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Caldera OpenLinux

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Caldera OpenLinux is a defunct Linux distribution that was created by the former Caldera Systems (now SCO Group) corporation. It was the early "business oriented distribution" and foreshadowed the direction of developments that came to most other distributions and the GNU/Linux community generally.

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Novell and Corsair

Corsair was a project founded inside of the Novell corporation. To quote the press release:
Corsair, as a new user interface for Netware. Corsair is what CEO Robert Frankenberg likes to call a "net top", a user-friendly interface for navigating around computer networks — and the Internet — that is icon-based, uses 3D graphics, and photographic-quality images, a more sophisticated approach than the cartoon figures in Microsoft's Bob interface.
This was being developed by a group inside of Novell called the Advanced Technology Group. They wanted an Internet desktop and were doing research on how to better and more easily integrate and manage network access for users. Windows networking support was terribleMicrosoft itself has indicated this. In their history of Windows [link] they specifically indicate that prior to Windows for Workgroups Windows–based PCs were not network-aware and were not a meaningful part of the emerging client/server computing evolution., the internet was dominated by UNIX based operating systems. Relative to their needs, Novell deemed the Unixes of the day [link]: This group became convinced that Linux offered the best possible answer for the OS component. There were many other components as well, of particular interest were On April 5th 1994 the Board of Novell brought in Robert Frankenberg, the general manager of Hewlett-Packard Personal Information Products Group to replace Ray Noorda as CEO of Novell. Novell's stock price had performed poorly recently due to flagging growth. There were 3 divisions within Novell: Frankenberg's initiative was to refocus the company on networking and networking services. In terms of the Corsair that meant shedding most of the pieces. Negotiations started which would eventually lead to Wordperfect being sold off to Corel. The advanced technology group was disbanded which shut down Willow and the OS project. Ferret was in line with the new direction and this component was kept within Novell. Ray Noorda had founded a venture capital investment group called the Canopy Group two years earlier. He felt there was substantial promise in both the OS project and the Willow project. He created two companies, to continue the work started at Novell. The OS company was called Caldera System, and the API company Willows Software.

Noorda's early vision for Caldera was to create an IPX based version of Linux which would license the key components, resell this technology back to Novell to continue the "Internet Desktop", to [quote] Noorda, "Caldera Network Desktop for Internet Access, a commercial grade implementation of Linux with built-in IPX, Windows for Workgroup and Internet protocol support and support for DOS/Windows/Unix applications". In effect Caldera started life as an outsourcing project for Novell. Caldera started with ten employees and most were from Novell: Bryan Sparks, founder/president (Novell); Bryce Burns, chief operations officer (Novell); Ransom Love, VP marketing (Novell); Greg Page, VP engineering (Bell Labs, AT&T); Craig Bradley, VP Sales (Lotus, Word Perfect).

Caldera Desktop Linux

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At this point Ransom Love and Noorda took note of the technologies that Caldera put together.

More than just a component for Novell, Caldera has assembled the components needed to create a VAR platform. Caldera faced a chicken and egg problem. OEM VAR applications often depended crucially on other company's commercial applications. Since these other applications hadn't been ported to Linux yet they couldn't meaningfully port their own applications. Caldera responded by creating a binary applications package which allowed Linux to run Unixware and OpenServer applications, the [Linux ABI] project, and assisting SCO in creating the [LKP(Linux Kernel Personalities)]. To [quote] Love, "We worked on Linux Kernel Personalities to bring Linux application compatibility to SCO Unix (formerly UnixWare) and OpenServer. The idea was to enable developers to write for both Unix and Linux with a common Application Programming Interface (API) and common Application Binary Interface (ABI). That way developers didn't have to work so hard, and Unix users, the client base we inherited from SCO, could run Linux applications. We were no longer thinking about mixing code; we were trying to create a common development environment. We were trying to keep the Unix and Linux kernels separate, while tying them to common APIs and ABIs."

Caldera also supported Alan Cox in his work on SMP, "Caldera bought the hardware... the dual P90 board + processors was not exactly cheap. The board btw is alive and well and currently owned by Dave Jones"[link] Intel was supportive of Caldera's strategy. If Linux destroyed the Unix base on Intel then Sun wouldn't have a low-end Unix path. This point becomes more interesting in light of SCO's litigation 8 years later.

It is worth commenting however that:

One might conclude SCO is suing IBM for its own acts.

Here is a [review] from Linux Journal of a late beta of Linux Desktop 1.0, and the original [press release] with more information.

