Indeed, IBM had quite broad support for NFS.
There's a whole chapter in this Redbook (1993) about OS/2 NFS clients
working with AIX, MVS, VM, and OS/2 servers.
https://ia801201.us.archive.org/11/items/gg243531/gg243531_TCPIP_2_0_for_OS2_Installation_and_Interoperability.pdf

On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 5:54 PM Charles H. Sauer (he/him) <
sauer@technologists.com> wrote:

> On 8/13/2025 7:31 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 10:18:34AM -0400, Dan Cross wrote:
> >> On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 10:00 AM Douglas McIlroy
> >> <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> >>> I was always sorry that Peter Weinberger's RFS never made it outside
> >>> Bell Labs. It allowed networking between separately administered
> >>> systems by mapping UIDs.
> >>
> >> I believe it did?  If I recall correctly, it was available with System
> >> V, though perhaps I am misremembering.
> >>
> >> I have no doubt that RFS was technically superior to NFS, but Sun had
> >> non-technical market advantages. Assuming that I am remembering
> >> correctly, I suspect it was unsuccessful commercially for two reasons:
> >>
> >> 1. Sun gave NFS (and the associated RPC layer) away for free, under a
> >> particularly liberal license, which lead to lots of interoperability
> >> (Larry's and Dave's comments notwithstanding). I suspect by the time
> >> RFS was available, it was much more expensive and less interoperable
> >> across heterogeneous systems.
> >
> > The NFS reference code was licensed under NDA with some cost involved
> > according to Rick Macklem who wrote the NFS code in 4.3BSD-Reno.
> >
> > Rick Macklem post to comp.protocols.nfs Aug 6, 1999
> >
> https://groups.google.com/g/comp.protocols.nfs/c/npQbxPe_ZeQ/m/Z_yQcsh56mkJ
> >
> > The userland RPC part was under different terms.
> >
> > "Sun will publish the source code for the user-level libraries that
> > implement RPC and XDR."
> >
> > Bill Shannon post to net.unix-wizards Jan 13, 1985
> >
> https://groups.google.com/g/net.unix-wizards/c/PkJdZgCbrC4/m/u0kt3eeFSt4J
> >
> > Sun RPC sources were later posted to mod.sources and included
> > on USENIX tapes.
>
> That's consistent with my memory. In particular, if I recall correctly,
> when I was still at IBM and we wanted to include NFS in AIX 3, it was
> challenging ($$$) to negotiate a satisfactory license for NFS, but we
> eventually obtained a license to include NFS in all IBM products (not
> just AIX).
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