Any SGI fans?

[TeamBlackFox]

So in response to the fact that SGI has no plans for IRIX as of 2013 December I went ahead and drafted a letter to their CEO. I have copied the letter below. And no, I'm not mentioning the GPL. I'd rather it stay proprietary than be GPL'd, so only permissive software licenses are mentioned here:

$DATE

$NAME
$ADDRESS

Attn: Mr. Jorge Titinger

I am writing to you today as a fan, user and supporter of the discontinued product line, IRIX, to propose the act of you and your company Silicon Graphics International would be to opening the source code of IRIX to the community under a permissive software license.

As your company is no longer vending or supporting IRIX as of December 2013 and have ceased development of it prior to this in 2006 of the product, the IRIX fans like me and those of fan sites such as NekoChan.net are facing some issues with use of the product as it ages and lags behind other UNIX variants. As it appears Silicon Graphics International has no further commercial plans for the product, me and several others of the community would love to see IRIX released under a permissive software license such as the MIT, BSD 2-clause or ISC license so we may continue development as a community. I do understand as the CEO and President of SGI you do not directly deal with this matter, but other members of the community have consistently asked your support and sales department with no success, due to a lack of power in those areas.

Releasing the code to IRIX would be a beneficial move for your company, especially under a permissive software license, as this means the community would update and add code, and your company would be free to incorporate that code into proprietary solutions where releasing the code otherwise would be impractical or bad for business. In addition the decision would make headlines across news sites where UNIX fans gather, and would generate attention for your company in a positive manner.

In conclusion I ask that you please consider this matter carefully, and hopefully, you will help make it happen for the community. Thank you for your time and attention while reviewing this letter.

Kind Regards,
$SIGNATURE
$NAME

[TeamBlackFox]

I hauled in a new SGI today - an O2 running an R5k at 160mhz. Spent 3 hours trying to setup a net install server under FreeBSD and finally gave up, gonna have a friend of mine burn me his copy of IRIX instead. Correction on my Fuel - it only has 2GB ram. I mistyped and noticed.

Also with the SGI got a sun Ultra 5 and a 1084s monitor. I'm an addict..

And I have a SGI o2 motherboard / system module of unknown specs with no ram. I don't suppose anyone here needs a spare O2?

@Iggy

Gonna fire up my Octane as soon as I get it out of storage. If it works I'll pm with a price when I have it.

[TeamBlackFox]

I'd prefer to use IRIX on SGI/MIPS Hardware honestly - its like saying use NetBSD on a Commodore - there is no point. Admittedly, same for Amiga UNIX really, but you get the gist.

[TeamBlackFox]

Okay so I have decided to sell my O2. Here are the specs:

170MHz R5000 MIPS
92MB RAM
18GB 15k RPM SCSI drive

Only issue is no OS installed on it - I'm still looking for IRIX cds as the ones my friend burned were rubbish. If someone is interested feel free to PM me.

[TeamBlackFox]

I'm trying to avoid torrenting on  public trackers due to my ISP. Anyways PM sent!

[TeamBlackFox]

So the O2 is still available - seems the TheMagicM found one locally - Congrats!

Any takers? Feel free to PM

[TeamBlackFox]

I wanted to simply update the thread that I'm not really active on this forum anymore, but I'm now a steady dealer of SGI MIPS and SGI Itanium gear. If you want something, PM me.

For bragging rights I am now the owner of a 4x700MHz Tezro and a 900MHz Fuel, both maxed out. Fantastic systems.