17 May
2006
17 May
'06
10:30 p.m.
Perhaps an OSF1-"lite", on par with 4.4BSD-Lite which had the
copyrighted code removed, would be possible to get released. Of course,
HP would have to have a motive in doing so.
All of this, the closing of UNX, the loss of the VAX and now the dying
of the Alpha chip, is very disheartening. Although I'm lucky enough to
have access to 5 VAXen (running 4.3 BSD UNIX and one running Ultrix4),
it's tough for anyone to learn and play with this stuff, because they
are becoming so scarce (you can by a VaxStation/MicroVax on eBay, but
these will only run Ultrix and not 4.3 BSD, unfortunately).
I also am very disappointed about the abandoning of the Alpha chip.
From it's start I was very impressed with it. It
was a very good RISC
architecture, and the first to really do 64-bit computing, and
do it
well. Before they decided to kill it, it was still the best
architecture for 64-bit computing on the market.
Even though I'm pro-open-source, I also can't help but lament losing
many of the commercial Unices over the past few years. The next version
of HP-UX will apparently be the last, PA-RISC is dying along with Alpha,
so presumably OSF1/Digital UNIX/Tru64 is either dead or end-of-lifed as
well, IRIX has moved to x86 (the platform I tend to loathe the most,
probably because I know it best and learned it first), AIX is still
around but IBM is focussing strongly on Linux, and Solaris is still
around (but they did kill SunOS 4.1.4 -- personally one of my favorite
Unices of all time, basically 4.3 BSD + Sun stuff such as OpenWindows +
nice improvements such as loadable kernel modules + pcc ported to
SPARC).
Not to mention all the mid-to-late 80's versions of UNIX -- Interactive,
AT&T System V (actually branded as that, uname -a returned
UNIX_System_V), as well as a ton of others I'm forgetting.
I guess I'm somewhat nostoglic about old UNIX, and I enjoy seeing it's
evolution. That's why whenever I'm able to view the source code of some
closed-source UNIX, it's very enjoyable to me. Old UNIX has a rustic
appeal to me.
It's unfortunate that it seems we must resign ourselves to a future of
x86-based OSs, such as Linux, or even Open/Free/NetBSD, which aren't
really UNIX (Linux definitely isn't, and the modern BSDs have changed
enough that they also aren't IMO).
It seems there's no diversity anymore, both in software and hardware.
It's amazing how x86 (an inferior architecture) could win the war of
architectures when it was basically a bastardized version of the VAX
(the best CISC chip ever, IMO). There were so many superior
architectures out there, such as SPARC, MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC, POWER,
PowerPC, and VAX. For x86 to win, really shows that the quality of
technology in a product really has no bearing on how it will do in the
market. It's not about quality, it's about profitability, and they are
very often not the same.
While IA-64 is based on the PA-RISC, it's still Intel, and the choice of
operating systems for it is still going to be limited to the handful
previously mentioned. Apple's move away from a RISC architecture
(PowerPC) to x86 is just as disheartening.
Oh well. I guess we are nearing the finish-line of this "race to the
bottom", because of the capitalistic influence on the computer industry.
My advice to anyone interested in UNIX (and computer architecture)
history is to stock up on machines now, while you can still find them on
places like eBay. Some of the newer-but-still-dead architectures such
as SGI/MIPS are numerous on eBay. Although, be careful when buying on
eBay, because many times you'll get a banged up, stripped of components,
unworking shell of one of the slower models of a system. This is
particularly true when trying to acquire a SparcStation on eBay. Good
luck trying to find a 2way SparcStation 20 with a nice size hard drive
and lots of RAM (the fastest machine SunOS 4.1.4 could run on -- and
I've heard that 4.1.4 did have very alpha SMP support, similar to what
Linux and the modern BSDs used for a long time, that being a "big giant
lock" [mutex] around the kernel).
