Formerly | UnXis (2011–2013) |
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Company type | Private |
Industry | Computer software |
Founded | April 11, 2011 |
Founders | |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
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Products | |
Website | www |
Xinuos is an American software company that was created in 2011. It was first called UnXis until assuming its current name in 2013. (Both names have been variations on the spelling of the Unix operating system.) Xinuos develops and markets the Unix-based OpenServer 6, OpenServer 5, and UnixWare 7 operating systems under SCO branding. Xinuos formerly sold the FreeBSD-based OpenServer 10 operating system.
The SCO Group (SCO) was a Utah-based software company that had over time acquired the operating system products SCO OpenServer and UnixWare, which dated back to earlier companies The Santa Cruz Operation and Unix System Laboratories and to the early history of Unix before that. But by the late 1990s these products found themselves losing in the marketplace, first to Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows Server line and then to open source Linux. [1] [2]
Beginning in 2003, the SCO Group began issuing proclamations and lawsuits, including SCO v. IBM , based upon a belief that SCO Unix intellectual property had been incorporated into Linux in an unlawful and uncompensated manner, resulting in what became known as the SCO–Linux disputes. [3] [4] [5] Reaction to SCO's actions from the free and open source software community was intense and SCO soon became, as Businessweek headlined, "The Most Hated Company In Tech". [6] 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. [7] [4] An appeal was filed, [4] but meanwhile in September 2007, the SCO Group filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. [8] [5]
The interest of Stephen Norris Capital Partners in the SCO Group started in February 2008, when it put forward a $100 million reorganization and debt financing plan for the company, which it would then take private. [9] [10] Stephen L. Norris had been a co-founder of the large and well-known private equity firm The Carlyle Group. [9] There was also an unnamed Middle East partner in the proposed deal; the Associated Press reported that Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia was involved. [11] But after a couple of months of due diligence investigation of SCO's operations, finances, and legal situation, [4] Stephen Norris Capital Partners considered a different course of action, instead proposing to purchase SCO assets outright. [12] [13] Norris appeared on stage at the SCO Tec Forum 2008 company developer and partner conference in Las Vegas in October 2008, where possible acquisition and investments plans were shown to attendees. [14]
Neither of those plans went forward, [5] and instead in June 2009 a new proposal emerged from a combination of Gulf Capital Partners, of which Stephen Norris was an investor, and MerchantBridge, a London-based, Middle East-focused private equity group, to create an entity called UnXis, which would then buy SCO's software business assets for $2.4 million. [15] [16] At that point the SCO Group had fewer than 70 employees left. [16]
That plan, too, did not move forward. In April 2010, SCO's mobility software assets were sold to its former CEO, Darl McBride, for $100,000. [17] In September 2010 the SCO Group put up the remainder of its non-lawsuit assets for public auction. [2] Thus in February 2011, another proposal was made, this time for $600,000, with this iteration of UnXis being backed by Norris, MerchantBridge, and Gerson Global Advisors. [5]
Some industry analysts were unsure of why Norris and his partners were wanting to acquire the SCO Unix software assets in the first place. In 2008 Ryan Paul of Ars Technica noted that "UnixWare, SCO's flagship product, hasn't seen a new release in four years." [10] Veteran technology journalist Maureen O'Gara, who earlier during the SCO–Linux disputes had been accused of engaging in pro-SCO actions, [18] in 2011 called UnXis an "odd venture" which had "been offering to buy SCO since mid-2009 for reasons that aren't patently obvious to anybody." [19]
But in any case, the bankruptcy court approved this proposal, as the only other bid submitted was for $18. [20]
