Open Source AIX? Don't Hold Your Breath

Published: February 2, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Just for a moment, imagine that IBM was not embroiled in a $3 billion Unix intellectual property and licensing lawsuit with the SCO Group. Imagine that if IBM wanted to, it could go to SCO and, as Sun Microsystems did with its Solaris Unix variant, got permission to open source its own AIX operating system.

I know this is a stretch. SunOS and Solaris, having a hybrid BSD and AT&T SVR4 licensing status because Sun and AT&T partnered to make SVR4, has a unique position in the Unix market. And it is very likely that there was nothing in the world SCO could do to stop Sun from going open source with Solaris since Sun probably has more rights to Unix than anyone--including SCO. That is speculation, of course, because neither Sun nor SCO have ever said anything precise about how they worked this out. But for the purposes of a little thought experiment, imagine that IBM's AIX could get the nod from SCO--if it was even required--and that Big Blue could take AIX out as an open source platform.

Would IBM do it?

It would seem not. Satya Sharma, the distinguished IBM engineer who functions as the chief software architect for the AIX operating system, waved off the suggestion that IBM might follow Sun and take AIX to an open source, community-developed model.

"We have considered open source AIX, but we have decided that our current way of doing things is a better way to go," Sharma explained. IBM likes the fact that it controls the development of both the Power processors and all of the systems and peripherals that hang off the boxes and the AIX platform that is tightly integrated to the features in the box. "We do not have any plans at this stage to open source AIX, and we do not believe that OpenSolaris will give Sun a big advantage."

If press releases and stories in the IT trade press were money, Sun would indeed have been a solidly profitable company in the past year, since the open sourcing of Solaris and then its middleware stack through 2005 has generated a lot of noise. And if registered downloads were money--Sun broke through 4 million downloads for Solaris 10 in a year--Sun might even be very profitable. But, so far, all that noise about Solaris and all of those downloads have not yet turned into cash. Sun is clearly banking on the idea that eventually, a percentage of those downloads will turn into hardware sales and support contracts. If this strategy works for Sun and it creates a huge community of Solaris users with a small percentage that give it money every year for support, IBM may have to reconsider its options.

But, first, IBM would probably have to win, lose, or settle the SCO lawsuit, which is slated to go to trial in February 2007.