SCO OpenServer
Encyclopedia
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
computer operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and now maintained by the SCO Group
SCO Group
TSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...
.
SCO UNIX/SCO Open Desktop
SCO UNIX was the successor to SCO XenixXenix
Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed to Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually superseded it with SCO UNIX ....
, derived from AT&T System V Release 3.2
UNIX System V
Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by American Telephone & Telegraph and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, termed Releases 1, 2, 3 and 4...
with an infusion of Xenix device drivers and utilities. SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2.0 was released in 1989 as the commercial successor to SCO Xenix. The base operating system did not include TCP/IP networking or X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
graphics; these were available as optional extra-cost add-on packages. Shortly after the release of this bare OS, SCO shipped an integrated product under the name of SCO Open Desktop, or ODT. 1994 saw the release of SCO MPX, an add-on SMP
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
package.
At the same time, AT&T completed its merge of Xenix, BSD, SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
and System V features into System V Release 4. SCO UNIX remained based on System V Release 3, but eventually added home-grown versions of most of the features of Release 4.
The 1992 releases of SCO UNIX 3.2v4.0 and Open Desktop 2.0 added support for long file names and symbolic link
Symbolic link
In computing, a symbolic link is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution. Symbolic links were already present by 1978 in mini-computer operating systems from DEC and Data...
s. The next major version, OpenServer Release 5.0.0, released in 1995, added support for ELF
Executable and Linkable Format
In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format is a common standard file format for executables, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps. First published in the System V Application Binary Interface specification, and later in the Tool Interface Standard, it was quickly accepted among...
executables and dynamically linked shared objects, and made many kernel structures dynamic.
SCO OpenServer
SCO OpenServer 5, an AT&TAT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
System V Release 3-based operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, was initially released by The Santa Cruz Operation in 1995. Based on SCO UNIX 3.2v4, SCO OpenServer 5 would become SCO's primary product and serve as the basis for products like PizzaNet (the first Internet-based food delivery system done in partnership with Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....
) and Global Access (the first commercially licensed and bundled Internet Operating System). Due to its large installed base, SCO OpenServer 5 continues to be actively maintained by SCO with major updates having occurred as recently as April 2009.
SCO OpenServer 6, an AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
System V Release 4.2MP-based operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, was initially released by The SCO Group in 2005. It includes support for large files, increased memory, and multi-threaded kernel (light-weight processes) and is referred to as SVR5. SCO OpenServer 6 contains the UnixWare
UnixWare
UnixWare is a Unix operating system maintained by The SCO Group . UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System...
7 SVR5 kernel integrated with SCO OpenServer 5 application and binary compatibility, OpenServer 5 system administration, and OpenServer 5 user environments.
SCO OpenServer has primarily been sold into the Small and Medium Business market (SMB). It is widely used in small offices, point of sale (POS
Point of sale
Point of sale or checkout is the location where a transaction occurs...
) systems, replicated sites, and backoffice database server
Database server
A database server is a computer program that provides database services to other computer programs or computers, as defined by the client–server model. The term may also refer to a computer dedicated to running such a program...
deployments. Prominent SCO OpenServer customers include McDonalds, Taco Bell
Taco Bell
Taco Bell is an American chain of fast-food restaurants based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., which serves American-adapted Mexican food. Taco Bell serves tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos, other specialty items, and a variety of "Value Menu" items...
, Big O Tires
Big O Tires
Big O Tires, LLC. is North America's largest franchiser of tire retailers. It is headquartered in Centennial, Colorado, and has more than 540 franchises in 21 U.S. states and Canada. It sells its own Big O private brand tires and other brands...
, Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....
, Costco
Costco
Costco Wholesale Corporation is the largest membership warehouse club chain in the United States. it is the third largest retailer in the United States, where it originated, and the ninth largest in the world...
pharmacy, NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
, The Toronto Stock Exchange
Toronto Stock Exchange
Toronto Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Canada, the third largest in North America and the seventh largest in the world by market capitalisation. Based in Canada's largest city, Toronto, it is owned by and operated as a subsidiary of the TMX Group for the trading of senior equities...
, Banco do Brasil
Banco do Brasil
Banco do Brasil S.A. is the largest Brazilian and Latin American bank by assets, and the third by market value. The bank, headquartered in Brasília, was founded in 1808 and is the oldest active bank in Brazil — and one of the oldest financial institutions in the world.Banco do Brasil is controlled...
, many banks in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and the railway system of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
UnixWare merger
SCO purchased the right to distribute the UnixWareUnixWare
UnixWare is a Unix operating system maintained by The SCO Group . UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System...
system and its System V Release 4 code base from Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
in 1995. SCO was eventually able to re-use some code from that version of UnixWare in later releases of OpenServer. Until Release 6, this came primarily in the compilation system and the UDI
Uniform Driver Interface
The Uniform Driver Interface is a defunct project developed by several companies to define a portable interface for device drivers....
driver framework and the USB subsystem written to it.
By the end of the 1990s, there were around 15,000 value-added reseller
Value-added reseller
A value-added reseller is a company that adds features or services to an existing product, then resells it as an integrated product or complete "turn-key" solution...
s (VARs) around the world who provided solutions for customers of SCO's Unix systems.
SCO announced on August 2, 2000 that it would sell its Server Software and Services Divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, to Caldera Systems, Inc. The purchase was completed in May 2001. The remaining part of the SCO company, the Tarantella Division, changed its name to Tarantella, Inc.