...Jon
-----Original Message-----
From: tuhs-bounces(a)minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org]
On Behalf Of patv(a)monmouth.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 2:40 PM
To: Lyrical Nanoha; tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
I have heard some grumblings of TOG possibly releasing CDE as open
source, but have no idea of where that stands. To be perfectly frank,
it had a lot of problems, especially in a 64-bit world. There were too
many word size assumptions, and a very good friend struggled for many,
many hours fixing those problems before it went to DEIL in India for
support. It could probably still benefit from a good "many eyes"
developer review and bug fix session in the hands of open source
developers. However, IMHO, it no longer has any advantage over KDE or
Gnome, but, as I said, that is my opinion.
Personally, I'd love to see OSF1 released open source. There were
experimental x86 and two Itanium versions in various states of
completion floating around DEC/Compaq/HP. I was part of the last
Itanium effort before the HP merger. That one booted to single user
before the project was killed.
OSF1/Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX was already branded as UNIX, and it would
be fun to see what would happen to the landscape if a branded UNIX was
free.
Unfortunately, too many proprietary licensed pieces of code in the HP
version, especially in System V support, for that to ever happen. Oh
well, we can all dream ...
Pat
On Wed, 17 May 2006, patv(a)monmouth.com wrote:
> Another loss to the UNIX community that I can personally report was
> the closing, one year ago this month, of the old DEC Manalpan
facility (UNX).
> This was the home of VAX System V, a large
portion of Ultrix, and
> everything that made up OSF1/Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX except for
> kernel, drivers, and several other components (although I personally
> did some kernel work on occasion). We did shell
and utilities,
> about 1/2 of X, Motif, CDE, installation, mail, and other parts of
> the OS that made it useful. If you look at old uucp headers
> anywhere on usenet, any of the traffic with headers that included
> systems with "unx" in the name was routed through this facility. I
> was there from when it was Digital through Compaq and finally HP,
almost all
the way through to the closing.
It would be nice if CDE were free, the rest is either part of the
Heirloom project or cloned in some open-source system (e.g., Lesstif).
--;
-uso.
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17 May
17 May
11:13 p.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
Stuart, Jon scripsit:
Perhaps an OSF1-"lite", on par with
4.4BSD-Lite which had the
copyrighted code removed, would be possible to get released.
That was only possible because of the massive effort to rewrite all things
AT&T out of the BSD source.
All of this, the closing of UNX, the loss of the VAX
and now the dying
of the Alpha chip, is very disheartening. Although I'm lucky enough to
have access to 5 VAXen (running 4.3 BSD UNIX and one running Ultrix4),
it's tough for anyone to learn and play with this stuff, because they
are becoming so scarce (you can by a VaxStation/MicroVax on eBay, but
these will only run Ultrix and not 4.3 BSD, unfortunately).
On come the emulators.
I guess I'm somewhat nostoglic about old UNIX,
and I enjoy seeing it's
evolution. That's why whenever I'm able to view the source code of some
closed-source UNIX, it's very enjoyable to me. Old UNIX has a rustic
appeal to me.
It's really "middle Unix" you are talking about. Old Unix and new Unix
(and I don't agree that Linux/*BSD are not Unix) are both now open source.
It's unfortunate that it seems we must resign
ourselves to a future of
x86-based OSs, such as Linux, or even Open/Free/NetBSD, which aren't
really UNIX (Linux definitely isn't, and the modern BSDs have changed
enough that they also aren't IMO).
Unix is a local minimum in the design space. It can be reimplemented
over and over.
--
John Cowan cowan(a)ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan
If he has seen farther than others,
it is because he is standing on a stack of dwarves.
--Mike Champion, describing Tim Berners-Lee (adapted)
18 May
18 May
1:42 a.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
Quoting John Cowan <cowan(a)ccil.org>rg>:
Stuart, Jon scripsit:
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to talk Novell into releasing the Unix
SysVr* source code under some form of BSD/MIT X license following the coming
evaporation of Societe Commerciel du Ondit - the SCOGroup Rumourmonging Machine.
Then get OSF1-"lite" released following that. Eating an elephant - one bite at
a time.
Wesley Parish
<snip>
Perhaps an OSF1-"lite", on par with
4.4BSD-Lite which had the
copyrighted code removed, would be possible to get released.
