In 2001, Caldera acquired the server software and services businesses of Santa Cruz Operations, a Unix software company founded in 1979, using money from a successful IPO.
The project was terminated in May 2001, SCO says, alleging that IBM "misused its access to the Unix Software Code" to help build the Linux open standard.
Similarly, while Apple's OS X's user interface is not just easy to use but engaging, it's just a candy shell built around the kind of tried-and-true Unix software that's powered everything from phone networks to computer science labs for a generation.
Linux is already used by most Internet-service providers and, outside America, is becoming one of the most popular versions of Unix, the software family to which it belongs.
The software's Unix core makes it easy for Apple to cram stripped down versions of the software onto mobile phones and home entertainment gadgets, such as Apple TV.
The company pushed software with Unix roots, and emphasized systems that bound computers together in sprawling networks, rather than treating them as stand-alone "personal" computers.
Freecode, one of the largest indexes of Linux, Unix and cross-platform software, as well as mobile applications generates nearly 500, 000 unique visitors each month.
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"We're in the storage business but have redefined it from mainframes to Unix and NT systems and increasingly to software, " says EMC Chief Executive Michael Ruettgers, 55.
The Unix bedrock has also attracted more and more software developers to the Mac platform, like Scott Lopatin who wrote a new blogging tool called Sparkpod.
But the Army's Jonathan Broskey stands by his claims of Apple's security: He says the high number of patches to Apple software is a good sign--evidence of the large community of developers actively working to tighten Unix programs and eliminate bugs.
That software "glue" means that IBM can use its dominance in the mainframe arena to win x86 and Unix customers away from competitors like Hewlett-Packard, which recently declared that it sells more x86 servers than any other vendor, and Dell.
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