During 1996 Caldera continued to be a valuable bit player, for example on May 23, 1996, at the Linux Kongress in Berlin, Germany, Caldera announced its plans to obtain POSIX and FIPS Certifications and the X/Open brand for UNIX 95 and XPG4 BASE 95 for the Linux operating system kernel.

Caldera Open Linux

By 1997 Caldera had taken on the form that it would be most remembered for. Caldera had switched over to the high end Linux product,

In 1995 for example when XFree86 was still very hard to configure and unreliable on most chip sets, Caldera had shipped with MetroLink's Motif and [XI Graphic's] [accelerated X].

Listing the software for any particular year for a dead product is pointless but over the next 5 years they offered additional commercial extensions to Linux (including but not exclusively):

In addition to other people's apps they created many Linux extensions to fill voids where no other commercial company was. Politically they also drove Linux in a commercial direction. By the end Caldera offered 3 versions: Henry Gleitman had commented that while Freud's theory itself was wrong, "Freud provided a goal for posterity. He showed us the kinds of questions that we have to answer before we can claim to have a full theory of the human personality." The analogous point can be made of Caldera OpenLinux, OpenLinux was not a Microsoft killer, but it showed the Linux community what would be required to create a mainstream desktop OS out of the Linux kernel. In many ways the last 10 years of desktop progress has been to successfully implement what Caldera was attempting to do with the tools they had available. Their technique for this was to utilize commercial software to fill in the largest gaps. This made their product a "value add" and thus they could charge for it, and at the same time it made them the most advanced distribution available.

Lineo and Marketing

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In July 1999 Caldera decides on a major refocus, on the embedded side where Caldera's technologies that were way ahead, were owned by them. These were:

This combination of technologies allowed Caldera to offer a full Linux operating system with a graphical browser that could run off a floppy disk. More importantly the product was unique, and this came from the fact that Caldera's [view] on the Linux embedded market was differed from other vendors. All the other vendors believed that Linux was heavily fragmented and that the solution was to offer Linux features for real time OSes, that is a Linux API for some other OSes. Red Hat with its [EL/IX] created a kernel independent framework (API) which allowed some Linux software to run on the ECOS kernel. Caldera did not agree with this assesment and believed the API was offered far more advantages and allowed for a fully hardened system, that is Caldera utilized a custom Linux kernel. As Bryan Sparks said, "Through the six companies we've acquired, Lineo has been able to extend the same (Linux) technology across multiple chip architectures, and we've also added real-time capabilities. Our acquisitions have given us a broader breadth of Linux support, from very small microcontrollers, through traditional platforms like x86, and up to high end, high availability systems. We see our strategy as a 'breadth strategy': moving a common api (i.e. the Linux api) in multiple directions, to gain broader market share."

And thus Bryan Sparks CEO or Caldera Systems, split off the embedded Linux company Lineo as a technology company under his own direction. The desktop company became Caldera International under the direction of Ransom Love. The focus for the desktop company became mainly marketing (Ransom Love was promoted to CEO from VP of Marketing) and business relationships. There were several reasons for this. The first was that Caldera had won a two hundred and fifty million dollar lawsuit against Microsoft for DR-DOS and was flush with cash. Secondly, while the Caldera distribution was good, its primary advantages were the use of technologies not owned by Caldera and thus if Caldera were successful its success could (from a technical standpoint) be imitated, by Red Hat, SUSE, TurboLinux, etc... For years Caldera had been competing directly with SCO Unix, but by 1997 Linux outperformed SCO in almost every respect. But making the choice to swtich from SCO to Caldera was not a "no-brainer" for companies because that also meant a switch of vendors and support organizations. Caldera's SCO acquisition was aimed at eliminating this problem. That is Caldera International's corporate direction became: combine SCO's distribution, marketing and VAR arm with LAMP, and use Project Monterey to develop a 64-bit strategy. In short what [SCO offered] was:

From a technical standpoint however Caldera Open Linux really shinned during the Ransom Love years. Their commercial bundling solution continued to work. They had a powerful low bug (by Linux standards) distribution that worked well on a wide range of hardware. They charged a great deal relative to other distribution and were able to generate a very strong profit. Red Hat pulled way ahead of them in terms of US sales and on the global sales front they trailed SUSE and TurboLinux as well, but financially do to the DR-DOS settlement they were the strongest of all the Linux distributions.

