|
ru.linux
- RU.LINUX ---------------------------------------------------------------------
From : Sergey Lentsov 2:4615/71.10 10 May 2001 17:11:06
To : All
Subject : URL: http://lwn.net/2001/0510
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1][LWN Logo]
[2]Click Here
[LWN.net]
Bringing you the latest news from the Linux World.
Dedicated to keeping Linux users up-to-date, with concise news for all
interests
Sections:
Main page
[3]Security
[4]Kernel
[5]Distributions
[6]On the Desktop
[7]Development
[8]Commerce
[9]Linux in the news
[10]Announcements
[11]Linux History
[12]Letters
[13]All in one big page
Other LWN stuff:
[14]Daily Updates
[15]Calendar
[16]Linux Stocks Page
[17]Book reviews
[18]Penguin Gallery
[19]Archives/search
[20]Use LWN headlines
[21]Contact us
TUCOWS.com:
[22]linux.tucows.com
[23]Ext2
[24]Themes
Recent features:
- [25]Kernel Summit
- [26]Singapore Linux Conference
- [27]djbdns
- [28]LinuxWorld NY
- [29]Jason Haas
- [30]Larry Wall
- [31]Bruce Momjian
- [32]2000 Timeline
- [33]Eric Raymond
- [34]LWN coverage of Comdex 2000
- [35]Ransom Love
- [36]Guido van Rossum
- [37]Paul Everitt
- [38]Embedded Systems Conference
- [39]Embedded Linux Consortium
- [40]OLS Coverage
- [41]Cary Bunks interview
- [42]Making circuits with PCB
- [43]Linux-powered Camera
- [44]The FSL Cluster
Here is the [45]permanent site for this page.
See also: [46]last week's LWN.
Leading items and editorials
The Caldera/SCO deal completes. Caldera Systems - now Caldera
International - [47]announced on May 7 that its acquisition of much of
SCO had finally been completed. It has been a long process - the deal
was originally announced last August. With this [48][Caldera/SCO]
acquisition, Caldera now claims to be "the largest Linux company in
the world." Certainly it will be a change for the company, and perhaps
for the Linux industry in general.
Caldera is getting SCO's Server Software and Professional Services
divisions, along with UnixWare and OpenServer. This all brings:
* A vast increase in headcount, quadrupling Caldera's staff to over
700 people.
* A major increase in cash flow. Caldera's revenue for the quarter
ending January 31 was just over $1 million. Throw in the SCO
divisions and that number jumps to almost $25 million. Similarly,
revenue for the year 2000 goes from $4.3 million to
$143.5 million.
* SCO's massive sales channels and marketing organization. Caldera
now claims over 15,000 resellers worldwide.
* And, of course, the proprietary UnixWare and OpenServer products.
None of this comes for free, of course. SCO gets $23 million in cash
now, another $8 million in installments after a year, and 16 million
shares in Caldera. If Caldera manages to make more than expected from
OpenServer, SCO gets a 45% cut of the excess as well.
All that revenue looks nice, but it's best not to lose sight of the
overall picture, as found in [49]the registration statement (warning:
2MB of legalese) filed in March:
Caldera has not been profitable. The server and professional
services groups have not been profitable and their revenue has been
declining.
Somehow Caldera is going to have to find a way to arrest the fall in
SCO's revenues while cutting enough costs to actually make a profit.
As an added little challenge, Caldera gets the costs of the SCO groups
immediately, but none of their accounts receivable or bank balances,
meaning that those groups will be a dead weight until the new invoices
go out and get paid. Caldera has money in the bank, even after handing
$23 million to SCO, but it may well see those reserves shrink quickly
in the near future.
Caldera's hopes, of course, are to work the company firmly into the
enterprise market by way of SCO's existing extensive customer base and
deployments. The current UnixWare and OpenServer business can be
extended by improving those products' interoperability with Linux.
Meanwhile, as SCO customers begin to think about transitioning over to
Linux, Caldera will be very nicely positioned to help them out. With
luck, SCO's customers will drive Caldera's Unix and Linux business for
years to come.
It might just work, if Caldera can manage to keep the attention and
loyalty of SCO's customer base, and if it can get revenue and expenses
a little better in line. Those are big ifs, but nobody said that the
business world was easy. This is a new phase in the development of the
Linux business community, we're most curious to see how it will turn
out.
No profitable businesses? That said, give us a moment to gripe about
one sentence buried deep within the Caldera/SCO registration
statement:
Caldera knows of no company that has built a profitable business
based in whole or in part on open source software.
Is it really true that no open source company has been profitable? How
about:
* [50]Sleepycat Software has been doing nicely with the Berkeley DB
for years.
* [51]Digital Creations has built a solid business on Zope, and was
briefly profitable before taking a new investment and launching
into another expansion phase.
