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=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 16485 invoked from network); 22 Feb 2023 20:44:57 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 22 Feb 2023 20:44:57 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 983FE42237; Thu, 23 Feb 2023 06:44:48 +1000 (AEST) Received: from anduin.eldar.org (tunnel403901-pt.tunnel.tserv9.chi1.ipv6.he.net [IPv6:2001:470:1f10:6cd::2]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5A87C42236 for ; Thu, 23 Feb 2023 06:44:37 +1000 (AEST) Received: from anduin.eldar.org (IDENT:brad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by anduin.eldar.org (8.16.1/8.13.8) with ESMTPS id 31MKiU8X029106 (version=TLSv1.3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256 verify=NO); Wed, 22 Feb 2023 15:44:31 -0500 (EST) Received: (from brad@localhost) by anduin.eldar.org (8.16.1/8.13.8/Submit) id 31MKiUG4021812; Wed, 22 Feb 2023 15:44:30 -0500 (EST) From: Brad Spencer To: Larry McVoy In-Reply-To: <20230222201233.GY7194@mcvoy.com> (message from Larry McVoy on Wed, 22 Feb 2023 12:12:33 -0800) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 15:44:30 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.6.4 (anduin.eldar.org [0.0.0.0]); Wed, 22 Feb 2023 15:44:31 -0500 (EST) Message-ID-Hash: LYWDZJXOVMTXEWWNMUZ4K2BCGAVX7WYF X-Message-ID-Hash: LYWDZJXOVMTXEWWNMUZ4K2BCGAVX7WYF X-MailFrom: brad@anduin.eldar.org X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Open sourcing SunOS? List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: Larry McVoy writes: > On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 01:04:37PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote: >> On Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 8:50 AM Dan Cross wrote: >> >> > Has anyone tried talking to anyone at Oracle about possibly getting >> > the SunOS code released under an open source license? There can't be >> > any commercial value left in it. >> > >> >> SunOS 4 has a lot of encumbered code in it, especially for i386 drivers. > > There is SunOS as in everything shipped, kernel and userspace, and there > is the kernel. So far as I remember, the i386 stuff was never integrated > into the source tree that Sun shipped from. There was the roadrunner > stuff but I don't think that ever made it in to the official tree. If > it did, nobody paid attention to it. All people cared about at the > time as SPARC and I don't think there was any outsourced hacking for > SPARC, that was all in house. > > The networking stack in SunOS 4.x was BSD derived. You might be thinking > of Solaris, that took the Lachman STREAMS stack but that was 5.x, not > 4.x. > > As the only guy, that I'm aware of, who took all the encumbered stuff > out of the kernel, put back the BSD tty drivers and a few other small > things that resulted in a kernel that we could freely open source, > I beg to differ with: > >> Bits of the >> network stack as well. It was hopeless to try to open source. There was a >> lot of bits >> and pieces that Sun had done with contracts that were, at best, ambiguous >> for >> what to do should they want to open source it. There may have been other parallel efforts in one form or the other. I know that there existed a patch to SunOS 4.1.3 that updated the network stack to a newer version from Berkeley that gained a couple of new features over the one Sun delivered. The patch was source code, but it was possible with this patch to apply it to a binary copy of SunOS and recompile / compile a new kernel that had the new stack in it, that is, you didn't need the full source to the kernel. It was a long time ago and I don't remember the details exactly, but I did use it on a file / build / NIS server we had in the department at AT&T/Lucent where I was at. My point mostly being that hacking on SunOS 4.x appears to have happened here and there. It certainly would have been nice to have a open source SunOS 4.x around although the userland may have presented its own trouble. -- Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org