[TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX")

Josh Good pepe at naleco.com
Wed Mar 15 08:45:47 AEST 2017


On 2017 Mar 14, 10:43, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:35 AM, Tim Bradshaw <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote:
> 
> >  Linux is not Unix, and runs on cheap tin.
> >
> I believe that
> the point you are making is that "white box" PC's running a UNIX-like
> system - aka Linux could comes pretty close to doing what the highly touted
> AIX, NCR et al were doing and were "good enough" to get the job done.

Well, an HP Proliant (or Dell or Lenovo, etc.) machine, with its 
hardware-RAID battery-backed hard disk controller, redundant power supplies, 
lights-out remote access to firmware/BIOS, and 512 GB or more of RAM, is not 
exactly a "white box" PC - although it is undoubtely PC-based. Those things 
are mass-produced for the Windows market, but run Linux just the same.

If that system can be had, with Linux and full or source code, for 20% of 
the cost of a similar "highly touted" AIX or HP/UX or SPARC machine... 
well, that's pretty much a game over situation for several formerly 
incumbent UNIX-branded vendors.

> And that's not a statement about UNIX as much as a statement about, the
> WINTEL ecosystem, that Linux sat on top of and did an extremely impressive
> job of utilizing.

Totally agree. But it's also a statement about how when UNIX (the by hackers, 
for the hackers, operating system) closed its source code, it signed its 
future, unappealable, certain demise.

In "internet lingo": UNIX closed its source, that was felt as breakage, and
it was "routed around". Therefore, Linux.

Fellow list member Larry McVoy shaw it comming from the very beginning, he
has a paper about it: http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/unix/srcos.html

-- 
Josh Good




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