Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)

Open Source packages for AIX

IBM has one download site  for AIX RPMs with limited selection of pretty old packages (aix toolbox), but there are several other sites available (See  Recommended Links ).   The best is probably perzl.org

There is also IBM Wiki devoted to open source:  IBM Wikis - AIX 5L Wiki - aixopen. AIX itself probably will stay closed source in the foreseeable future(Timothy Prickett Morgan, Feb 2, 2006) :

Just for a moment, imagine that IBM was not embroiled in a $3 billion Unix intellectual property and licensing lawsuit with the SCO Group. Imagine that if IBM wanted to, it could go to SCO and, as Sun Microsystems did with its Solaris Unix variant, got permission to open source its own AIX operating system.

I know this is a stretch. SunOS and Solaris, having a hybrid BSD and AT&T SVR4 licensing status because Sun and AT&T partnered to make SVR4, has a unique position in the Unix market. And it is very likely that there was nothing in the world SCO could do to stop Sun from going open source with Solaris since Sun probably has more rights to Unix than anyone--including SCO. That is speculation, of course, because neither Sun nor SCO have ever said anything precise about how they worked this out. But for the purposes of a little thought experiment, imagine that IBM's AIX could get the nod from SCO--if it was even required--and that Big Blue could take AIX out as an open source platform.

Would IBM do it?

It would seem not. Satya Sharma, the distinguished IBM engineer who functions as the chief software architect for the AIX operating system, waved off the suggestion that IBM might follow Sun and take AIX to an open source, community-developed model.

"We have considered open source AIX, but we have decided that our current way of doing things is a better way to go," Sharma explained. IBM likes the fact that it controls the development of both the Power processors and all of the systems and peripherals that hang off the boxes and the AIX platform that is tightly integrated to the features in the box. "We do not have any plans at this stage to open source AIX, and we do not believe that OpenSolaris will give Sun a big advantage."

Many program are precompiled On IBM aix toolbox site all precompiled binaries on this site are in RPM format.  See AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications ReadMe.

If the program is not availble from IBM or other major AIX open source repositories (http://www.perzl.org/aix/, Bull AIX freeware site, pWare etc.,  see Recommended Links ) you need to compile it  See Compilation of open source on AIX. This not always easy and you first need to search Google for some recommendations. Below are very raw notes from my experience:

• Apache on AIX
• PHP on AIX