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