[rescue] rescue Digest, Vol 68, Issue 12

[Andrew Jones]

> Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:00:33 -0400 From: Phil Stracchino 
> <alaric at metrocast.net> Subject: Re: [rescue] rescue Digest, Vol 68, 
> Issue 12 To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org> Message-ID: 
> <48791B71.9070000 at metrocast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; 
> charset=ISO-8859-1
> Well, if this were IBM's or Novell's legal department we were talking
> about ... but remember, this is SCO, the company that decided suing its
> own customers was a really great business model.  (Sorta like the RIAA,
> really.)
>
>   
They were up a creek without a paddle long before they started the 
lawsuits.  SCO and Caldera were not a very good match for each other.

Caldera had made most of their money through direct sales of Linux to 
SCO UNIX customers, based around 1:1 replacements of SCO UNIX with Linux.

In contrast, it was my understanding that SCO had made most of their 
money through channel sales.  That is, I was led to believe they made 
most of their money selling to VARs, who would make a huge margin on the 
SCO UNIX sales.

When Caldera bought SCO, they kept the same SCO-destroying business 
model for the Linux product, while schizophrenically pushing OpenServer 
and UnixWare with the other hand.  Is it any wonder that their channel 
dried up?  VARs (and everyone else) could see which way the wind was 
blowing.

P.S.  Sorry about the change in subject lines.