I'd argue Mac OS X is proprietary UNIX, but I'll admit to that being a bit pedantic.
It's definitely partially proprietary, and it is definitely a Unix operating system.
Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
131–140 of 221 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ugly. This makes me seriously wonder whether they just did not put an index in, and unfathomably many hours have been wasted on useless full table scans for something that would have been fixed with a handful of CREATE INDEX statements? Though that's a lot of conjecture, and the real answer is probably more complex. But your examples do make me wonder...
Likely wasn't a RDBMS at all, but flat files with maybe one key index (or perhaps none).
I really doubt that a schema like that would survive at the kind of scale SW operates at. I'm about 80% sure I saw mention of database operations in the startup/shutdown logs, but I could be misremembering.
My guess is that they bought whatever database software was popular in the early 90s and never changed.
I do know they've been slowly changing the schema over the years, increasing the number of digits in the account number, adding email fields, that kind of thing. But I doubt there's been any major upgrades.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#133I used to work for Sherwin-Williams. The in-store computers run some custom *nix OS. The software that company runs on is a text based ui that hasn't changed since it was introduced in the 90s. They released a major update in 2020 that allowed you to move windows around the screen. It was groundbreaking. But let me tell you, this system was absolutely terrible. All the machines were full x86 desktops with no hard dri…
I know of a small shop that made a good living buying software packages like that, rewriting/modernizing the technology, and selling the new version back to all the existing customers. It was kind of a win for everyone -- the customers got updated, secure software, the owners of the old tech who were getting nothing out of it (this stuff is not SaaS) got some money, and some developers got work.
That sounds like a great gig tbh
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#134Yup. SCO OpenServer 5.0.something, for some partner's accounting department. Neither the OS nor the application software have been updated since the late 1990s, but if it works, it works, I guess... (to be honest: the application software is only used to run reports in response to requests from the legal department, but apparently still can't be shut down -- I ask once a year, next upcoming 'query date' in my agenda…
Hey, you took the tools you had and combined them into something new to solve a problem. That's literally what technology is, even if it isn't sexy.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#135I worked at Chef Software up until last year and we maintained binary distributions of the software (including ruby and lots of lower level libraries) that were built on Solaris, AIX and Windows in addition to Ubuntu, RHEL and FreeBSD. Most customers were on Ubuntu/RHEL/Windows. There was very little on FreeBSD, AIX or Solaris. We had zero interest for HP-UX, I think that is dead enough to be ignoreable. Banks and fi…
Is AIX functionally superior for banks and financial services? Or is it a matter of legacy software requiring AIX?
I can't really answer that, but my general impression is that they actually like it and it isn't just legacy (or at least some of them).
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#136I work at a telco. We have many museum-grade Unices in production, mostly AIX and Solaris - we even have a Wang still running in one of our datacenters. It's largely a case of there isn't a business case to migrate it to modern hardware - one day we'll no longer operate a legacy copper PSTN network, but until that day comes, we still need it all. We still have maintenance contracts on some hardware, like our Sun Fires. It's very clear that replacement parts are scavenged from whatever they can find second hand.
I recently rewrote the system we use to push user accounts and passwords to systems that don't support LDAP. It was amusing to write an app using a current-day stack on RHEL 8 that purely exists to handle these very legacy systems.
One of my favourite systems I've had to work on is running Solaris 2.5.1. Users are added to the program by editing the source code and recompiling it. How times have changed.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#137> I also see that HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris are apparently still maintained and get releases, which suggests that they are still being used in production in some places. When I worked for $(LargeDefenseContractor) we used Solaris for a defense system we were developing. Over time the older units (based on older hardware) would be passed down to the national guard. I would not be surprised if Solaris was still being use…
Dated info (2001/2002?) but there was Solaris use at the NSA around that time too. Seems like the military and associated organs like to use it.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are modern proprietary systems as well. RHEL is a good example. RHEL is free software, isn't it? (it's just that if you decide to fully use the rights given by the licenses, bye bye support and updates from Red Hat IIRC)
RHEL is not free, but the word "free" is loosely defined in open source world. RHEL is open source, yet it is also proprietary. Yes, if you wanted to build from source you can, for free, but you get no access to the repos or service and you have to strip out all references to Red Hat (trademark / copyright infringement) if you want to use it commercially. So, ya if you want to use it at home or to learn, it's free.
