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Microsoft and Sun licenses

Microsoft and Sun licenses

Posted Aug 12, 2007 18:15 UTC (Sun) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
In reply to: Microsoft and Sun licenses by drag
Parent article: A bad day for the SCO Group

I have no idea where you got that idea.. Solaris is a SysV style kernel and toolset not BSD/SunOS. That was the major drag between the days of SunOS 4.1.4 and Solaris 2.1 because so little worked together.


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Microsoft and Sun licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2007 5:58 UTC (Mon) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link]

Well, Solaris 8 has also the title SunOS 5.8

There has been a merge somewhere along the line.

Microsoft and Sun licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2007 9:56 UTC (Mon) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link]

If my memory serves me well, SunOS 4.x and below are BSD, while SunOS 5.0 onwards are SysV. To emphasise the change, Sun's always released SysV-based SunOS under the Solaris label, not as a separate SunOS product, although Solaris is just branding for the newer SunOS products.

Microsoft and Sun licenses

Posted Aug 13, 2007 15:05 UTC (Mon) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]

Ugh... Solaris vs. SunOS naming rears its ugly head again.

The Solaris name first applied to SunOS 4.1.x along with the windowing environment and so on that was placed on top of it. SunOS 4.x and before was based on BSD. The Solaris name wasn't pushed really heavily. Indeed, according to the article I linked above, the Solaris name was constructed for the SunOS 5.x release, and then backfitted onto the SunOS 4.1.x products while SunOS 5 was in development.

With SunOS 5.x, Sun more heavily emphasized the Solaris name, with Solaris 2.0 corresponding to SunOS 5.0. When Solaris 2 came out, the SunOS name kinda drifted into the background. SunOS 5 / Solaris 2 was a big deal, as it was that version that shifted to a SysV base in contrast to the BSD base that had been under previous SunOS releases.

So, in terms of public perception, "SunOS" is the "BSD based version" and "Solaris" is the "SysV based version." But, in reality, both monikers have applied to both variants. Yay marketing.

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