In 1994, Caldera Inc. was formed by Bryan Sparks and Ransom Love with the financial backing of Novell Inc. founder Ray Noorda. The company was one of the first backers of commercial Linux. Since that time, Caldera's successor company, The SCO Group Inc., has gained notoriety for its legal actions against Linux vendors and end users over what it says is proprietary Unix code. When he left Caldera in mid-2001, industry wags said Love would take the helm of the UnitedLinux consortium; but instead, he left the Linux business. Today, Love is writing a book about the early days of Linux commercialization and the open-source way of approaching problems.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols, editor of eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center , spoke to Love in an exclusive interview. Love, who was Caldera CEO during its acquisition of SCO and the contested Unix source code, expressed displeasure over the current developments from his former company.

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