[TUHS] Re: AIX moved into maintainance mode

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 9:46 AM Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 17:20, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > Pretty unrealistic to expect the users to suddenly have the time to do
> > kernel dev.  Solaris opened sourced itself and it's dead.
>
> I believe 0x1DE computer are working on that. :-)

It's true we run illumos on the host. That's ideally transparent to
users, though.

Outside of Oxide, illumos is used in several places, but it's fair to
say that it's nowhere near as popular as Linux or the BSDs.

illumos is, as far as we know, the only actively-maintained open
source System V derivative. Is it Unix? I don't know; there's
definitely AT&T code in there. The kernel binary is called "unix", if
that matters. But I don't think anyone has bothered to keep up with
the UNIX(TM) trademark certification. To the extent your article was
concerned with systems that do that, I think you were largely right
(though macOS doesn't seem like it's going anywhere anytime soon). But
to say that illumos, or the BSDs for that matter, aren't "Unix" in
terms of interface or use seems incorrect.

I don't think that Larry is wrong arout Solaris, but I think that
Oracle re-closing the source probably also had a lot to do with it.
Still, OpenSolaris never gained critical mass; maybe it was just too
little too late. It is striking how Unix has repeatedly suffered
through corporate shortsightedness; how much of Linux's success is due
to being free of that?

> > As for BSD, they pretty much killed themselves by all the in-fighting and
> > the lack of someone like Linus.  That was obvious 30 years ago and it
> > hasn't changed.
>
> I entirely agree.

Meh. I don't know. I'll make a prediction: at least one of the BSDs
will outlive Linux.

Linux right now sort of reminds me of commercial Unix in the 90s.
Personally, I think something's going to come from out of left field
and displace it within the next 15 years, just like Linux displaced
(and yes, killed) commercial Unix. Compatibility shims for the API
will continue to exist, but the implementation will be very different.

        - Dan C.