Caldera has confirmed that it is to enforce Microsoft-style, per-seat licensing for its new Workstation product released today.

"The suggested price for single licenses to Caldera's OpenLinux Workstation with Support is $99, and licenses to Caldera's OpenLinux Workstation are $59 each. Both product lines include a 60-day Caldera Volution Online subscription," says the company in a press release issued today.

Per-seat licensing is a rarity in the Unix world. That's because workstations are traditionally capable of supporting several concurrent users. IDC's Dan Kusnetzky told us (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19912.html) last week that the next batch of IDC figures will create a new category in recognition of this. Linux usage is divided three ways between server, workstation and 'serverstation', where a workgroup server is doubling up as a workstation.

In contrast to traditional Unix pricing which typically provides a limit for 'concurrent' users, the number of CPUs, Microsoft has maintained a single user license fee on its workstation products. It comes from a single-user world, of course, and in the past has frowned upon use of Windows NT as a workgroup server by limiting the number of concurrent TCP/IP connections that client machine is capable of maintaining.

"I'm not going to use Caldera, since one of the benefits of using Linux is not having to worry about silly per-seat licenses," writes a user on Slashdot. "I was until now a big fan of Caldera, writes another user on LinuxToday. "I guess all I can do now is help fill in the hole they just dug. Goodbye Caldera, Hello Mandrake."

Caldera had not returned our calls at press time. ®

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