SCO Forum 2004

Message ID: 162250
Posted By: raoulduke_esq
Posted On: 2004-08-03 05:18:00
Subject: SCO Forum 2004 - Monday (1)

Sorry I'm late with this report, I hope it has some relevance. I haven't been able to keep up today as I've been away from the laptop all day.

SCO Forum 2004 openned on Monday, 2 Aug 04, at 8:30 AM PDT to about 300 attendees. Jeff Hunsaker set the tone for the morning by proclaiming "We are celebrating the power of UNIX." He talked about the 25 years of UNIX history, going back to 1979 - featuring bits of music and video clips of movies and events from the year.

Darl's entrance was theatrical. He was introduced as the underdog, while video clips from the movie "Rocky" played on screens, including the knock-out punch of Apollo Creed. "Eye of the Tiger" played for him as a magazine cover calling him "Corporate Enemy No. 1" was put up. He then switched to the metaphor of Wesley from "The Princess Bride," and as he mentioned Groklaw, Yahoo, Slashdot, and Linus Torvalds, the screens flash a clip of the villian saying "inconceivable!". He also mentioned that "The pressure applied by IBM and it's agents is brutal."

He next launched into the SCO history of UNIX, which we've seen before. In 97, he noted that SCO delivered UnixWare 7, and started Project Monterrey. He asked "and what did we do?" and a voice in the audience calls out "You openned your code to IBM". Someone then shouts out "IBM pulled the plug!" and "they wanted to sell consultants" for Linux. It didn't seem terribly impromptu. He then brings up an image of the "UNIX Tree" where the roots are Unix System Laboratories, the trunk is UNIX System V, the branches are partners like IBM, HP, Sun, Unisys, SCO, Microsoft, and others. Finally, the leaves are UNIX solutions for government, business and education. This UNIX economy is worth tens of billions of dollars and "UNIX powers business", he claims.

Next, he spent some time going over SCO's Goals & Objectives, which are, briefly: (1) reinvest in the operating systems, (2) roll out SCOx Web Services, (3) establish new partnerships, (4) aggressively defend SCO IP, (5) create new business opportunities fro partners, and (6) increase shareholder value. He expects to release the last quarters' results at the end of the month (of August, I assume).

Then he sketched out what he called "SCO's Position". First, relative to the SCO's ownership of UNIX: (1) SCO owns all UNIX System V source code from AT&T, (2) SCO owns all agreements to all UNIX vendors, (3) SCO owns all UNIX System V copyrights, (4) SCO owns all claims for violations of UNIX licenses, (5) SCO controls all UNIX System V derivatives. Then answered the question "How is SCO going to keep the UNIX tree thriving?" with the following: (1) IBM licensed UNIX, (2) IBM & SCO partnered in Monterrey, (3) IBM abandoned SCO, (4) IBM contributed UNIX derivative code to Linux in violation of agreement, (5) SCO is now having it's day in court. Later he has an animation of a guy chainsawing off the "IBM branch" of the UNIX tree, complete with chainsaw sound effects. He claims that with "the few versions" of AIX & Dynix that IBM has begrudginly provided to them in discovery, SCO has "identified 21,000 lines of UNIX code that IBM allegedly contributed to Linux." He believes that SCO is leading the fight against the destruction of intellectual property in the Software Industry.
(cont)

Message ID: 162252
Posted By: raoulduke_esq
Posted On: 2004-08-03 05:21:00
Subject: Re: SCO Forum 2004 - Monday (2)

Darl then described SCO's plans for the future - "We are committed to the future", and seemed to indicate that they will not be bought out. Obviously, they plan to "agressively defend their IP". Then he touched on the UNIX System Laboratories trademark registration; it has "brand name value" and "core values of taking that value and licensing it out" (it didn't make sense to me either). "Project Diamond" will work to integrate their products to 32/64 bit Intel/AMD architectures. Finally, he introduced the "SCO Marketplace", where external developers can "bid" on SCO projects. He did a little "developer intelligence test" asking if people want to work for "free or fee". A voice in the audience shouted out "I wanna get paid". "We believe there is a population of developers who want to get paid for work," he continued. His goal is "helping out paid-for systems in place."

Finally, we get to "Darl's Predictions". The first is "Unix will grow, not die", because "we're comitted to staying in the game." Secondly, Project Diamond will proliferate the SCO ecosystem - "the OS is where the value is". Third, "develop for fee" will prevail over "develop for free". Fourth, concerning SCO vs IBM, "the rest of the story will emerge". He pauses to note that, on Groklaw, "Whenever somebody posts something that is positive for SCO, it gets immediately removed." And, "Big Blue has big problems." Next, he predicted that "Mainstream IT community will understand & embrace SCO's position". Again, he paused to note that Slashdot has an element of openness and that "open blogs" will support SCO. Finally, he believes that "Commercial vendors will fight vigorously to protect Intellectual Property" - making reference to the entertainment industry. He also mentioned the latest "Linux patents" news.

He closed his presentation with "Going back strong around the USL model" and "We didn't start this fight but we're going to finish it."

(cont)

Message ID: 162253
Posted By: raoulduke_esq
Posted On: 2004-08-03 05:22:00
Subject: Re: SCO Forum 2004 - Monday (3)

The next speakers were Sandeep Gupta (VP SCO Engineering), Janet Sullivan (Product Marketing Manager), Erik Hughes (Director, Product Management), and Gerald Smith (Strategic Alliance Manager), who came out to a film clip from "The Three Amigos". They basically covered in detail the products and plans introduced earlier by Darl. Briefly, the next version of OpenServer is called "Legend" which represents the incorporation of a System V with an OpenServer personality. Boxes of the the Beta of Legend were distributed with a restrictive NDA afterwards. This then brings it one step closer to integration of 32 bit OpenServer with UnixWare, which is Project Diamond, due for the second half of 2006. From one chart, it looks like Diamond will have a 64 bit "ad-on [sic]". Finally, Sandeep Gupta described the "SCO Marketplace Initiative" as both "new income oprotunities" for external developers, and as an extension of the SCO engineering team.

Delaying lunch were four "customer testimonials". The first was from CSK Auto, a chain of auto parts stores, who is replacing the entire computer infrastructure in their 1125 stores with new hardware running UnixWare. He did poke fun at the MicroSoft/Gardner TCO study; according to the "experts", moving to an MS-based system would save them $800K annually on administration. Since they only have a single UNIX system admin, he went out and bought a car because he expected a big raise. I can't help but wonder if there is any relation here to AutoZone. The next speaker was from Mardon Health Care Information systems, who called small-town hospitals "cash cows". Next was "Computer Business Consultants", who support Voice Over IP for overseas call centers hawking timeshare sales. Finally, a representative from Siemens Power Generation Instrumentation and Control Group in Germany, produced a marketing fluff video that extolled "really profitable management".

Then attendees enjoyed a delicious lunch before thr breakout sessions in the afternoon, followed by a cocktail hour, dinner, award ceremony, and a stand-up comic.

I'm bushed - I'm off to bed!

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