California-based Mt Xinu Inc (read the name backwards to see the joke) is offering supported source code versions of the Mach operating system for Sun Microsystems Sun-3, DEC VAX and IBM RT computers. The company has a contract with Carnegie Mellon University, originator of the Mach Unix variant, to prepare supported source releases of Mach for use in research and development. The release, called 2.6 MSD for Mach Standard Distribution, is based on Carnegie-Mellon’s 2.5 Mach kernel, but will have the Berkeley 4.3BSD interface that is a standard in the research community and will be source-compatible with existing 4.3BSD applications; many standard 4.3BSD binary applications will also run unchanged. It costs $3,000 for a licensed copy of the source code, 20 volumes of documentation and rights for additional internal use in binary form. An AT&T Co Unix source licence is also needed, and is available late next month.
