Subject: status of 86open

From: Dion Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 17:02:27 -0700

Here is the blurb that I published to the 86open dev group.
We just announced at SCO forum that we will indeed support
Linux application compatibility in UnixWare.  No time fram
announced.  ALso, we will begin to support selected open-source
tools (e.g. gcc and related tools).
-Dion

Bulletin on status of 86open at SCO
-----------------------------------
As we see it, the 86open activity is a research project,
conceived in a single meeting and with some ensuing email
discussions.  It is not a _product_ plan; it is a technical
feasibility exploration.  It does not necessarily have an end,
and it may yet happen.

There are other ways of obtaining interoperability of binaries,
as we also discussed at the original meeting.  When we first
discussed it, we acknowledged that emulation was one way that was
known to work.  As we understood it, there was a consensus that
we already have emulation that works.  This is not interesting.
The interesting idea that Linus put forth was a research proposal
for a universal, reference C library with a minimal set of
functions that everyone could build; certainly not guaranteed to
work, and we did not know if it was feasible.  But it _was_
interesting to the audience, so we - the whole group - decided to
spend a little time on it.

As time went by, the engineers at SCO who chose to work on this
found it was harder than expected and we had to admit we either
(1) needed help, or (2) would stop spending time on it.  Partly
due to other pressing issues, #2 happened first.  There still may
be work done on the idea of a portable, minimal reference libc
port, but it's not moving forward at SCO right now.

Also, and partly as result of the 86open discussions and
activities, SCO has come to believe that we really need to be
able to run Linux binaries in the near future.  Knowing that the
emulation scheme works to around 90% success, maybe better, we
are now choosing to invest in making that scheme work.

Some of our engineers may yet return to the original libc
project, or they may not.  They are volunteers and make their own
choices, but SCO is not going to put company time/money into that
project at this time, except to the extent that we are happy to
provide SCO software to anyone who wants to experiment.

In the coming months, SCO will be improving the capabilities of
the lxrun emulator. 

-Dion L. Johnson II
SCO

On Fri, Aug 21, 1998 at 07:55:16AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
 > 
 > What happened to that i386 Unix binary standardisation group/forum/thingy
 > that was announced last year? I think I saw that you were on it.
 > 
 > Cheers again!
 > 
 > 	Warren

---

From: Dion Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 08:56:53 -0700

On Fri, Aug 21, 1998 at 11:16:33AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
 > From: Warren Toomey <[email-masked]>
 > Subject: Re: status of 86open
 > To: Dion Johnson <[email-masked]>
 > Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 11:16:33 +1000 (EST)
 > X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)]

 > In article by Dion Johnson:
 > I'd have to say about time on the GNU/open source tools. In the
 > sense that you should provide the GNU people with patches to get
 > the tools working, not dial-up support to SCO users.

We've been porting GNU stuff for several years.  It's released on
our "Skunkware" CD.  Of course, the guys who do the ports reflect
porting info/patches back to the authors.  Robert Lipe (EGCS) is
one of our best contributors.

 > 
 > On the 86open front, I guess I'd like a standard that wasn't vendor-specific.
 > I'd like Linux to `bend' a little to meet the standard, just as all the
 > other vendors like FreeBSD and SCO would have to, as well.

Any standard we pick will have some vendor origin.  We (all of us) seem
to be heading toward a scheme where the kernel will recognize the
binaries and do appropriate emulation for each type.

 > 
 > Thanks for the blurb, though. I'm glad it hasn't died out yet.

Lots of activity around Linux right now.  We have a bunch of Linux
people wanting to meet with SCO and see how we can work together.
It's a delicate situation since Linux is indeed a competitor to
us, but also we are all Unix and need to stand united. More
will be revealed. ;-)
-Dion
 > Cheers,