The sale was closed on 11 April 2011, with Stephen Norris Capital Partners and MerchantBridge being the final buyers, and UnXis was formed in substance. [21] (O'Gara reported that MerchantBridge had 25 percent ownership of UnXis and Gulf Capital Partners had another 25 percent. [19] ) In particular, the company took over the product names, ownership, and maintenance of The SCO Group's flagship operating system products, OpenServer and UnixWare. [22] [23] It also took over some 32000 service contracts for existing SCO Group customers; [24] these customers represented some 82 countries and business segments such as finance, retail, fast food, and governmental entities. [25] It would be up to UnXis to hire SCO Group employees, of whom only handfuls were still left at various locations. [21]
The SCO Group's litigation rights against IBM and Novell did not transfer to UnXis, and The SCO Group subsequently renamed itself to The TSG Group. [21] [23] UnXis indicated that it had no involvement or interest in any ongoing aspects of those actions: "There is no place for litigation in our vision or plan." [22] Indeed, UnXis would be indemnified from any legal costs of ongoing litigation. [24]
Initially, UnXis was headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. [24] Its CEO was Richard Bolandz, [21] who was a former CIO of Qwest Communications. [22] Norris was chair of the board of UnXis and Eric Le Blan, a senior partner with MerchantBridge, was vice-chair. [19] Several existing SCO Group executives took on C-Suite level positions. [19]
Bolandz professed optimism on the part of himself and the UnXis backers about the SCO products, especially if they could be updated for newer requirements including cloud computing. [5] He said those improvements would be in areas such as 64-bit computing, biometric authentication, IPv6 support, and virtualization capabilities. [22] Virtualization support was especially critical for the existing SCO operating system products, not just because of the market trends of server consolidation and other benefits, but because it would allow the older products to run on hardware that they were otherwise uncertified or unsupported for. [26]
Bolandz said quarterly updates of the SCO products would be forthcoming, [21] and that SCO "is really a tremendous company with a great history and a great product that unfortunately made some very poor strategic choices." [5] The UnXis owners said at various times in statements reported by The Salt Lake Tribune that they would invest $5–12 million in the company towards this modernization effort and towards rehiring some of the SCO employees who had been let go during the bankruptcy years. [5] [21]
Some industry analysts thought there was some reason to share Bolandz's view. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet wrote that "I actually think UnXis has a shot at this. While I've disliked SCO's policies for the last eight years, I never disliked their products. OpenServer and UnixWare, while they're not open operating systems, are remarkably stable. ... [They occupy] a real, albeit small, server operating system niche." [22]
By early 2013, UnXis headquarters had changed to San Mateo, California, [27] and its President was Sean Snyder. [28] [29]
In June 2013, the company changed its name to Xinuos. [29] The SCO Group lawsuit against IBM was again alive in the courts, but Xinuos reiterated that it was not involved: "Since the sale of assets was completed [in 2011], we have had no further dealings with The SCO Group and have no knowledge regarding any legal action nor do we have any interest whatsoever in such proceedings." [30] Instead, Snyder emphasized that, "The negativity directed as SCO was directed at management not at the products themselves. It's an overstatement to say the products were beloved, but not by much." [31]
Besides San Mateo, the company had additional facilities in Berkeley, California, Florham Park, New Jersey, Bad Homburg, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan. [32]
The initially-talked-about investments in the existing SCO products did not materialize, as by 2013 the company decided that they had been neglected too long and the cost of upgrading was too high. [31] Instead, Snyder said, "it made more sense to adopt a modern and existing OS and transition to that." [31]
Accordingly, in June 2015, Xinuos announced OpenServer 10, which is based on the FreeBSD operating system. [33] It then had its general availability release as OpenServer 10 in January 2016. [34] The FreeBSD base gave a 64-bit operating system with modern capabilities, and Xinuos adopted the open source model of the license being free and the company trying to make money from superior offerings in technical support, product maintenance, and professional services. [31] However, as of March 2023, this product no longer appears on the Xinuos website, and presumably is no longer sold.
