The origins of SCO (was: SCO declares war ...)

bscott at ntisys.com bscott at ntisys.com
Thu May 15 16:23:58 EDT 2003


On Thu, 15 May 2003, at 3:29pm, gaf at blu.org wrote:
>> SCO is/was also involved in the development of "Merge" ...
>
> I don't believe that SCO was involved with Win4Lin.  They had a WINE like
> commercial product.  Win4Lin is a virtual Machine (somewhat similar to
> VMWare) that allows you to run Windows 9x as a process under Linux.

  If you look at Win4Lin, you will notice that all of the variables,
programs, etc., except for the very recent stuff, uses the name "Merge".  
Many other things (e.g., the kernel modules) begin with the letter "M". This
is because Win4Lin builds on the "Merge" product.

  Okay, checking past messages on the Win4Lin list, I find the following
information, which implies that SCO was only a licensee, and never an owner,
of Merge/Win4Lin.  Which is good.  :-)

  Information:

  It appears the company which originally developed the Merge software was
"Locus Computing Corporation".  They marketed a product called "DOS/Merge",
which is the ancestor to the Win4Lin that we all know and love.  DOS/Merge
was later called "386/Merge" when 386 protected mode support was added.

  At some point, a company called "Platinum" bought Locus.  They apparently
integrated Merge with other components into product lines called
"PC-Enterprise" and "PC-Interface".

  The Merge product was licensed to several other companies, including SCO,
Sun, and HP.  Sun and SCO both have commercial Unix products that run on
Intel hardware; they offer "SCO Merge" and "Sun Merge" as layered products
for their Unixes.  SCO, of course, has since been bought by Caldera.

  At some point, a company called "DASCOM" bought the rights to Merge from
Platinum.  Shortly thereafter, Platinum was bought by Computer Associates
(CA), and falls off the Earth.  DASCOM was later bought by IBM.  IBM was not
interested in Merge, and spun the Merge group off as "TreLOS".  TreLOS later
merged with Lastfoot.com, and became "NeTraverse".

  So:

  Locus -> Platinum -> DASCOM -> IBM -> TreLOS + Lastfoot -> NeTraverse

  DOS/Merge -> 386/Merge -> PC-Enterprise & PC-Interface -> Win4Lin

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
| The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do  |
| not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. |
| All information is provided without warranty of any kind.              |







More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list