Back in 1993 you may recall that after Novell acquired Unix Systems Labs from AT&T there was a lot of speculation about whether Novell would create a "Super NOS" by engineering a NetWare-Unix hybrid OS. Well, it didn't happen. Instead of doing that, Novell turned out an excellent Unix implementation on Intel processors called UnixWare. Novell wound up with both NetWare and UnixWare to offer its customers. Ironically, Novell wound up in a similar situation in 2004 after acquiring SUSE Linux. This time the plan was to replace NetWare with Linux due to NetWare's declining fortunes in the OS marketplace.
Unfortunately, UnixWare met with only modest commercial success. Even though Novell now owned Unix, it was not regarded as a Unix company like Sun. So in a moment of questionable decision making, Novell sold the marketing* rights for Unix and UnixWare to the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). At the time, SCO was regarded as the "Rodney Dangerfield" (I don't get no respect!) of Unix on Intel processors. At least SCO had a reputation for doing Unix on Intel processors, which was more than Novell had at the time. This decision, however, would come back to haunt Novell in 2003.
By the mid-1990s the open-source Linux OS was emerging as a challenger to both Unix and Windows for a share of the server OS market. Former Novell CEO Ray Noorda funded Caldera, which created its own Linux distribution aimed at the business customer using a reseller channel distribution model. Along the way, Caldera eventually acquired SCO and renamed itself The SCO Group after abruptly dropping out of the Linux distribution business. New management then decided to branch out into the intellectual property licensing business. Next thing you know it is 2003 and The SCO Group files a lawsuit against IBM for $5 billion claiming IBM allowed Unix code from their AIX implementation to be "donated" to Linux. There was wide-spread suspicion that Microsoft had arranged the financial backing SCO would need to litigate this lawsuit, which turned out to be true.
Novell responded to The SCO Group v IBM lawsuit by claiming it still owned the Unix and UnixWare copyrights because it never sold them to SCO...just the marketing* rights. The SCO Group then sued Novell for defamation. Novell said we'll see you in court. Fast forward to August 2007 when a Federal District Court judge in Utah ruled that Novell, not The SCO Group, owns the copyrights to Unix and UnixWare. The SCO Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection one month later. End of story? Not yet.
By way of Shickshinny (a town in northeastern Pennsylvania) we finally get around to what Novell should have done with UnixWare back in the mid-1990s. Novell should have opened up the UnixWare code base to Linux kernel developers. Why? Because Novell was going nowhere fast with UnixWare, NetWare was beginning to lose out to Windows NT, and Linux was just reaching take-off velocity in the OS market. For a company looking for the "next big thing" in OS software, this should have been a clue about what to do. But nothing fails like success and Novell management was still enamored with the success of NetWare despite the growing competition from Microsoft. Too bad that Novell had lost Ray Noorda's insight into the importance of Linux.
Today, there should be no reason why Novell, which is also the distributor of SUSE Linux, would not want Linux to take advantage of technical advances "locked away" in UnixWare. Rather than "fork" Linux development by keeping it just for SUSE, Novell should open-source UnixWare to Linux kernel developers and see if we can't finally get the "Super NOS" that was rumored about many years ago.
As an addendum to this post, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Linux-Watch, January 4, 2008) has been thinking along a similar line when he writes: "What will Novell do with Unix? I don't know, but what I'd like them to do is to open-source as much of the code as they can. There's still some goodness left in Unix that hasn't been duplicated in Linux." He goes on to say that when Ransome Love, former CEO of Caldera and one-time Novell executive, wanted to open-source Unix he discovered that the Unix code contained copyrighted code from other companies. Steven concludes by writing: "Since Novell is a Linux company, it make perfect sense to me if they were to cherry-pick Unix for its best code and release it to the public". I assume by "release it to the public" he means under the GPL. You can read the full Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols article at http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6243163353.html
Well, there you have it. We both agree that Novell could make a valuable contribution to Linux kernel development by releasing some of the Unix/UnixWare code to the open-source community. And as soon as the wooden stake is pounded into SCO's heart, maybe that is just what Novell will do. Let's hope so.
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