I think the industry embrace of Merced is a mixture of herd mentality
and bet-hedging. While SGI's MIPS series may be less than successful,
and even HP-UX' market share isn't large enough for the chip to be
profitable, I don't think they'll bet the company on a chip that has yet
to see silicon, which is very experimental in design, and which has been
slipping its schedule on a regular basis.
Even more so for the *successful* competing chips, like UltraSparc, PPC
and Alpha.
> I wonder when the penny will drop for the UNIX vendors? Who will be
> the first to ditch their OS and instead pour their development effort
> into value-added Linux?
Umm...well, most of the little guys have been assimilated into bigger
companies, Data General, Tandem etc are seeing their Unices discontinued
and the niches being picked up by Digital Unix and Solaris.
For anybody to emrace Linux like that, it would have to be a company
that prioritizes a strong hardware presence to control over software,
and with a Unix that is already fairly compatible, making it easier to
support existing customer base.
I think it makes more sense for new entrants, like Corel, or possibly
Motorola, should they decide to enter the server or desktop market, but
perhaps IBM could pick up Linux?
Digital has a lot of systems to support already, and *could* turn to
Linux, if they lost a lot of market share. Sun is too committed to
their Solaris flagship. SGI isn't extremely successful with IRIX, but
since they are losing out on the hardware/chips business, the OS is
basically what they have left. HP hardware doesn't have a good Linux
port, but some speculate that they end up being just another hardware
manufacturer if and when Merced arrives.
Just my completely offtopic $0.02
~kzm
-- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu