> The only thing I don't understand is, why would Caldera spend so much > time, money, and effort in trying to port WABI to linux, if it's parent > group was going to do this. Well, WABI is Sun's proprietary technology. Ray Noorda's got a few bucks, and knows how to play the proprietary software game (and he also realizes that free software is going to be next BIG thing). So he doesn't want his investments to be hostage to Sun. Plus Willows was just a couple of guys, so they were cheap. When you are in Ray Noorda's position, and you have a lot of money to invest (and get a good return on), you have to find a good market segment that small right now, and is destined to be extremely large 10 years from now. Right now, the free software industry fits that bill. In economic terms, it's still pretty small - mostly financially supported by public sector university funding and the ISP industry. By definition, it plays by different rules than the proprietary software industry, which Microsoft dominates. If I wanted a place where I could sink a few billion dollars (in a few years), and was safe from attack from Microsoft - free software would be it. Of course, there needs to be some significant work to grow the size of the market so that the ancillary products and services market (where the money is made) is large enough to support that sort of investment. I think it's a really smart move, from a business standpoint. Of course, I essentially made the same decision a year ago (but I don't have a billion dollars to invest). :-) Cheers, - Jim
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