[TUHS] SunOS vs Linux

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Jan 07, 2017 at 01:58:29PM +1100, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Friday,  6 January 2017 at  9:27:36 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 10:56 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Perhaps an interesting area of speculation is, "what would the world have
> >> looked like if USL v BSDi hadn't happened *and* SunOS was opened to the
> >> world?" I think in that parallel universe, Linux wouldn't have made it
> >> particularly far: absent the legal angle, what would the incentive had been
> >> to work on something that was striving to basically be Unix, when really
> >> good Unix was already available?
> >
> >> I agree.
> 
> I think that if SunOS 4 had been released to the world at the right
> time, the free BSDs wouldn't have happened in the way they did either;
> they would have evolved intimately coupled with SunOS.

Yup.  Instead of the splintering we have had with *BSD, I think it would
have drawn everyone in to work on that OS.

I have regrets in my life.  Not getting SunOS out there as open source
is one of the big ones.  I fought for it, perhaps harder than anyone
else.  Which perhaps makes me the bigger loser since I didn't win.

The world would be a better place if that had happened.  Linux is fine 
but it lacks what SunOS had.