From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: pepe@naleco.com (Josh Good) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2017 23:45:47 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX") In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20170314224547.GB14659@naleco.com> On 2017 Mar 14, 10:43, Clem Cole wrote: > On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:35 AM, Tim Bradshaw wrote: > > > Linux is not Unix, and runs on cheap tin. > > > I believe that > the point you are making is that "white box" PC's running a UNIX-like > system - aka Linux could comes pretty close to doing what the highly touted > AIX, NCR et al were doing and were "good enough" to get the job done. Well, an HP Proliant (or Dell or Lenovo, etc.) machine, with its hardware-RAID battery-backed hard disk controller, redundant power supplies, lights-out remote access to firmware/BIOS, and 512 GB or more of RAM, is not exactly a "white box" PC - although it is undoubtely PC-based. Those things are mass-produced for the Windows market, but run Linux just the same. If that system can be had, with Linux and full or source code, for 20% of the cost of a similar "highly touted" AIX or HP/UX or SPARC machine... well, that's pretty much a game over situation for several formerly incumbent UNIX-branded vendors. > And that's not a statement about UNIX as much as a statement about, the > WINTEL ecosystem, that Linux sat on top of and did an extremely impressive > job of utilizing. Totally agree. But it's also a statement about how when UNIX (the by hackers, for the hackers, operating system) closed its source code, it signed its future, unappealable, certain demise. In "internet lingo": UNIX closed its source, that was felt as breakage, and it was "routed around". Therefore, Linux. Fellow list member Larry McVoy shaw it comming from the very beginning, he has a paper about it: http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/unix/srcos.html -- Josh Good