SCO Skunkware, often referred to as simply "Skunkware", is a collection of open-source software projects ported, compiled, and packaged for free redistribution on Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) operating environments.
[1] SCO Skunkware was an early pioneering effort to bring open source software into the realm of business computing and, as such, provided an important initial impetus to the acceptance and adoption of open source software in the small and medium-sized business market.
An extensive SCO Skunkware download area[2] has been maintained since 1993 and SCO Skunkware components were shipped with operating system distributions as far back as 1983, when Xenix for the IBM XT was released by The Santa Cruz Operation.
[4] Later additional open source distributions for operating platforms such as the FreeBSD Ports collection and the Solaris Freeware repository[5] would lend added momentum to the adoption of open source in the business community.
Some components may restrict their use to non-commercial purposes or require a license fee for commercial use (e.g. MBROLA).