In an effort to turn around its dwindling Unix revenue, SCO introduced a new version of its OpenServer product on Wednesday along with a new open source friendly attitude.
OpenServer 6 is based on the same software core as the company's other operating system product, UnixWare, a later arrival that the company and its predecessors have emphasised for years but that never was adopted as much as OpenServer. The new OpenServer can run software for both operating systems, improves performance by a factor of two to four, and can be used on 32-processor machines with as much as 16GB of memory, SCO said.
The company's software is most popular for use in companies with numerous business branches -- a notable customer is McDonald's. However, the SCO Group and its predecessor, the Santa Cruz Operation, struggled with competition from Windows and more recently, Linux.
In SCO's most recent quarter, which ended on 30 April, Unix revenue had declined to $7.8m (£3.3m) from $8.4 million during the same quarter a year earlier.
SCO has been most prominent recently for its legal attack on IBM, Novell and others regarding its allegation that proprietary Unix software has been improperly moved into open source Linux. Indeed, one of its targets is AutoZone, a former OpenServer customer.
Part of that attack was levelled at the General Public License (GPL), which governs Linux and which SCO attorneys said violates the US Constitution as well as copyright, antitrust and export control laws. But on Wednesday, SCO touted the inclusion of several open source products with OpenServer.
"In addition to supporting numerous Unix applications, as well as Java applications with the inclusion of Java 1.4.2, customers will also find thousands of additional applications available through many of the latest open source technologies that are integrated into SCO OpenServer 6," SCO said in its announcement.
Among the included open source packages are Samba and MySQL, which are released under the GPL, as well as Firefox, Tomcat, Apache and PostgreSQL.
SCO's position is consistent, spokesman Blake Stowell argued. "We don't necessarily have issues with open source, we just have an issue with open source technology that includes intellectual property it shouldn't," he said. Indeed, SCO's products have included open source components for years.
OpenServer 6 costs $599 (£255) for a computer with two users and $1,399 (£595) for one with 10 users.
Talkback
SCO. Too little, too late. Perhaps they're starting to realise what life is like for a Microsoft puppet but quite frankly, I couldn't care less. Darwin doesn't favour too environmental depandant or overspecialized species you see.
SCO uses open-source software, but I've never heard of them contributing anything back.
Bascially, they like open source as long as it doesn't compete with their products.
Why would anyone use sco when there are so many other better companies out there. LEave them alone, they will go bankrupt and the world will be a better place.
I get the feeling SCO is really run by a 1 year old kid. They started off stubborn and literally threatened the entire Open Source community with licensing costs and finally when they start losing, its "we have nothing against the Open Source community".
Dont forget that M$ also used (and still does) similar "business" methods to get where they are today,
so no question what the real motivation behind SCO
is then.