* [52]Prosa srl was doing well before its acquisition by Linuxcare,
and is now reborn from the ashes of that mess.
* [53]Cygnus Software was an open source company way back before
most people had heard of free software, and did very well.
* [54]Red Hat, which bought Cygnus, is closing in on profitability.
* [55]Cybersource has been doing well in the support business for
years (see [56]this week's Letters to the Editor Page).
* It is not much of a stretch to include [57]O'Reilly & Associates
on this list.
* Let us express our apologies right now to all of the profitable
companies that we left out.
Business is hard, and free software business may yet prove to be
harder than many others. But it should not be said that nobody has
succeeded.
PriorArt.org enters the software patent fray. A new site called
[58]PriorArt.org has [59]announced its existence. This site is
positioned as a way for free software developers to avoid having their
techniques patented out from underneath them.
The idea is this: patents can be invalidated by a demonstration of
"prior art" - proof that somebody else had already invented the
technology of interest. Prior art must be documented, however; it's
not enough for somebody to say that they were using a technique years
ago. It is also highly preferable that the prior art be available to
patent examiners when a patent is applied for. When the information is
easily available, the patent should be denied at that stage. Otherwise
a court case may be required to bust a patent that has been issued,
and that is an expensive proposition.
So PriorArt.org is inviting free software developers to disclose their
innovations through their site. Disclosures go into a large database,
which may be searched by anybody. It is claimed that this database,
which is maintained by [60]IP.com, is consulted by patent examiners.
Disclosures are timestamped and notarized (somehow) so that there is
no doubt as to the timing of any particular discovery.
This approach thus differs from [61]BountyQuest, which focuses on
digging up prior art to break patents which have already been granted.
The service is not truly free. The normal charge for this sort of
disclosure through IP.com is $19.95. This charge is not being waived
for free software disclosures; instead, [62]donations are being
solicited to purchase "publication vouchers" for free software
inventions. IP.com thus hopes to make money from this operation - and
an extensive database full of inventions could prove useful as well.
Any effort which helps defeat software patents is helpful, certainly.
There are some problems with this approach, though, that could affect
its long-term success.
For example, consider the problem of who will actually disclose
inventions through this system. Free software developers are busy
people who are unlikely to find the time to write up every "invention"
and feed it to a web site - especially a web site for a proprietary
database which requires a credit card number even to submit a "free"
disclosure. Remember also that the most obnoxious software patents
cover techniques that seem obvious to developers. Reasonable hackers
don't tend to think that a little function they just put together
might be patentable.
Disclosures will also be limited, of course, by the number of
donations received to pay for them. At $20 per disclosure, the bill
could get high fairly quickly.
But, more to the point, free software developers already disclose
everything they invent, in the clearest possible form: working code.
Source repositories on SourceForge and many other sites contain a
detailed, time-stamped history of free software development. Rather
than try to convince developers to write up their techniques, it would
be preferable to find a way to mine the incredible database of prior
art that already exists. A detailed of the kernel, gcc, emacs,
PostgreSQL, or any other significant free software project would
probably yield more prior art than will ever find its way into
PriorArt.org.
In the end, however, this is all defensive action, based on the idea
that the patent system is really OK, the only problem is that
insufficient information is available to patent examiners. If you
believe that the real problem is in the concept of software patents to
begin with, these approaches will seem inadequate. Wouldn't it be
better if we could fix the patent laws, and prevent software patents
from being implemented where they do not yet exist?
Bruce Perens: Software Patents vs. Free Software. For a different
approach to software patents, consider [63]this lengthy piece by Bruce
Perens:
Ironically, some of the biggest patent holders are the Free
Software Community's own partners, companies like IBM and HP that
have aggressively incorporated GNU/Linux into their business plans
and expect significant revenue from it before long. IBM is said to
hold 10% of software patents, and HP is one of the largest patent
holders in general. It's important for us to start a dialogue with
these and other partners. That's why I am calling a summit meeting
on Free Software and The Law.
This meeting will have some specific goals, including getting a formal
promise from the companies involved that they will not sue free
software developers for patent infringement. Even better would be a
promise to defend developers from patent suits brought by others. The
companies involved in the meeting are, after all, benefitting from the
work of these developers.
It will be interesting to see what comes of this summit, but patience
will be required - it's happening at the end of August, after the
LinuxWorld conference.
Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
* [64]Security: Immunix 7.0 released with licensing changes,
Turbolinux "spring cleaning", OpenSSH 2.9, new vulnerabilities in
cron, Samba, minicom, and man-db.
* [65]Kernel: Buffer cache, page cache, and block I/O; ReiserFS:
ready for prime time; ESR confronts brutality and heuristics.