That was only possible because of the massive effort to rewrite all
things
AT&T out of the BSD source.
--
John Cowan cowan(a)ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan
If he has seen farther than others,
it is because he is standing on a stack of dwarves.
--Mike Champion, describing Tim Berners-Lee (adapted)
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"Sharpened hands are happy hands.
"Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands"
- A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
"I me. Shape middled me. I would come out into hot!"
I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the
other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press
8:36 a.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
On Thu, May 18, 2006 2:42 am, Wesley Parish wrote:
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to talk Novell into releasing
the Unix SysVr* source code under some form of BSD/MIT X license following
the coming evaporation of Societe Commerciel du Ondit - the SCOGroup
Rumourmonging Machine.
Then get OSF1-"lite" released following that. Eating an elephant - one
bite at a time.
I think the problem with all these `just open source it' schemes is that
they're simpler in theory than in practice. In particular, in practice
someone has to go through the source of the system checking for everything
that might have been licensed from someone else and whose license
agreements might prohibit its release. Few of those things will
(probably) have been kept track of, and the penalty for failure is that
some nasty residual company which now owns the stuff you licensed comes
down your throat.
For orphaned systems this is a lot of work for no obvious gain (it
wouldn't be orphaned if the organization that created it thought it had
much value to them).
A good example would probably be SunOS 4 - we already know that Sun are
quite interested in open sourcing stuff given OpenSolaris, but SunOS 4
hasn't been, presumably because it is full of stuff-they-don't-own and has
no commercial value at all.
--tim
19 May
19 May
8:16 a.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
Several comments spring to mind:
One - closed-source proprietary software development is a minefield waiting
for the unwary;
Two - open-source development is self-administering as far as "contributions"
goes, and we generally don't need people to go through on a similar "find the
haystack -in-the-needle" search;
Three - there is usually a group of people willing to do this sort of work -
voluntarily - as the Groklaw example shows us, so it's often more an inertia
thingee than anything more serious.
And last but hardly least, given the rise of the law-suit residual company,
etc, opening the source of such orphaned systems may become a necessity,
because law-suits such as the SCO example, will succeed if the law in general
is kept ignorant of computer history, etc. In that case, opening the OSF1
source tree would pay dividends in peace of mind.
Just some thoughts.
Wesley Parish
On Thu, 18 May 2006 20:36, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
On Thu, May 18, 2006 2:42 am, Wesley Parish wrote:
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-------------
Mau ki ana, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku ki ana, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be
possible to talk Novell into releasing
the Unix SysVr* source code under some form of BSD/MIT X license
following the coming evaporation of Societe Commerciel du Ondit - the
SCOGroup Rumourmonging Machine.
Then get OSF1-"lite" released following that. Eating an elephant - one
bite at a time.
I think the problem with all these `just open source it' schemes is that
they're simpler in theory than in practice. In particular, in practice
someone has to go through the source of the system checking for everything
that might have been licensed from someone else and whose license
agreements might prohibit its release. Few of those things will
(probably) have been kept track of, and the penalty for failure is that
some nasty residual company which now owns the stuff you licensed comes
down your throat.
For orphaned systems this is a lot of work for no obvious gain (it
wouldn't be orphaned if the organization that created it thought it had
much value to them).
A good example would probably be SunOS 4 - we already know that Sun are
quite interested in open sourcing stuff given OpenSolaris, but SunOS 4
hasn't been, presumably because it is full of stuff-they-don't-own and has
no commercial value at all.
--tim
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8:41 p.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
On 19 May 2006, at 09:16, Wesley Parish wrote:
Three - there is usually a group of people willing to
do this sort
of work -
voluntarily - as the Groklaw example shows us, so it's often more
an inertia
thingee than anything more serious.
I think this is off topic now, but the issue is that the company that
signed the license agreements is the entity that is liable to be
sued. So it is their responsibility to ensure that they are safe
from that. That pretty much means it will cost them money, because
*their* engineers and legal people will have to check things, and
demonstrate to the satisfaction of the officers of the company (who
carry the can if they get sued) that it's OK.
