From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lm@mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2017 19:12:33 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] SunOS vs Linux In-Reply-To: <20170107025829.GH99823@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20170107025829.GH99823@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <20170107031233.GI16253@mcvoy.com> On Sat, Jan 07, 2017 at 01:58:29PM +1100, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Friday, 6 January 2017 at 9:27:36 -0500, Clem Cole wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 10:56 PM, Dan Cross wrote: > > > >> Perhaps an interesting area of speculation is, "what would the world have > >> looked like if USL v BSDi hadn't happened *and* SunOS was opened to the > >> world?" I think in that parallel universe, Linux wouldn't have made it > >> particularly far: absent the legal angle, what would the incentive had been > >> to work on something that was striving to basically be Unix, when really > >> good Unix was already available? > > > >> I agree. > > I think that if SunOS 4 had been released to the world at the right > time, the free BSDs wouldn't have happened in the way they did either; > they would have evolved intimately coupled with SunOS. Yup. Instead of the splintering we have had with *BSD, I think it would have drawn everyone in to work on that OS. I have regrets in my life. Not getting SunOS out there as open source is one of the big ones. I fought for it, perhaps harder than anyone else. Which perhaps makes me the bigger loser since I didn't win. The world would be a better place if that had happened. Linux is fine but it lacks what SunOS had.