>>> This is a bit revisionist, methinks. At best, this statement needs a > big "where IBM's involvement began", but it's just not true that Marist > started >> it all. The Bigfoot project came before it, and there were no > Marist participants to be seen there. > > Citation notwithstanding. I open the floor for adjustment;
Summer, 1998: Bigfoot really gets rolling for Linux on S/370. Main participants (at the time): Neale Ferguson, Software AG Rick Troth, BMC Software David Boyes, Nortel GPS (I primarily did doc and testing) Linas Vepstas, IBM Israel Some (lots of) input from: Arty Ecock, CUNY Dave Jones, V-Soft Software Adam Thornton, Flathead Software Foundry (apologies if I left anyone out -- my memory is starting to go and it was 10 years ago...) No Marist people, although I'm sure they knew about it. First running Bigfoot kernel was July 1999, I recall. Neale had a mostly running libc and some userspace apps along with that mid-August. Fall, 1999: IBM releases joint study "technology preview" project with Marist (late Sept/October, IIRC) Both projects were coexisting, but completely independent, and the IBM one was a completely black project. Marist released the internal IBM skunkworks version; a running kernel and a big chunk of userspace were availble from Bigfoot before that time. There was a lot of discussion with IBM (via SHARE and other channels) pre-tech preview project release where the words "with you or without you (IBM), Linux on S/390 is going to happen" figured prominently. The Bigfoot effort petered out mid-2000 when it was clear that IBM's endorsement of the Marist and later SuSE 7.0 release on the G5 hardware would be the survivor -- if nothing else, due to having more and better hardware available and being better funded. See Harold Prichett's SHARE presentations for Spring 2000 SHARE for some fairly good docs on the Bigfoot effort and the later grafts of IEEE FP emulation for G2 and G3/4 9672s from the Bigfoot prototype into the Marist release. So, it's fair to say that Marist was where IBM publically engaged with Linux on S/390 hardware, but it's not accurate to say that Marist started it all. I don't want to take credit away from IBM and Marist for their release, but it's not fair to forget about the history (and the amount of work) that had a lot to do with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