> but the word "free" is loosely defined in open source world
The word "free" is well-defined in this context (I carefully used it in the phrase "free software"). A free software respects the 4 freedoms given in the free software definition [1]. You can run it for all purpose, study it, redistribute it, distribute your modified version.
Within the law, of course. Always. Licenses are restricted by the law.
> RHEL is open source, yet it is also proprietary
That's not possible because proprietary means "not open source" (as defined by the Open source Definition [2]). Or "not free" (as defined by the Free Software Definition).
Moreover, something is open source if and only if it's free software.
(save some anecdotal licenses that are considered open source by the OSI but not free by the FSF, but that's anecdotal and that's not relevant to RHEL).
It's exactly because RHEL is free software, or, said differently, open source, or said differently, not proprietary, that open source / free alternatives like AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux, their friends and formerly CentOS can exist, legally.
Note, open source ≠ source available (which is a necessary condition to open source but not sufficient).
> you have to strip out all references to Red Hat (trademark / copyright infringement)
Sure. That's trademark, and not related to copyright. Open source / free software licenses are related to copyright only. The licenses do offer you all the rights guaranteed by the definition of free software, of course you still have to respect the law by using those rights, including trademark.
Respecting licenses (based on copyright) and respecting brands / trademarks are two orthogonal dimensions of the matter.
You could tell me that see, you can't redistribute RHEL verbatim because of trademark so it's not free software. Wrong. It's right that you can't redistribute RHEL verbatim because of trademark, but that's not enforced by its FLOSS licenses. It's enforced by law (hence my mention of the "within the law" restriction earlier). It's subtle but important nonetheless.
Firefox has similar restrictions. Mozilla allows you to redistribute it under the Mozilla Firefox brand only if you don't patch it too much. Formerly, it was stricter than that, you could not redistribute it under the the Mozilla Firefox brand if you changed anything. GNU/Linux distributions could redistribute it as Firefox even though they patched it because Mozilla explicitly allowed them to do so. That's why Debian redistributed it as Iceweasel at some point, and now as Firefox again. They first decided that they didn't like needing an express authorization, and then Mozilla requirements were relaxed, ways of doing things changed, and using the trademark was fine again [3].
> RHEL is not free
It's not free as in gratis.
It is free as in libre / free software. It's certainly not proprietary. Except for proprietary software it has in its non-free repositories.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#fs-definition
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the OS itself was passable. It had the absolute bare minimum required to work, so not much could go wrong. The ancient software also wasn't bad. After a few months learning the hotkeys and menu structure, the speed with which you can enter and process data was absolutely incredible. It had problems, but usually minor and patched in a reasonable time for corporate IT. The real problem was their database manageme…
Ugly. This makes me seriously wonder whether they just did not put an index in, and unfathomably many hours have been wasted on useless full table scans for something that would have been fixed with a handful of CREATE INDEX statements? Though that's a lot of conjecture, and the real answer is probably more complex. But your examples do make me wonder...
I remember running some very large reports over multiple years of inventory movement. Disk access on the server was totally saturated for a good 20-30 minutes.
Thinking about it now, it had to have read out the entire database multiple times.
Oh yeah, these reports weren't processed on the server, either. The network link on the terminal I used would be pegged at the max rate the server could read from the disk. I never really figured out what that's about.
I guess it's trying to stream large chunks of the DB to the terminal and running the query locally? No clue.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone using proprietary Unix at work?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Fair question, although the basic answer should be obvious: the users still need access to the data! So, the question becomes more like "why not upgrade", or more specifically "why not migrate the data to something that is not so shockingly obsolete", since it's probably clear that there is no real upgrade path here (both SCO and the vendor of the accounting system are long gone). Usually with systems of this vintage…
[deleted]