Sun, SCO, Novell, Citrix put bucks into Caldera

Caldera Systems has received a $30 million investment from Sun, SCO, Citrix, Novell, Egan Managed Capital, and Chicago Venture Partners. Sun's move is seen to be a positive acceptance that Linux is less harmful to Sun's future than Windows, and that when it comes to performance, Sun still expects Solaris to shine. The non-participation by Intel (which did fund the Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux distributions) can be put down to Caldera's legal case against Microsoft, which made Intel nervous. Wintel may be a bit battered, but it still flies - and there's a limit as to just how much sand can be thrown in Microsoft's face. The Citrix investment is linked to the company's desire to encourage access to any application on any platform with any device, while SCO sees any initiative that brings Linux and Unix together as a good thing. Novell of course wants to create new platform options that detract from Windows. John Egan will join the Caldera Systems' board, as will Ed Iacobucci, chairman of Citrix. Caldera now has the opportunity to carry out some major software developments, and s likely to be less market-hungry than Red Hat or Corel, which brings us to this thought: who better to buy with all that cash than Corel? Corel's Linux has been well-received, and the WordPerfect suite still remains the sine qua non for many users. ® See also: Caldera files for IPO MS settles on eve of Caldera trial