Caldera (company)

Caldera
IndustrySoftware industry
FoundedOctober 1994; 30 years ago (1994-10)[1]
Founder
Defunct2002 (2002)[2]
Products
Subsidiaries
  • Caldera UK Ltd.
  • Caldera Deutschland GmbH
  • Caldera Taiwan
  • Caldera Systems, Inc.
  • Caldera Thin Clients, Inc.

Caldera, Inc. was a Canopy-funded software company founded in October 1994[1] and incorporated on 25 January 1995[2] by former Novell employees Bryan Wayne Sparks, Ransom H. Love and others to develop the Caldera Network Desktop (CND) and later create a Linux distribution named OpenLinux (COL). The company was originally based in Provo and later in Orem, Utah, USA.

Their first product in 1995 was Caldera Network Desktop, which was based on Red Hat Linux[3][4] and Novell's Corsair Internet Desktop. It also included LISA (Linux Installation and System Administration),[4] which had been developed by the German Linux Support Team (LST) for their own Linux distribution.[5]


The newer OpenLinux distribution was based on LST Power Linux, a Slackware-derived distribution that had been maintained by LST since 1993[6] and the first to come with a Linux 2.0 kernel.[5]

Looking for a DOS operating system to bundle with their OpenLinux distribution,[1] Caldera, backed up by The Canopy Group as their largest investor, acquired Novell DOS 7 and other Digital Research assets from Novell on 23 July 1996.[7][8] The deal consisted of a direct payment of US$400000 as well as percentual royalties for any revenues derived from DR-DOS to Novell.[9] Caldera filed the Caldera v. Microsoft antitrust lawsuit the same day.[10] This lawsuit related to Caldera's claims of monopolization, illegal tying, exclusive dealing, and tortious interference by Microsoft. An example was that certain beta versions of Windows 3.1 produced technically groundless "non-fatal" fake error messages when installing and running them on DR DOS 6.0 due to a check known as AARD code in order to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and destroy DR DOS' reputation.[11][12][13][14][15][16] Another example was bundling and artificially tying MS-DOS 7 and Windows 4 into a single product (Windows 95) in order to eliminate competition. Caldera later demonstrated that it would have been beneficial for DOS and Windows users to have a choice between MS-DOS and DR-DOS feature-wise, and that it was technically possible to run Windows 4 on DR-DOS 7 simply by faking some new, unnecessarily complex but functionally non-essential internal interfaces through WinGlue.[10][17][18][19][20][21][22] See Microsoft litigation#Caldera v Microsoft.

Since Digital Research's CP/M and MP/M had no commercial value for Caldera, they offered various binaries and sources for download on their site and allowed the redistribution and modification of more collected CP/M files through Tim Olmstead's independent "The Unofficial CP/M Web site" since 1997, for as long as they did not contain any DOS technology.[23][24][25]

Caldera, Inc. supported the Linux-port of Star Division's StarOffice 3.1 with ca. DM 800000 in order to offer the product with their OpenLinux distribution in 1997.[26][27][28][29]

While active, Caldera, Inc. created a number of subsidiaries:

  1. ^ a b c Ball, Lyle; Pomeroy, Nancy, eds. (1996-09-10). "Caldera announces open source code model for DOS - DR DOS + the Internet = Caldera OpenDOS". Provo, UT, USA: Caldera, Inc. Archived from the original on 1996-10-18. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  2. ^ a b "Caldera, Inc". OpenCorporates. Archived from the original on 2022-01-27. Retrieved 2022-01-15. Caldera, Inc. […] Company Number 1222412-0142 […] Incorporation Date 25 January 1995 […] Dissolution Date 29 April 2002 […] Registered Address 240 W CENTER ST Orem, UT 84057 United States
  3. ^ Petreley, Nicholas (1996-02-19). "Down to the Wire - Hot Caldera rates a look as an Internet service, maybe even for desktops". InfoWorld. 18 (8). InfoWorld Publishing Inc.: 108. ISSN 0199-6649. Archived from the original on 2019-11-23. Retrieved 2017-06-25.
  4. ^ a b Hughes, Phil (1996-06-01). "Caldera Network Desktop 1.0". Linux Journal. No. 26. Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC). ISSN 1075-3583. Archived from the original on 2018-08-05. Retrieved 2018-08-05. [1]
  5. ^ a b "LST Software GmbH Merges With Caldera Inc. - Critically acclaimed European Linux developers strengthen Caldera's Commitment". Linux Kongress, Würzburg, Germany. PR Newswire. 1997-05-23. Archived from the original on 2012-09-13. Retrieved 2011-09-04.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference LST_2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Caldera_1996_Suit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Leon_1996_Caldera was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jones_2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Caldera_Fullstory_Tech was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Schulman_1993_AARD was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Schulman_1994_Undocumented-DOS was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference Caldera_1999_FactRel was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Caldera_1999_Statement_of_facts was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference TLJ was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Egbert_1998 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cebit_1998_Winglue was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference Romano_1998_Winbolt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lea_1998_Satellite was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference Graham_1999_Win95 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference Paul_2002_RMD was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference Paul_2002_W4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference Olmstead_1997_1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference Olmstead_1997_2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference Caldera_1997_CP/M was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brors_1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference CW_1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference Strobl_2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bantle_2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).