On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 06:06:00 +0900 Joel Rees <joel.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2014/10/16 5:46 "Ric Moore" <wayward4...@gmail.com>: > > > > On 10/15/2014 12:39 PM, Steve Litt wrote: > > > >> We've actually been in this place before. Wonderful Linux company > >> Caldera became SCO (oversimplification, but you know what I mean). > >> Wonderful Linux company Corel changed their CEO, and promptly > >> accepted money from Microsoft and dropped all their Windows > >> software. > > > > [...] > > > If you knew Caldera, then you would know that it started with > capitalization and focus by the retired CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda. > > Now that is my kinda guy, as he knew that Linux would grow to be > > more > than a desktop hobby toy. And, he put his own money where his mouth > was. He was not responsible for what happened after. I still have a > copy of the Caldera install CD and it worked like a charm on an aging > ThinkPad. But it was too pitiful to watch Netscape try to update > itself. :) Ric > > > > Yes, Noorda was a good guy. > > I think Steve was talking about a later CEO. It was a bad time for Linux and a complicated situation. I just looked up Noorda, Caldera, SCO and WordPerfect on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group I can't tell for sure, but it looks like Noorda was innocent of all betrayal. I'm pretty sure the Caldera/SCO badguy was a slimebag patent troll named Darl McBride. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darl_McBride About Corel, the other example I used... Corel had bought WordPerfect in 1996, and some time around Y2K came out with both Corel Linux, which was a pretty darn good desktop Linux for the time, and WordPerfect for Linux, which I paid for (and liked). Those times are long past, and I could find little on what happened with Corel, so I looked at my contemporaneous writing from that era: http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200010/200010.htm#_linuxlog Apparently, Corel CEO and board chair Michael Cowpland "stepped down" on 8/15/2000, and Derek Burney was appointed interrum president and CEO. On 10/2/2000, Corel and Microsoft announced a "strategic alliance", involving Microsoft's infusion of $135 million for 24 million non-voting convertable shares. The short story, Microsoft bought Corel and Corel almost immediately stopped making any software for Linux. Both Caldera and Corel were co-opted by Microsoft and turned into Microsoft proxies in the battle against Free Software, but at least Corel didn't turn into patent troll. As I remember, the main non-Microsoft slimebags of the era were Darl McBride of Caldera/SCO, and Derek Burney of Corel. SteveT Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20141016015427.40554...@mydesq2.domain.cxm
