Leroy Tennison wrote:
If I heard/remember correctly, AT&T's UNIX was proprietary but they released it to academic institutions under NDA and were lax in enforcement. We all know what happened. In this case it's obviously open
Well, also that AT&T was forbidden by law from competition in that market, so they really weren't sure what to *do* with UNIX.
source, we know what will happen if someone tries something. My main concern is future development, will it remain open source. My real fear is that a certain un-named company is going to feel pressured to buy Canonical.
Does that unnamed company already own Solaris?
My surprise is that no one is commenting on the price IMB is offering, a 60-70% premium, that in and of itself seems risky.
I would think it highly unlikely that they would completely rewrite Linux, to be able to get around the licensing. I expect the same proprietary extensions that upstream does, but not much more.
And, as I said, I can see them pushing their customers, hard, to migrate, not to another IBM o/s, but to Linux. A huge part of IBM, now, is service and support.
mark