Ransom Love's Secret Master Plan for Linux and UNIX

Before I start reminiscing about Linux's
poor-but-honest days, here's Ransom's advice for ISVs developing
for future SCO products. It's simple. "Develop to Linux now." If
he's sure about nothing else, Ransom is sure that Linux is the
UNIX-on-Intel standard. As for the ISVs, "None of them are going to
be able to say that they don't want anything to do with Linux."
Whether the ISVs ultimately decide to support Linux or not, they
will be learning it.But this doesn't mean SCO's current offerings are off the
menu. They're just getting a coat of Linux paint. "Partners and
OEMs need high-end today, and UnixWare can fill that role today."
The Linux kernel personality on UnixWare is being demonstrated here
at the show, and is now undergoing performance tuning and testing.
It will be a released product within a few months. So there's your
write-once solution for those two OS flavors, anyway.The three big server OS contenders, Ransom says while holding
up three fingers, are Solaris, Linux and Windows. Dismissing the
Windows finger with a flick, since Linux has it beat handily, he
moves on to the big challenger, Solaris, which scales all the way
up to Sun's not-quite-big-iron Enterprise servers. Since Linux
doesn't go up that far, UnixWare "continues to deliver a value
proposition for a period of time." Caldera is offering a family of
Linux-compatible OSes that scales across a wide range of Intel
boxes, just as Solaris scales across a wide range of SPARC-based
boxes. Naturally, the Intel-based boxes are cheaper, so Ransom has
a potent competitor for Solaris. Do I have that right?Beyond that easy-to-explain story, Caldera's future holds an
intricate OS breeding process. Applications will play happily in a
we're-all-Linux-here user space, under guidelines enforced by the
benevolent, long-awaited LSB, but anyone interested in hacking the
OS itself will need a scorecard."Linux is being pulled across the spectrum of IT solutions,
and a single kernel won't scale," Ransom says. The considerations
that are important to embedded Linux, to the small server market
Linux rules now, and to the midrange and high-end server markets
are different. As Linux "forks" - hopefully through a proliferation
of compile-time options, not a real fork, Ransom hastens to
add - the high-end parts will end up participating in some
sort of technology-sharing arrangement with UnixWare.So, Linux, UnixWare, Openserver, Monterey (or whatever
they're calling it now) - what is the secret master plan? I draw a
chart - OSes down the left, years across the top, fill in
"Linux 2.4" in 2001 with a question mark, and ask Ransom to fill in
the rest. Arrows sprout from Linux and spread like fungus tendrils
into the "UnixWare" and "Monterey" areas - that's the
compatibility thing - and a big arrow moves forward into the future
along the UnixWare/Linux dividing line. This represents the spawn
of Linux and UnixWare, an über-OS with a yet-to-be-determined
licensing policy. Ransom says you'll be able to see the source
code, but parts will be open source, and parts will be "viewable
source" - you'll be able to read it, but not modify and
redistribute it.A dangerous course indeed, in this market. Caldera can't
afford to keep UnixWare alive as a proprietary product if the
mainstream Linux kernel blows past it in performance and features.
"Our model is to innovate, give back, and innovate again," Ransom
says. So, if current industry trends are any guide, Caldera will be
making a lot more of UnixWare a lot more open than they're
expecting.So, for all you UNIX goddesses and gurus out there, the big
question has got to be: What chunks of historic UNIX will Caldera
release under an open-source license? Love says that code is
coming, but, "the specifics we don't know yet." Let's help him out.
Eric Raymond wants some document-processing tools, including a
program that determines the "reading level" of text you feed it.
I'm sure the rest of you have some ideas as well. So, please write
and tell me which UNIX tools or other code you want, and I'll visit
Ransom in Orem, Utah and present him with a list of the top
requests. Since (1) Ransom is a nice guy and (2) he won't make any
money from this stuff anyway, I predict he'll GPL a good-sized
basket of software.One more question for Ransom is whether he got any software
patents in the acquisition. He doesn't know, and adds, "That wasn't
our intent." If it turns out Caldera now has some software patents,
I asked if we could put them under a free license, and Ransom
doesn't see why not. So, I'll get in touch with Caldera's corporate
counsel to talk about that. And, Ransom, let's print up some "UNG
(UNIX is not GNU)" shirts for when you put that UNIX code under the
GPL.

email: ljeditors@ssc.com