On Thu, Jul 11, 2002, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote about "Re: Slightly OT: New Version of MSIE for Solaris and HP-UX": > > Some of the historical biggest UNIX software companies were founded by > > Microsoft (like SCO, the only owner of the official source-code of UNIX > > which was recently acquired by Caldera). > > No, Microsoft had shares in SCO. They didn't own SCO. You may look at the SEC > filing again. MS did have their own crappy version of Unix - called Xenix.
I'm writing this from memory, so maybe someone would like to "google" and find some webpage to check these facts: (so take everything I write now with a "IIRC" modifier) Xenix was started by Microsoft, in the late 70s, before they even had DOS. It was somehow based on AT&T code, but ported to other types of computers (I don't remember the details). Later, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), a small existing Unix consulting company, took it over and Xenix for the 80286 CPU became its flagship product in the 80s (I remember seeing it first around 1987, I think. If I remember correctly, the '386 was still to expensive then for casual use). Xenix was later renamed "SCO Unix", when SCO licensed from AT&T the right to use the "Unix" trademark, and even later (around 1995) SCO actually bought the entire UNIX and UnixWare business from Novell. It is obvious that the ties between Microsoft and SCO were initially stronger than just holding shares for investment purposes. It appears like Microsoft sold off its XENIX operations to SCO around 1983, and continued to collect royalties as well as owning a part of SCO. I don't suppose that Microsoft had any say in running SCO or its future directions, though. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Jul 11 2002, 2 Av 5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Entropy: Not just a fad, it's the future! http://nadav.harel.org.il | ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
