“Caldera will use the Microsoft settlement money primarily
for acquisitions, development and marketing, according to Lyle
Ball, VP of marketing and communications at Lineo, the Caldera Inc
operating company concerned with embedded clients based on Linux
(Embedix) and DR-DOS. There has been a strategic move to keep
the Microsoft litigation in Caldera Inc and away from product
areas, so that operational matters were not affected. Ball drew
particular attention to Microsoft having settled “right before a
jury trial”. Meanwhile Caldera Systems will continue with its Open
Linux distribution, which should receive considerable publicity
shortly because Caldera filed its S1 IPO registration statement
with the SEC yesterday.”
“Caldera CEO Bryan Sparks told The Register that Microsoft did
not know of the intended filing of Caldera’s IPO yesterday, since
had it done so it would not have accommodated the coincidental
serendipity. Although the company is less widely-known than Red
Hat, Caldera shares will almost certainly enjoy a considerable
premium when they are traded. The lawsuit made it difficult for
Caldera to have an IPO much earlier. Ironically, when Microsoft
wanted to prove during the Washington trial that it had tough
operating system competitors, it put on a demo of Caldera’s
OpenLinux. What poetic justice it would be if this became true, and
that Linux became the most widely installed operating system on new
PCs, as Microsoft “feared.”