From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 23892 invoked from network); 19 Jan 2023 19:08:50 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 19 Jan 2023 19:08:50 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E017542495; Fri, 20 Jan 2023 05:08:42 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-pj1-f53.google.com (mail-pj1-f53.google.com [209.85.216.53]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9742842492 for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2023 05:08:33 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-pj1-f53.google.com with SMTP id x2-20020a17090a46c200b002295ca9855aso6790957pjg.2 for ; Thu, 19 Jan 2023 11:08:33 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=kev009.com; s=google; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date :message-id:reply-to; bh=Qt9ucW3fpQBkjsepZ8CRw/lKTAdvhQk18R3fcg/AuUo=; b=bjF2XWNI/zvjDhuieE4Si53b6xDaTvCnqRtzt9FkmciJZOWvsEGXtMqNP+ZQr+S7KH Uu9HQ05svTwkrGc/hOGNLHQrjZbZxT9+wXw+u3/LwY9gccv830QAT4uTrUcKPeMqs7ky uqsSBpG6NMLDlMlh7YQXZUcGRiwta/kTq4tUc= X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc :subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=Qt9ucW3fpQBkjsepZ8CRw/lKTAdvhQk18R3fcg/AuUo=; b=hn4Kky0uCYtQfY8/Wwb/8+tJdpRwA+BIVRgkQ3dKn2l7OYg0N55YGEG82KiEzGzo/M dRidjaq51zvaLbRb2LQ2X+0JRwcZDll0ZQEEfnforsYWiEIe3LVG5uG2CjDA6vBncE2G WJSkuijLDe/UzkjII7kT5S/KbMD2PHtMY6tlZBhZLR4wmx90jsNS1dNBDbYS0UAYKE8g veiappFaux0qp/GTd85AEFdGHUbwC+UB2EIO9ivGJAXskU1jGOwkXWhGtTkMjSv85WxB I4I0UQPuAmI4DeLOEJLv5xGexXdPsKXeb/cCqJlMo2tu/BfLIl6qN7txy9/j/lrtXJ8v pxww== X-Gm-Message-State: AFqh2kovIGpr7S9sK7hmzT1cuI07y9wABpwIPpKFyulQFltvAuDN7Iej 0+jlpxz3TgXvwnOyVTgPvRpuJwDLlLWti2pP/LsQKQ== X-Google-Smtp-Source: AMrXdXsv5SRD5+5wANn7O7EOo5Dnpg2tucGkiPzYz2xFqFiehjfY7XngfT5xDq6nicL0l4Axi82ceSOWorKV8NohseI= X-Received: by 2002:a17:90a:f0c6:b0:229:ecc3:db0e with SMTP id fa6-20020a17090af0c600b00229ecc3db0emr354273pjb.38.1674155253079; Thu, 19 Jan 2023 11:07:33 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <202301180943.30I9hrOw030485@freefriends.org> <202301181513.30IFDDUJ015224@freefriends.org> <20230118151446.GD2964@mcvoy.com> <202301190802.30J82KwQ025718@freefriends.org> <20230119150434.GA626@mcvoy.com> In-Reply-To: From: Kevin Bowling Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:07:21 -0700 Message-ID: To: segaloco Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID-Hash: 4BFFKLWPT7Q3ES7ZAW5Q6SUWNQ65RJ65 X-Message-ID-Hash: 4BFFKLWPT7Q3ES7ZAW5Q6SUWNQ65RJ65 X-MailFrom: kevin.bowling@kev009.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: AIX moved into maintainance mode List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 11:23 AM segaloco via TUHS wrote: > > Bringing it back around to AIX, this may be a bit of a leading question, = but for those who are more in the know than not on how AIX works, is there = any chance there are little design nuggets hidden down in there that now, n= ot being critical to an active IBM project, may find their way out there in= to the world? > > This is kinda my latent curiosity with any of these commercial systems, i= f there's something absolutely amazing hiding down in one of the codebases = just waiting to see the light of day in some post-commerical source release= that might improve the situation out there in open source UNIX-like land. = Some ideal SMP scheduler, quality drivers, etc. There's definitely a lot of nice stuff in there, most "reviews" or recollections of AIX distill down to "OMG ODM" and completely miss the forest from the trees. I've seen some data and I think AIX scales, at least out of the box, much higher than Linux on massive CPU and NUMA systems. That may be a bit of a cause and effect, there's a likelihood of someone buying a top range POWER system to run as a single system image. However OpenSolaris provides a sober analysis of what you are after: 1) how much work is involved in open sourcing a commercial UNIX. The then CEO blogged about how he had personal involvement to get it done, and the high hurdle was lawyer work getting rights and approvals from third parties to re-license everything. AIX has, in addition to whatever vestiges of Bell/AT&T code, Bull and Motorola code and probably a lot of others (OSF, HP, Sun, etc are mentioned in the copyrights on install) whose rights may not exist in any recognizable form after 40 years. 2) how little is generally applicable outside a native environment. In terms of code, the main contribution from Solaris today outside of it is ZFS. The ports are all a bit of a side car (even in Illumos), Larry has pointed out on this list how hard they worked to get unified memory in SunOS only to have that lost again by ZFS. As some random anecdote, in FreeBSD there is a reference to Solaris prior to OpenSolaris here https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/sys/kern/subr_turnstile.c?id=3D961a7b24= 4dbfc467c112b7a594825da8c0a41acf and FreeBSD and macOS also use OpenBSM inspired by Sun. The BSDs occasionally share some code (usually drivers or higher level subsystems like ufs or pf) but as time goes on it seems more ideological than code since they have all drifted sufficiently from one another. So close study of any interesting AIX bits would be about as useful as code for cross pollination. On the other hand, source dumps are great for historical records and study. For instance, the heirloom tools (https://heirloom.sourceforge.net/doctools.html) came from the work done to open Solaris. If you get source control repos, it also gives you a nice whodunit. > Of course, the usefulness of any such thing would depend on any theoretic= al eventual license applied to a source code release. Something restrictiv= e would prevent proliferation of a good idea, but in any case, there are so= many lineages just ripe for plundering, and as time goes on, it becomes mo= re likely those source codes will actually be accessible and licensed to al= low that. Who knows though... > > - Matt G. > ------- Original Message ------- > On Thursday, January 19th, 2023 at 9:19 AM, Adam Thornton wrote: > > The era of general-purpose computers won't end. > > The problem is that a great many single-purpose items are (and increasing= ly will be), for reasons of scale/developer availability/familiarity, gener= al-purpose computers that come from the factory supposedly packaged to do o= nly one thing. > > But all of them will have brains that will let them do arbitrary things. = Some of these things will be done at the behest of the organizations contro= lling the society where the developers come from. Some of them will be done= at the behest of transnational organized crime rings. Some will be done by= enthusiasts. But I don't think we are too far from the world where you can= 't trust your toothbrush unless you carved it yourself from a stick with a = knife that's been in your family for generations. > > But really, this is all just "Reflections on Trusting Trust," which was, = what, 1984? > >