5 ms·

I wonder if anything could be purchased or similar from HP. Seems like a lot of work to rebuild something that might still be available somewhere.

SMP-UX 3y ago
Got millions?
- imoverclocked 3y ago
  Nope. Maybe it could be a charitable donation though?
  - thombat 3y ago
    Generally the problem for a company is being entirely sure that the OS codebase is theirs to donate. Are there any third party components, if so were they correctly classified so that now they'll be filtered out of the code dump? (And was that classification updated in the obsolete source if subsequent deals affected it?) Probably so, but if you're wrong then it will likely cost. So your legal dept will advise that the safest and cheapest option is not to release it. (I was at Symbian when much of that was open sourced: a paralysingly large effort that still left a lot of critical components closed)
    - imoverclocked 3y ago
      3rd party dependencies are a good point. Though we are talking about a 35 year old OS whose last incremental update was 16 years ago and last major release about 25 years ago. We are also talking about a non-profit inheriting the codebase. Seems like the lawyers could probably figure something out given these constraints. Irix did a lot of things in-house and the value of the OS is not generally in commonly available components. I suspect that any 16-25 year-old 3rd-party components that are of any value have modern equivalents which are open-source and probably better in most ways. I would think there is a way of putting the burden of sorting through these issues onto the non-profit receiving the rights much as the burden was passed to HP through an acquisition in the first place.
      - avidphantasm 3y ago
        None of this will deter a patent or license troll from suing…
      - SMP-UX 3y ago
        HPE bought Rackable for NUMALink tech, moreorless. I'd have less faith in corporations to do the right thing. As an Indian, I get nothing but slave treatment even in America because I'm expected to work for less and harder than my white counterparts.
pantalaimon 3y ago
The article says that rackable, the previous owner, binned all of the old stuff in 2010
- imoverclocked 3y ago
  I saw that. Sometimes things have a way of surviving those kinds of events though. It's also possible that just by getting the rights to the stuff, they can piece together portions that would otherwise be inaccessible. eg: someone held onto a source tarball somewhere but doesn't want to come forward because of potential legal retribution. People hold onto mementos even if by accident in the shuffle of life. Maybe someone has an old book in storage or something? The article also mentions that they are unsure if they can legally reverse engineer it. Getting the rights to Irix would definitely solve that problem too.

SMP-UX 3y ago

Got millions?

imoverclocked 3y ago
Nope. Maybe it could be a charitable donation though?
- thombat 3y ago
  Generally the problem for a company is being entirely sure that the OS codebase is theirs to donate. Are there any third party components, if so were they correctly classified so that now they'll be filtered out of the code dump? (And was that classification updated in the obsolete source if subsequent deals affected it?) Probably so, but if you're wrong then it will likely cost. So your legal dept will advise that the safest and cheapest option is not to release it. (I was at Symbian when much of that was open sourced: a paralysingly large effort that still left a lot of critical components closed)
  - imoverclocked 3y ago
    3rd party dependencies are a good point. Though we are talking about a 35 year old OS whose last incremental update was 16 years ago and last major release about 25 years ago. We are also talking about a non-profit inheriting the codebase. Seems like the lawyers could probably figure something out given these constraints. Irix did a lot of things in-house and the value of the OS is not generally in commonly available components. I suspect that any 16-25 year-old 3rd-party components that are of any value have modern equivalents which are open-source and probably better in most ways. I would think there is a way of putting the burden of sorting through these issues onto the non-profit receiving the rights much as the burden was passed to HP through an acquisition in the first place.
    - avidphantasm 3y ago
      None of this will deter a patent or license troll from suing…
    - SMP-UX 3y ago
      HPE bought Rackable for NUMALink tech, moreorless. I'd have less faith in corporations to do the right thing. As an Indian, I get nothing but slave treatment even in America because I'm expected to work for less and harder than my white counterparts.

pantalaimon 3y ago

The article says that rackable, the previous owner, binned all of the old stuff in 2010

imoverclocked 3y ago
I saw that. Sometimes things have a way of surviving those kinds of events though. It's also possible that just by getting the rights to the stuff, they can piece together portions that would otherwise be inaccessible. eg: someone held onto a source tarball somewhere but doesn't want to come forward because of potential legal retribution. People hold onto mementos even if by accident in the shuffle of life. Maybe someone has an old book in storage or something? The article also mentions that they are unsure if they can legally reverse engineer it. Getting the rights to Irix would definitely solve that problem too.