Tarantella, Inc.
Santa Cruz Operation was a software company based in Santa Cruz, California which was best known for selling three Unix variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX , and UnixWare. Eric Raymond, in his book The Art of Unix Programming, calls SCO the "first Unix company"...
, while Caldera Systems became Caldera International, and subsequently in 2002 the SCO Group
SCO Group
TSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...
.
Under the SCO Group
The SCO Group continued the development and maintenance of OpenServer. They currently continue to maintain the now obsoleted 5.0.x branch derived from 3.2v5.0.x; the most recent of these is 5.0.7.On June 22, 2005, OpenServer 6.0 was released, codenamed "Legend", the first release in the new 6.0.x branch. SCO OpenServer 6 is based upon the System V Release 5 UNIX kernel and features multi-threading application support for C, C++, and Java applications through the POSIX interface. OpenServer 6 features kernel-level threading (not found in 5.0.x).
Some improvements over OpenServer 5 include improved SMP support (support for up to 32 processors), support for files over 1 terabyte on a partition (larger network files supported through NFSv3), better file system performance, and support for up to 64GB of memory.
OpenServer 6.0 maintains backward-compatibility for applications developed for Xenix 286 onwards.
Copyright issues
On Friday, August 10, 2007, a U.S. district court judge ruled in the case of SCO v. NovellSCO v. Novell
SCO v. Novell was a United States lawsuit in which the The SCO Group claimed ownership of the source code for the Unix operating system, including portions of Linux...
that Novell holds UNIX and UnixWare copyrights for code developed before 1995, enabling Novell to claim licensing fees collected by SCO related to those copyrights. The case is not fully vetted in the legal system as there are remaining portions still awaiting findings.
On Aug 24, 2009, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Colorado* District of Kansas...
reversed the 2007 summary judgment of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, which found that Novell was the owner of Unix and UnixWare copyrights. This reversal allowed for SCO to continue its claim that IBM and others used SCO Unix code in Linux operating system software
On Tuesday, March 30, 2010, a jury of 7 men and 5 women determined that Novell owns the copyrights to Unix.
SCO files for chapter 11 protection
On September 14, 2007 the SCO GroupSCO Group
TSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...
filed for Chapter 11 protection
Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most...
in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Versions
| Version | UNIX SVR | Date | Codename | Editions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCO UNIX System V/386 | 3.2.0 | 1989 | ? | |
| Open Desktop 1.0 | 3.2.1 | 1990 | ? | |
| Open Desktop 1.1 | 3.2v2.0 | 1991 | ? | Supplement for upgrade to 3.2v2.1 |
| SCO UNIX | 3.2v4.0 | 1992 | ? | |
| Open Desktop 2.0 | 3.2v4.1 | 1992 | Phoenix | Desktop System, Server |
| Open Desktop/Server 3.0 | 3.2v4.2 | 1994 | Thunderbird | Open Desktop, Open Desktop Lite, Open Server |
| OpenServer 5.0 | 3.2v5.0 | 1995 | Everest | Desktop System, Host System, Enterprise System |
| OpenServer 5.0.2 | 3.2v5.0.2 | 1996 | Tenzing | Desktop System, Host System, Enterprise System, Internet FastStart |
| OpenServer 5.0.4 | 3.2v5.0.4 | 1997 | Comet | Desktop System, Host System, Enterprise System |
| OpenServer 5.0.5 | 3.2v5.0.5 | 1999 | Davenport | Host System, Desktop System, Enterprise System |
| OpenServer 5.0.6 | 3.2v5.0.6 | 2000 | Freedom | Host System, Desktop System, Enterprise System |
| OpenServer 5.0.7 | 3.2v5.0.7 | 14 February 2003 | Harvey West | Host System, Desktop System, Enterprise System |
| OpenServer 6.0 | 5 | 14 June 2005 | Legend | Starter, Enterprise |
SCO Skunkware / open source
All versions of SCO OpenServer have included significant open source components including BINDBIND
BIND , or named , is the most widely used DNS software on the Internet.On Unix-like operating systems it is the de facto standard.Originally written by four graduate students at the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley , the name originates as an acronym from...
/X11/Sendmail
Sendmail
Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and -delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol used for email transport over the Internet....
/DHCP/Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
/Tcl
Tcl
Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
and others. Later releases are bundled with numerous additional open-source applications including Apache
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
, Samba
Samba (software)
Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...
, MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
, OpenSSH
OpenSSH
OpenSSH is a set of computer programs providing encrypted communication sessions over a computer network using the SSH protocol...
, Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
, KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, a wide variety of graphics web and X11 libraries (gwxlibs package), and most recently OpenOffice for OpenServer 6.
All versions of SCO operating system distributions including SCO OpenServer also have an extensive set of open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
packages available for free download via the SCO Skunkware
SCO Skunkware
SCO Skunkware, often referred to as simply "Skunkware", is a collection of Open Source software projects ported, compiled, and packaged for free redistribution on SCO operating environments. SCO Skunkware packaged components exist for SCO Xenix, SCO UNIX, SCO OpenServer 5, SCO OpenServer 6,...
site.
See also
- The Santa Cruz Operation and UNIX
- SCO v. NovellSCO v. NovellSCO v. Novell was a United States lawsuit in which the The SCO Group claimed ownership of the source code for the Unix operating system, including portions of Linux...
- The SCO GroupSCO GroupTSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...