3 ms·
By 1994 it was already too late. That window was a very small one from the late 1980's to the very early 1990's Id say 1993 max. SCO Xenix occupied that commo
by scruffyherder 8y ago
By 1994 it was already too late.
That window was a very small one from the late 1980's to the very early 1990's Id say 1993 max. SCO Xenix occupied that commodity UNIX on i386, but Minix386 started to fill that void, even though it was basically forbidden. Linux changed all of that as there was no insane licensing once version 0.12 was introduced ( https://web.archive.org/web/20070819045030/http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.12 https://web.archive.org/web/20070819045030/http://www.kernel... ), with TCP/IP being added shortly afterwards in 1992. Linux was not obscure at the time at all, when new versions were released getting the latest kernel source from prep.ai.mit.edu was an insane waiting in line task..
Just as in the same time period we saw the rise & fall of OS/2, and the emergence of Windows NT. The hacker free market was open for grabs, but Minix's licensing failed, BSD was caught up in a lawsuit, and NT was anything but free. Solaris was going to stay a SYSV secret, and Mach needed 32v + BSD + SYSV licensing so no joe kid on the street could get access.
Why settle for Unix v6 photocopied Lions notes on the PDP-11 when you could spend a few days downloading SLS onto disks and boot into Linux?
1994 was far far too late. Even for AT&T's UnixWare to make a dent. SCO just ended up blowing their brains out partnering with IBM on that project Monterrey to bring SYSV to 64bits, just as Apple wasted their company way with fantasies of IBM & Pink/Taligent. Even IBM did it to themselves porting OS/2 to L4, thinking that OS/2 on a Microkernel was going to compete with Microsoft's implementation of a microkernel.