[Info-vax] Real live example...

[Dan Cross]

In article <tt5nr2$5i$1 at panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>>In article <k5n2tcFtd0kU9 at mid.individual.net>,
>>bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>On 2/22/2023 10:08 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> While you're at it, feel free to call someone at Oracle and ask them to
>>>> open-source SunOS 4.1.4.  If you can actually get someone to understand
>>>> that SunOS is different than Solaris you'll have got farther than anyone else
>>>> ever has.
>>>
>>>Why would anyone want SunOS 4.1.4 open sourced?  There is nothing
>>>there that isn't in any of the BSD's that are already available
>>>and include versions that run on Sun hardware.  I can see Oracle's
>>>reluctance to waste any time or money doing anything with any
>>>version of SunOS.  Assuming they even still have copies of any of it!!
>>
>>I can think of two reasons:
>>
>>1. Nostalgia (and hobbyists)
>>2. The virtual memory subsystem
>>
>>The VM system in SunOS 4 was very clean.  Fortunately, this is
>>one of the things that was carried over in large part to Solaris
>>2.
>
>Also use of commercial software that was available only in binary form.
>Much of which you can make work with some tinkering under BSD but it's not
>fun tinkering.

That you could probably do that with a binary distribution and
an emulator like simh or tme.  For that matter, I seem to recall
a certain amount of backward compatibility for SunOS 4 binaries
under Solaris 2, but it's fuzzy now; I know you could run SunOS
binaries under 4.4BSD on SPARC, at anyrate.

	- Dan C.