United Linux

United Linux mascot
United Linux mascot

Caldera quickly found itself in a classic business problem where the interests of the existing business conflicted with their growth model. SCO was a much larger company than Caldera International had been (the DR-DOS settlement had been what made the buyout possible), and in fact of the $71m of revenue 90% was from the SCO side of the business. Moreover, Caldera costs $2 in marketing to generate a $1 in sales, SCO was mature and sold itself (mainly to repeat customer). The VAR relationship was even more problematic. Caldera had always sold the "Linux is SCO but better" model and had done everything possible to make the transition to from SCO to Caldera relatively seamless. Each of the 14,000 SCO resellers made much more from each SCO sale than from sales of Caldera so they were not anxious to move existing customers from SCO to Linux; and even those that were supportive of Linux saw no strong value add for Caldera and often sold Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Caldera had two businesses in direct competition one which was a shrinking but still profitable UNIX business, the other a rapidly growing business that was still hemorrhaging money.


The most logical solution was to establish Caldera as the premier Linux brand. Without the threat from Red Hat, transitioning resellers from SCO to Caldera would be much easier. With this in mind Ransom Love formed an alliance of large business oriented Linux distributions which utilized the KDE desktop, called United Linux:

As [filings] from Novell in the SCO Group SCO v. Novell lawsuit show us this was more than simply a marketing gimmick:


In particular the United Linux members agreed that each member would have an irrevocable, perpetual, and worldwide license to use and unlimitedly exploit any intellectual property rights of the other members in the UnitedLinux Software, which would be transferred to the LLC for this very purpose...


Business responded favorable to the movement: IBM and AMD quickly formed partnerships, the Linux Professional Institute adopted United Linux as their standard distribution for training. In many ways it could be argued (and United Linux itself argues this) that with United Linux November 2002 release Ransom Love accomplished the goal that Caldera had been working for during the last 10 years. For the first time there was a Linux distribution with:

SUSE had the engineering as it had continued to maintain a large technical staff, Caldera had the global support organization and Turbo Linux and Connectiva brought with growth potential into less flooded markets. This merger was so successful that Love and Sparks could claim vindication that year when Novell reversed the Frankenberg decision and brought United Linux engineering talent back into the fold with the acquisition of SUSE.


United Linux was [rejected] by the broader Linux community however. The use of per seat licensing was the most highly controversial move by United Linux [for example]. More importantly by the time United Linux was released Caldera was already dead. Darl McBride had become CEO of Caldera International and the focus had shifted away from Linux.


As an incidental Caldera at this point released a Caldera "Linux distribution" with the OpenUNIX 8 kernel instead of the Linux kernel. Unix has TLI and STREAMS support which makes writing drivers easier. This product supports Richard Stallman's [point] that Linux is merely a kernel for the GNU system. Caldera proved this by replacing the kernel and yet not having to change much else on a full featured desktop and server "Linux".



Darl McBride

While the final version of United Linux wouldn't come out till 2002, inside of Caldera major changes took place. The board of directors, including Ralph Yarro, brought in the CEO of Franklin-Covey Darl McBride. Almost immediately he saw the value of of Caldera as being primarily the value of SCO#redirect . Caldera had purchased SCO for $100m, Novell had purchased SCO for $1b, where had that extra value gone? The company was renamed SCO Group. Ransom Love was reassigned to work exclusively on United Linux. After he completed this he left the company to join Progeny Linux Systems which was aiming to create a professional Debian. He remains there in the capacity of a board member and advisorhttp://www.progeny.com/about/board.htm#love. 


McBride himself took the company in the direction of IP litigation (see SCO v. IBM, SCO v. Novell, SCO v. AutoZone, SCO v. DaimlerChrysler). One of his first acts as CEO was to collect six hundred thousand in back licensing fees that were owed due to Caldera. He cleaned up various Linux related licensing issues allowing for a new round of financing http://news.com.com/2100-1001-939881.html. Soon thereafter he made strong false accusations regarding Linux having stolen SCO intellectual property and the company's emphasis shifted from producing anything at all to being a company focused on lawsuits#redirect .


As CNN [put it]:


SCO's "legal" alternative — persuading users to pay for licensing — is untested in a court of law. It's not clear that Linux users are in fact breaking any intellectual property laws. Stowell says only, "We hope people will take us seriously as well and will compensate us."

Interestingly the technical press was much more negative, [for example]. 


While Caldera had aimed for profitability over community. SCO aims for profitability over anything else, quoting Love on what led to the lawsuithttp://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdewk/is_200309/ai_ziff108082/pg_3:


I think Caldera investors who wanted a quick return pressured the management. They seem to think that short-term, possible gains are more important than long term ones, which is unfortunate.


Caldera had been willing to buck the open source community on issues like the GPL. SCO has argued that open source community in total is illegitimate http://www.sco.com/copyright/. Caldera in the end put marketing above engineering, marketing being a technique designed to mislead#redirect . SCO freely purjures itself in filing after filing http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html. Wired Magazine has called McBride "the most hated man in high tech" http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/linux.html.



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