Subj : life, then end and everything
To   : Francois Thunus
From : Lawrence Garvin
Date : Fri Jun 13 2003 07:25 pm


Francois wrote to Lawrence at 14:39 07 Jun:

 LG> Unfortunately, there's always the possibility that IBM /did/ 
 LG> convert some AIX code into the Linux kernel, and if so -- if that 
 LG> really did happen, I'd want to be as far away from a Linux 
 LG> installation as possible until I see exactly who the SCO Group is 
 LG> going to aim their poison darts at after IBM.

 FT> Don't forget that there is another possibility: that SCO, when it 
 FT> was still called Caldera, put it in there itself.

While I agree, it's possible, it's not likely. Caldera was formed to create a 
/distribution/ of Linux. I'm skeptical that anybody at Caldera actually did any 
kernel-level programming work.

 FT> If you look at the press release, the publicly avowed goal of 
 FT> Caldera when they embraced Linux was to "blend the two 
 FT> technologies together".

Blend what two technologies? When Ray Noorda left Novell, and funded the 
creation of Caldera, the only "asset" that Caldera had in their portfolio was 
the rights to DR-DOS, which Novell had divested themselves of. All of the 
AT&T/USL Unix code went to the Santa Cruz Operation in Santa Cruz, California, 
and became Unixware. Caldera, nee SCO Group, never had any access to any AT&T 
Unix code, or the SCO OpenServer code, until Caldera bought the products and 
the names from the Santa Cruz Operation two years ago.

 FT> As for IBM putting AIX code in Linux, I personnally doubt it. The 
 FT> two systems have rather different underlying philosophies as far 
 FT> as design goes. 

I agree with you Francois. I find it highly unlikely that there's any code 
leaking from the AIX (written for the PowerPC) group down to the Linux (written 
for the Intel Pentium) group. Even IF it was shared, at best it would have been 
shared only conceptually, because the code would have, most likely, needed to 
be rewritten for the differing processor architecture.

--- 
 * Origin: lawrence@eforest.net | The Enchanted Forest (1:106/6018)

.