Simultaneously, Xinuos introduced a migration path for existing customers using older OS products. In December 2015, Xinuos released "definitive" versions of OpenServer 5, OpenServer 6, and UnixWare 7. [35] These definitive operating system instances could run as an entity within Open Server 10, [35] such that even if existing 32-bit SCO applications were not in a position to be recompiled from source code for OpenServer 10, they could still run under, and get some of the advantages of, the more modern environment. [31]
For the OpenServer 10 launch Xinuos also sought to revive at least some of the famed SCO-based partner and reseller channel, which had once had over 10000 members but by early 2016 was down to 75. [31] One long-time SCO-focused reseller association that did remain with Xinuos was iXorg. [36]
By early 2016, the Berkeley location had become the headquarters for Xinuos, [34] and only the Tokyo office of the others was still open. [37]
In December 2017, Xinuos released "Definitive 2018" versions of OpenServer 6 and UnixWare 7. [38] This was followed in October 2018 by the release of a "Definitive 2018" version of OpenServer 5. [39]
Some longtime SCO add-on products, such as Microlite's BackupEDGE backup/restore offering, kept their product up-to-date with the "Definitive" versions. [40] So too did the iXorg reseller association, which continued throughout the 2010s to discuss and test the latest Xinuos OS products during its regular meetings. [36] [41]
SCO–Linux disputes |
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Overview |
Litigation |
Companies involved |
Individuals involved |
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In May 2019, Xinuos moved its operations to the United States Virgin Islands, locating itself as a tenant in the University of the Virgin Islands Research and Technology Park in Saint Croix. [42]
In March 2021 Xinuos announced that it has sued IBM and its subsidiary Red Hat. [43] The lawsuit, filed in the District Court of the Virgin Islands, claims that IBM "stole" its intellectual property and that IBM and Red Hat together "conspired to illegally corner a market and crush competition." [44] The action's intellectual property claims are partly rooted in the 1998, multi-company Project Monterey effort. [45] This has led some industry observers to characterize the Xinuos suit as an attempt to relitigate the SCO v. IBM case. [46] [47] The antitrust claims are based on more recent IBM and Red Hat activities that, as per Xinuos, include alleged agreements to divide the market and exclude Xinuos's OpenServer 10, and FreeBSD in general, from that market. [43] [48] [49] In response to the action, IBM said the "allegations merely rehash the stale claims of its predecessor ... and have no merit." [44] Law360 and Bloomberg Law reported that broader claims of anti-competitive conduct are at issue in the lawsuit. [48] [49] When reporting on this lawsuit, Ars Technica says Red Hat isn't a monopoly on Unix-like operating systems, mentioning "rivals" such as SUSE and Ubuntu. [50]
The main products of Xinuos are the following:
Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.
Darl Charles McBride is an entrepreneur and CEO of Shout TV Inc. McBride is known as the former CEO of The SCO Group. On March 7, 2003, during McBride's tenure as CEO of the company, The SCO Group initiated litigation against IBM, alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement claims connected to Unix. SCO Group lost in a series of court battles, and was eventually forced into bankruptcy.
SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., commonly abbreviated as SCO v. IBM, is a civil lawsuit in the United States District Court of Utah. The SCO Group asserted that there are legal uncertainties regarding the use of the Linux operating system due to alleged violations of IBM's Unix licenses in the development of Linux code at IBM. The lawsuit was filed in 2003, it has lingered on through the bankruptcy of SCO Group and the adverse result in SCO v. Novell, and was reopened for continued litigation by order of a new judge on June 14, 2013. Pursuant to the court order reopening the case, an IBM Motion for Summary Judgment was filed based upon the results of the Novell decision. On December 15, 2014, the judge granted most of IBM's motion, thereby narrowing the scope of the case, which remained open. On March 1, 2016, following a ruling against the last remaining claims, the judge dismissed SCO's suit against IBM with prejudice. SCO filed an appeal later that month. In February 2018, as a result of the appeal and the case being partially remanded to the circuit court, the parties restated their remaining claims and provided a plan to move toward final judgement.
The SCO 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, 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.
Caldera International, Inc., earlier Caldera Systems, was an American software company that existed from 1998 to 2002 and developed and sold Linux- and Unix-based operating system products.
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants for Intel x86 processors: Xenix, SCO UNIX, and UnixWare.
UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Systems, Caldera International, and The SCO Group before it was sold to UnXis. UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than a desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. UnixWare is primarily marketed as a server operating system.
Unix System V is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. System V Release 4 (SVR4) was commercially the most successful version, being the result of an effort, marketed as Unix System Unification, which solicited the collaboration of the major Unix vendors. It was the source of several common commercial Unix features. System V is sometimes abbreviated to SysV.
