SCO Resurrected from the Dead

Aug 26, 2002 at 15:27:40

The embattled, Linux pioneer Caldera announced today that it had renamed itself the SCO Group, SCO being the name of the UNIX vendor Caldera acquired assets from last year. The original organization known as SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) is now known as Tarantella, a company producing “web-enabling software.”

Caldera, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: CALD) announcement, which first surfaced midmorning, seems to be an attempt for Caldera to capitalize on the name of the elder company. Yet, Open for Business's editor-in-chief Timothy R. Butler remained skeptical, noting that SCO dumped the legacy UNIX systems last year mostly due to lackluster sales.

"The problem is Caldera is grabbing on to what they see as opportunities to use proprietary software to keep themselves afloat, while they ignore the real products their customers want. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a name change is wasteful at best," Butler noted. "Much like UnitedLinux, the name change does little in the way of offering customer value, and perhaps even confuses buyers wondering where the company is now heading."

SCO Group's Darl McBride begs to differ. In the announcement, McBride heralds the change by saying "The name change to SCO from Caldera builds on a strong market position which we will extend as we reinvent the SCO brand." He continued, opining "For more than two decades, the SCO name has been synonymous with reliability, stability and cost efficiency. Now, the coexistence and collaboration of UNIX and Linux systems from a single source offers our customers and channel partners a powerful choice of solutions, backed by a name that powers millions of servers around the world - SCO."

Investor's initial reaction to the move seemed positive, perhaps rewarding the company for moving away from Linux, which has been viewed as dotcom-esque in the slow economy over the last year. The SCO Group's stock rallied eighty points today, closing at $2.78 or an increase of 40.40%.

At a larger scale, this moves also signals the second major shift in the UnitedLinux alliance in the last week. TurboLinux, another consortium member, announced last Monday that it was selling most of its assets to Japan-based SRA Co. After the initial news leaked out, SRA confirmed that TurboLinux would remain part of UnitedLinux.

For more information on the SCO Group's announcement today, we recommend that you read LinuxandMain's article Adios, Caldera; hello, SCO Group. You can also find the announcement itself here< /a>.