IMO

Over this last weekend, I retired from service my last 2 A/UX servers. These 2 machines performed secondary and tertiary backup services, for other more advanced servers, but I recall the day when all my Net/Web functionality was provided by Macs running A/UX. Those machines ran very well, and even the 2 recently retired servers still performed adequately, although they were quickly running out of steam, even for the drastically reduced workload assigned to them. A/UX was very good to me. First of all, it was the vehicle that really got be interested in the Net and in "open source," but it was also my association with A/UX that really got me my first notice on the Net. I still run into people who say "Are you the Jim Jagielski who was the owner of jagubox and the editor of the A/UX FAQ?" I learned a lot by porting various programs and applications to A/UX, lessons I still use today. It is amazing how a "unsuccessful" OS could have created such a long-lasting community. But even as unsuccessful as it might have been, you can see the heritage of OS X by looking at A/UX. When Apple dropped the m68k chipset and went with the PowerPC, A/UX was dropped as well. They were supposed to create the next generation of A/UX, called PowerOpen, but it never really happened. OS X is what A/UX could have turned into, and in a much quicker timeline, if Apple had decided that the Unix server-space was still a viable market. But we had to wait a long time for that perfect marriage of Unix and the Mac OS. For over 15 years, I've had at least 1 A/UX server running, performing its tasks with quirky efficiency. But no longer. It's earned its rest, and I'm only too grateful to let it have it.