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SCO Group
The SCO Group (often referred to SCO and later called The TSG Group) was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation (the original SCO), including the UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, and then, under CEO Darl McBride, pursuing a series of high-profile legal battles known as the SCO–Linux controversies.
The SCO Group began in 2002 with a renaming of Caldera International, accompanied by McBride becoming CEO and a major change in business strategy and direction. The SCO brand was re-emphasized, and new releases of UnixWare and OpenServer came out. The company also attempted some initiatives in the e-commerce space with the SCOBiz and SCOx programs. In 2003, the SCO Group claimed that the increasingly popular free Linux operating system contained substantial amounts of Unix code that IBM had improperly put there. The SCOsource division was created to monetize the company's intellectual property by selling Unix license rights to use Linux. The SCO v. IBM lawsuit was filed, asking for billion-dollar damages and setting off one of the top technology battles in the history of the industry. By a year later, four additional lawsuits had been filed involving the company.
Reaction to SCO's actions from the free and open-source software community was intensely negative, and the general IT industry was not enamored of the actions either. SCO soon became, as Businessweek headlined, "The Most Hated Company in Tech". SCO Group stock rose rapidly during 2003, but then SCOsource revenue became erratic and the stock began a long fall. Despite the industry's attention to the lawsuits, SCO continued to maintain a product focus as well, putting out a major new release of OpenServer that incorporated the UnixWare kernel inside it. SCO also made a major push in the burgeoning smartphones space, launching the Me Inc. platform for mobility services. But despite these actions, the company steadily lost money and shrank in size.
In 2007, SCO suffered a major adverse ruling in the SCO v. Novell case that rejected SCO's claim of ownership of Unix-related copyrights and undermined much of the rest of its legal position. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection soon after and attempted to continue operations. Its mobility and Unix software assets were sold off in 2011, to McBride and UnXis respectively. Renamed to The TSG Group, the company converted to Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2012. A portion of the SCO v. IBM case continued on until 2021, when a settlement was reached for a tiny fraction of what the SCO Group had initially sued for.
The Santa Cruz Operation had been an American software company, founded in 1979 in Santa Cruz, California, that found success during the 1980s and 1990s selling Unix-based operating system products for Intel x86-based server systems. SCO built a large community of value-added resellers that eventually became 15,000 strong and many of its sales of its SCO OpenServer product to small and medium-sized businesses went through those resellers. In 1995, SCO bought the System V Release 4 and UnixWare business from Novell (which had two years earlier acquired the AT&T-offshoot Unix System Laboratories) to improve its technology base. But beginning in the late 1990s, SCO faced increasingly severe competitive pressure, on one side from Microsoft's Windows NT and its successors and on the other side from the free and open source Linux. In 2001, the Santa Cruz Operation sold its rights to Unix and its SCO OpenServer and UnixWare products to Caldera International.
Caldera, based in Orem, Utah, was founded in 1994 by several former Novell employees who saw promise in Linux as a technology and failed to convince Novell management to move forward with it. Caldera's early funding came from Ray Noorda, the former CEO of Novell, and the Utah Valley-based Canopy Group investment fund that Noorda started for high-technology firms. The company had been in the business of selling its Caldera OpenLinux product but had never been profitable. It attempted to make a combined business out of Linux and Unix but failed to make headway and had suffered continuing financial difficulties. By June 2002, after it had moved to nearby Lindon, its stock was facing a second delisting notice from NASDAQ and the company had less than four months' cash for operations. As Wired magazine later wrote, the company "faced a nearly hopeless situation."
On June 27, 2002, Caldera International had a change in management, with Darl McBride, formerly an executive with Novell, FranklinCovey, and several start-ups, taking over as CEO from Caldera co-founder Ransom Love.
Change under McBride happened quickly. On August 26, 2002, he announced at the company's annual Forum conference – relocated from Santa Cruz to Las Vegas – that Caldera International was changing its name to The SCO Group. He did this via a multimedia display in which an image of Caldera was shattered and replaced by The SCO Group's logo, which was a slightly more stylized version of the old Santa Cruz Operation logo. The attendees at the conference, most of whom were veteran SCO partners and resellers, responded to the announcement with enthusiastic applause. McBride announced, "SCO is back from the dead", and a story in The Register began simply: "SCO lives again." As part of this, the company adopted SCOX as its trading symbol.
