[Wolves] Solaris now open source

[Andy Wootton]

trog wrote:

>On Tuesday 14 June 2005 21:08, Andy Wootton wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I think Sun have been treated quite badly by the Linux community. For a
>>few years they were the only company that kept Unix alive while HP and
>>IBM hedged with Wintel boxes. 
>>    
>>
>
>HP/UX and AIX are both Unix and more "standard" than Solaris.  All three 
>pre-date Linux by many years with (AFAIK) AIX being the first cab off the 
>rank.  Pre-loved RS/6000s pop up regularly and it is not unknown for them to 
>find their way into the home.
>  
>
I was talking about HP and IBM hedging their bets by bringing out Wintel 
servers while Sun bet their business on Unix.I've talked to an 
'enterprise' software house who said they write and test on Solaris 
because it is the most "vanilla" Unix available. If it runs on Sun then 
it will run anywhere. This suggests that HP and IBM have added stuff 
that it non-standard. I know that AIX has additional sysadmin-by-menus 
tools.

I think all the big players now are based on System V. DEC/Digital/HP 
Alpha Ultrix/OSF etc. was the last distribution with a BSD heritage left 
in the game and I assume HP will bury it. Strange, because every techie 
I knew when I first became aware of Unix thought BSD was superior.

To answer Simon's original question, RMS set out on the Gnu project to 
duplicate Unix using non-AT&T code, from the top downwards. At a guess, 
the bits that aren't the same are what Linus' little helpers built when 
they met him on the way up. What is Unix anyway; the API(s), the 
shell(s), a particular set of utilities, the POSIX standard? At the 
level I interact with systems there is less difference between AIX and 
GNU/Linux that between Windows XP and Windows NT.

Woo