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, the entire idea of UL was shaky, and shady..

    We are better off with out it.

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