[Linux-aus] Please take down or alter this page

[Leon Brooks]

The following page contains a false claim, and several misleading ones:

    http://www.thescogroup.com/5reasons/

Point 5, "SCO UNIX® is Legally Unencumbered", is a false claim for two 
reasons.

The first is that Novell actually owns significant portions of it, which 
The SCO Group (TSG) are using only under license. Novell group is 
currently in litigation with TSG on one hand, and supporting IBM who 
are in litigation with TSG on the other.

The second is that a number of device drivers from SuSE Enterprise Linux 
8 appear to have turned up in UnixWare recently.

Point 1, "SCO UNIX® is a Proven, Stable and Reliable Platform" and point 
4, "SCO UNIX® is Secure" are misleading in that they tell lies of 
omission. It would be less so if the page title were not "5 reasons to 
choose UNIX instead of Linux".

Linux is proven, stable and reliable: in use in spacecraft, military 
applications, testing of jet engines and so on ad infinitum around the 
world.

One significant feature which contributes to this is that anyone can do 
an audit for themselves to verify what has been said, whereas with 
TSG's UNIX offerings, one either has to take TSG's word for it, or hope 
to negotiate access to code which may or may not be exactly the same as 
the code you'd be running day-to-day.

Linux is also secure, in fact it can be considerably more secure than 
either UnixWare or OpenServer can ever dream. As well as minor security 
advantages built into the base system, and options like GRSecurity, 
there are significant security benefits to be had in SELinux which are 
simply not available in any form on any TSG Unix product.

Since I'm speaking to the page anyway, I think it's worth mentioning 
that the remaining two points are actually significant disadvantages.

"SCO UNIX® is backed by a single, experienced vendor" is slightly 
misleading as well, since TSG is not the Santa Cruz Operation which has 
accumulated all of the experience in question.

That aside, a single vendor is a major disadvantage for two major 
reasons, the first being that you open yourself to control by that 
vendor, and the second being that when IBM's lawyers have finished 
turning TSG into a greasy spot on the corporate bitumen, where does one 
turn for UnixWare support?

"SCO UNIX® has a Committed, Well-Defined Roadmap" implies that TSG have 
their own ideas about where they're taking their Unix, whereas a 
product without a rigid roadmap is much more open to control (as "our 
Unix") and customisation by the purchasers.

In other words, an inflexible roadmap locks customers out of the 
development cycle to some degree, which is likely to result in a 
product less well suited to their needs.

Cheers; Leon

-- 
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Vice President, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Committee Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/            Past Committee Member, Linux Australia