Unix System Laboratories (USL), sometimes written UNIX System Laboratories to follow relevant trademark guidelines of the time, was an American software laboratory and product development company that existed from 1989 through 1993. At first wholly, and then majority, owned by AT&T, it was responsible for the development and maintenance of one of the main branches of the Unix operating system, the UNIX System V Release 4 source code product. Through Univel, a partnership with Novell, it was also responsible for the development and production of the UnixWare packaged operating system for Intel architecture. In addition it developed Tuxedo, a transaction processing monitor, and was responsible for certain products related to the C++ programming language. USL was based in Summit, New Jersey, and its CEOs were Larry Dooling followed by Roel Pieper.
In a series of legal disputes between SCO Group and Linux vendors and users, SCO alleged that its license agreements with IBM meant that source code IBM wrote and donated to be incorporated into Linux was added in violation of SCO's contractual rights. Members of the Linux community disagreed with SCO's claims; IBM, Novell, and Red Hat filed claims against SCO.
SCO v. Novell was a United States lawsuit in which the software company The SCO Group (SCO), claimed ownership of the source code for the Unix operating system. SCO sought to have the court declare that SCO owned the rights to the Unix code, including the copyrights, and that Novell had committed slander of title by asserting a rival claim to ownership of the Unix copyrights. Separately, SCO was attempting to collect license fees from Linux end-users for Unix code through their SCOsource division, and Novell's rival ownership claim was a direct challenge to this initiative. Novell had been increasing their investments in and support of Linux at this time, and was opposed to SCO's attempts to collect license fees from Novell's potential customers.
Beginning in 2003, The SCO Group was involved in a dispute with various Linux vendors and users. SCO initiated a series of lawsuits, the most known of which were SCO v. IBM and SCO v. Novell, that had implications upon the futures of both Linux and Unix. SCO claimed that Linux violated some of SCO's intellectual properties. Many industry observers were skeptical of SCO's claims, and they were strongly contested by SCO's opponents in the lawsuits, some of which launched counter-claims. By 2011, the lawsuits fully related to Linux had been lost by SCO or rendered moot and SCO had gone into bankruptcy. However the SCO v. IBM suit continued for another decade, as it included contractual disputes related to both companies' involvement in Project Monterey in addition Linux-related claims. Finally in 2021 a settlement was reached in which IBM paid the bankruptcy trustee representing what remained of SCO the sum of $14.25 million.
Xinuos OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop, is a closed source computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), later acquired by SCO Group, and now owned by Xinuos. Early versions of OpenServer were based on UNIX System V, while the later OpenServer 10 is based on FreeBSD 10. However, OpenServer 10 has not received any updates since 2018 and is no longer marketed on Xinuos's website, while OpenServer 5 Definitive and 6 Definitive are still supported.
Merge is a software system which allows a user to run DOS/Windows 3.1 on SCO UNIX, in an 8086 virtual machine.
eDirectory is an X.500-compatible directory service software product from NetIQ. Previously owned by Novell, the product has also been known as Novell Directory Services (NDS) and sometimes referred to as NetWare Directory Services. NDS was initially released by Novell in 1993 for Netware 4, replacing the Netware bindery mechanism used in previous versions, for centrally managing access to resources on multiple servers and computers within a given network. eDirectory is a hierarchical, object oriented database used to represent certain assets in an organization in a logical tree, including organizations, organizational units, people, positions, servers, volumes, workstations, applications, printers, services, and groups to name just a few.
Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems since 1998. A successor to the Caldera Network Desktop put together by Caldera since 1995, OpenLinux was an early "business-oriented distribution" and foreshadowed the direction of developments that came to most other distributions and the Linux community generally.
Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2 with a syscall exception meaning anything that uses the kernel via system calls are not subject to the GNU GPL.
Stephen L. Norris is an American businessman, investor, and financier. He was one of the co-founders of The Carlyle Group, an American private equity firm. He was later owner and founder of Stephen Norris Capital Partners and the chairman of Gulf Capital Partners.
SCO Forum was a technical computer conference sponsored by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), briefly by Caldera International, and later The SCO Group that took place during the 1980s through 2000s. It was held annually, most often in August of each year, and typically lasted for much of a week. From 1987 through 2001 it was held in Santa Cruz, California, on the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz. The scenic location, amongst redwood trees and overlooking Monterey Bay, was considered one of the major features of the conference. From 2002 through 2008 it was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, at one of several hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. Despite the name and location changes, the conference was considered to be the same entity, with both the company and attendees including all instances in their counts of how many ones they had been to.