This doesn't mean it can't happen (as said in another branch of this,
people within Sun have tried it before) but it does mean it's
competing with other stuff for resource. Would Sun (say) improve
their chances of survival by to open source SunOS 4 (which, although
people romanticise it now, actually sucked, even at the time - it was
only being better than early SunOS 5 and being a long time ago that
make it seem nice) or to open source Java? Or by doing neither?
Sorry for the rant, I'll shut up now.
--tim
18 May
18 May
8:50 a.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
On Wed, 2006-May-17 15:30:47 -0700, Stuart, Jon wrote:
I also am very disappointed about the abandoning of the
Alpha chip.
Likewise. And on a related subject, FreeBSD dropped its Alpha support
(from the development branch) earlier this week - it had fallen below
critical mass - and a lot of this would have been the death of the
underlying chip.
From it's start I was very impressed with it. It
was a very good RISC
architecture, and the first to really do 64-bit computing, and do it
well. Before they decided to kill it, it was still the best
architecture for 64-bit computing on the market.
I can't think of any other architecture where the designers considered
what they needed to do to make the architecture future-proof. The
normal architectural design criteria are a mixture of the number of
transistors they can fit on a chip today and backward compatibility.
so presumably OSF1/Digital UNIX/Tru64 is either dead or
end-of-lifed as
It's effectively end-of-life. There will be no future releases, though
HP will support it until about 2011.
It's unfortunate that it seems we must resign
ourselves to a future of
x86-based OSs, such as Linux, or even Open/Free/NetBSD, which aren't
really UNIX (Linux definitely isn't, and the modern BSDs have changed
enough that they also aren't IMO).
If Linux and *BSD aren't Unix, how do you define Unix? (Other than
having paid TOG the trademark licensing fees).
PowerPC, and VAX. For x86 to win, really shows that
the quality of
technology in a product really has no bearing on how it will do in the
market.
That is a surprise to you?
It's not about quality, it's about
profitability, and they are
very often not the same.
There's a bit of a feedback loop: Starting with the IBM-PC, x86 sold
in large volumes, so there were lots of profits and design costs could
be amortised over a larger volume, allowing more man-hours to be
invested in the next generation whilst still returning a profit. This
makes the next generation of x86 outperform the competition at a lower
price - encouraging more people to use x86.
While IA-64 is based on the PA-RISC, it's still
Intel,
I suspect the IA-64 will quietly fade away. It hasn't lived up to the
hype and even Intel seem to acknowledge this by licensing the amd64.
and lots of RAM (the fastest machine SunOS 4.1.4 could
run on -- and
I've heard that 4.1.4 did have very alpha SMP support, similar to what
SMP support started earlier than 4.1.4. The sun4m machines (SS470,
SS670) were the first SMP machines and ISTR they were supported in
the last 4.0.x or early 4.1.x releases. (I was using them at the
time but the details have faded a bit after 15 years).
Linux and the modern BSDs used for a long time, that
being a "big giant
lock" [mutex] around the kernel).
Most early SMP systems worked this way - it's relatively easy to
implement and gives good CPU utilisation on CPU-intensive tasks (that
don't need the kernel much).
--
Peter Jeremy
9:42 a.m.
New subject: Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down
On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 06:50:52PM +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote..
I ran a SS670MP for a while. ISTR 4.1.1 or somesuch was the first SunOS
to run on it.
Wilko
On Wed, 2006-May-17 15:30:47 -0700, Stuart, Jon wrote:
and lots of RAM
(the fastest machine SunOS 4.1.4 could run on -- and
I've heard that 4.1.4 did have very alpha SMP support, similar to what
SMP support started earlier than 4.1.4. The sun4m machines (SS470,
SS670) were the first SMP machines and ISTR they were supported in
the last 4.0.x or early 4.1.x releases. (I was using them at the
time but the details have faded a bit after 15 years).
6555
days inactive
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days old
7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
John Cowan -
Peter Jeremy -
Stuart, Jon -
Tim Bradshaw -
Wesley Parish -
Wilko Bulte