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SCO Group
The SCO Group (often referred to SCO and later called The TSG Group) was an American software company in existence from 2002 to 2012 that became known for owning Unix operating system assets that had belonged to the Santa Cruz Operation (the original SCO), including the UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, and then, under CEO Darl McBride, pursuing a series of high-profile legal battles known as the SCO–Linux controversies.
The SCO Group began in 2002 with a renaming of Caldera International, accompanied by McBride becoming CEO and a major change in business strategy and direction. The SCO brand was re-emphasized, and new releases of UnixWare and OpenServer came out. The company also attempted some initiatives in the e-commerce space with the SCOBiz and SCOx programs. In 2003, the SCO Group claimed that the increasingly popular free Linux operating system contained substantial amounts of Unix code that IBM had improperly put there. The SCOsource division was created to monetize the company's intellectual property by selling Unix license rights to use Linux. The SCO v. IBM lawsuit was filed, asking for billion-dollar damages and setting off one of the top technology battles in the history of the industry. By a year later, four additional lawsuits had been filed involving the company.
Reaction to SCO's actions from the free and open-source software community was intensely negative, and the general IT industry was not enamored of the actions either. SCO soon became, as Businessweek headlined, "The Most Hated Company in Tech". SCO Group stock rose rapidly during 2003, but then SCOsource revenue became erratic and the stock began a long fall. Despite the industry's attention to the lawsuits, SCO continued to maintain a product focus as well, putting out a major new release of OpenServer that incorporated the UnixWare kernel inside it. SCO also made a major push in the burgeoning smartphones space, launching the Me Inc. platform for mobility services. But despite these actions, the company steadily lost money and shrank in size.
In 2007, SCO suffered a major adverse ruling in the SCO v. Novell case that rejected SCO's claim of ownership of Unix-related copyrights and undermined much of the rest of its legal position. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection soon after and attempted to continue operations. Its mobility and Unix software assets were sold off in 2011, to McBride and UnXis respectively. Renamed to The TSG Group, the company converted to Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2012. A portion of the SCO v. IBM case continued on until 2021, when a settlement was reached for a tiny fraction of what the SCO Group had initially sued for.
The Santa Cruz Operation had been an American software company, founded in 1979 in Santa Cruz, California, that found success during the 1980s and 1990s selling Unix-based operating system products for Intel x86-based server systems. SCO built a large community of value-added resellers that eventually became 15,000 strong and many of its sales of its SCO OpenServer product to small and medium-sized businesses went through those resellers. In 1995, SCO bought the System V Release 4 and UnixWare business from Novell (which had two years earlier acquired the AT&T-offshoot Unix System Laboratories) to improve its technology base. But beginning in the late 1990s, SCO faced increasingly severe competitive pressure, on one side from Microsoft's Windows NT and its successors and on the other side from the free and open source Linux. In 2001, the Santa Cruz Operation sold its rights to Unix and its SCO OpenServer and UnixWare products to Caldera International.
Caldera, based in Orem, Utah, was founded in 1994 by several former Novell employees who saw promise in Linux as a technology and failed to convince Novell management to move forward with it. Caldera's early funding came from Ray Noorda, the former CEO of Novell, and the Utah Valley-based Canopy Group investment fund that Noorda started for high-technology firms. The company had been in the business of selling its Caldera OpenLinux product but had never been profitable. It attempted to make a combined business out of Linux and Unix but failed to make headway and had suffered continuing financial difficulties. By June 2002, after it had moved to nearby Lindon, its stock was facing a second delisting notice from NASDAQ and the company had less than four months' cash for operations. As Wired magazine later wrote, the company "faced a nearly hopeless situation."
On June 27, 2002, Caldera International had a change in management, with Darl McBride, formerly an executive with Novell, FranklinCovey, and several start-ups, taking over as CEO from Caldera co-founder Ransom Love.
Change under McBride happened quickly. On August 26, 2002, he announced at the company's annual Forum conference – relocated from Santa Cruz to Las Vegas – that Caldera International was changing its name to The SCO Group. He did this via a multimedia display in which an image of Caldera was shattered and replaced by The SCO Group's logo, which was a slightly more stylized version of the old Santa Cruz Operation logo. The attendees at the conference, most of whom were veteran SCO partners and resellers, responded to the announcement with enthusiastic applause. McBride announced, "SCO is back from the dead", and a story in The Register began simply: "SCO lives again." As part of this, the company adopted SCOX as its trading symbol.
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