* [66]Distributions: Yellow Dog Linux 2.0, an introduction to the
development team behind it, the Debian Weekly News returns and
Slackware moves up to Gnome 1.4.
* [67]On the Desktop: Desktop speed, Gtk+ 1.3.5, Mozilla 0.9,
Multimedia with Fer de Lance.
* [68]Development: LinuxFund grants awarded, LSB 0.9, Cal3D, OpenSSH
2.9, Apocalypse 2.
* [69]Commerce: Craig Mundie's speech, Playstation Linux update.
* [70]History: The Wang patent lawsuit, AFUL founded, Ken Thompson
trashes Linux, Free Standards Group formed.
* [71]Letters: The Linux support business; responses to Mundie; the
trouble with packaging systems.
...plus the usual array of reports, updates, and announcements.
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
* [72]Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
* [73]Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh, Managing Editor
* [74]Michael J. Hammel, Senior Editor
May 10, 2001
[75]Click Here
[76]Click Here
[77]Next: Security
[78]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [79]Eklektix, Inc.,
all rights reserved
Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
References
1. http://lwn.net/
2. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/pageid=001-012-132-000-000-001-000-000-012
3. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/security.php3
4. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/kernel.php3
5. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/dists.php3
6. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/desktop.php3
7. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/devel.php3
8. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/commerce.php3
9. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/press.php3
10. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/announce.php3
11. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/history.php3
12. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/letters.php3
13. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/bigpage.php3
14. http://lwn.net/daily/
15. http://lwn.net/cgi-bin/webcal.pl
16. http://lwn.net/stocks/
17. http://lwn.net/Reviews/
18. http://lwn.net/Gallery/
19. http://lwn.net/archives/
20. http://lwn.net/op/headlines.phtml
21. http://lwn.net/op/Contact.html
22. http://linux.tucows.com/
23. http://news.tucows.com/ext2/
24. http://unixthemes.tucows.com/
25. http://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/
26. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Singapore
27. http://lwn.net/2001/features/djbdns.php3
28. http://lwn.net/2001/features/linuxworldny/
29. http://lwn.net/2001/features/JHaas/
30. http://lwn.net/2001/features/LarryWall/
31. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Momjian/
32. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Timeline/
33. http://lwn.net/2000/features/ESR/
34. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Comdex/index.php3
35. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Comdex/RansomLove.php3
36. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Guido.php3
37. http://lwn.net/2000/features/PaulEveritt.php3
38. http://lwn.net/2000/features/ESC/
39. http://lwn.net/2000/features/ESC/ELC.php3
40. http://lwn.net/2000/features/OLS/
41. http://lwn.net/2000/features/CBunks/
42. http://lwn.net/2000/features/pcb/
43. http://lwn.net/2000/features/Axis/
44. http://lwn.net/2000/features/FSLCluster/
45. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/
46. http://lwn.net/2001/0503/
47. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/a/caldera-sco.php3
48. http://www.caldera.com/
49.
http://www.freeedgar.com/search/ViewFilingsData.asp?CIK=1102542&Directory=103570
4&Year=01&SECIndex=238&Extension=.tst&PathFlag=0&nStartLoc=636&nEndLoc=1928910&T
extFileSize=1928926&DateFiled=3/26/2001&FormType=S-4/A&SFType=&SDFiled=&tabletyp
e=1&tablename=&SourcePage=FilingsResults&OEMSource=&UseFrame=1&CompanyName=CALDE
RA+INTERNATIONAL+INC%2FUT
50. http://www.sleepycat.com/
51. http://www.digicool.com/
52. http://www.prosa.it/
53. http://www.cygnus.com/
54. http://www.redhat.com/
55. http://www.cyber.com.au/
56. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/letters.php3
57. http://www.oreilly.com/
58. http://priorart.org/
59.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-08-200
1/0001487797&EDATE=
60. http://www.ip.com/
61. http://www.bountyquest.com/
62. http://priorart.org/donating.jsp
63. http://perens.com/Articles/Patents.html
64. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/security.php3
65. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/kernel.php3
66. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/dists.php3
67. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/desktop.php3
68. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/devel.php3
69. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/commerce.php3
70. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/history.php3
71. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/letters.php3
72. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
73. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
74. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
75. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=lwnbutton125top
76. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/buttonpos=125-001-016
77. http://lwn.net/2001/0510/security.php3
78. http://www.eklektix.com/
79. http://www.eklektix.com/
--- ifmail v.2.14.os7-aks1
* Origin: Unknown (2:4615/71.10@fidonet)
Вернуться к списку тем, сортированных по: возрастание даты уменьшение даты тема автор
| Тема: |
Автор: |
Дата: |
|
URL: http://lwn.net/2001/0510 |
Sergey Lentsov |
10 May 2001 17:11:06 |
|
|
