The IRIX 6.5.7M (sgi) source code

(github.com)

67 points | by reconnecting 2 days ago ago

33 comments

  • reconnecting 2 days ago

    For me personally, IRIX 6.x had one of the most beautiful (and colourful) GUIs ever.

    For the curious, there is a guide (1) on how to run IRIX 6.5.22 in MAME.

    1. https://sgi.neocities.org

    • mixmastamyk 2 days ago

      Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use.

      One other thing lost, their scrollbars kept an indentation of where the bar was until you let go, which was sometimes useful.

      Not a fan of the busy backgrounds, but can’t win ’em all.

      Does anyone have a screenshot of the window menu (right click on titlebar)? Been looking for the CUA hotkeys related to those window functions. Most still work but are not shown on Linux desktops for some reason.

      • senko 2 days ago

        > Wow, look at those luxurious titlebars, windows edges, scrollbars, and tabs! So easy to use.

        That's just Motif: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)

        Shame it wasn't under an open license to begin with (they relicenced it to LGPL waaay too late). We've been reimplementing it ever since.

      • sgt 2 days ago

        They also loved italic!

        • mixmastamyk 2 days ago

          Yeah, they were a few years ahead of cleartype/retina unfortunately.

    • hedgehog 2 days ago

      Someone did a screen capture of a SGI "System Tour" app that explains how a lot of the UI worked:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8fiA9TrRk

    • wink 2 days ago

      That reminds me about some irc channel around 25 years ago where we had this odd guy running IRIX and occasionally sending us screenshots.

      Most people were on Windows, some of us were running Linux, but IRIX seemed odd even to us, with our mainstream DEs like enlightenment or KDE or windowmaker :D

    • rainingmonkey 2 days ago

      What is the scrollwheel thing on the left side of some windows?

      • blipvert 2 days ago

        As I recall that changed the size of the (vector graphic) icons in the window.

        Though it has been twenty-odd years since I last used an SGI box so open to correction!

        • zvr 2 days ago

          Yes, it was essentially a "zoom" wheel.

    • dvno42 2 days ago

      For those interested, there is a lovely IRIX clone WM called MaXX. I've been using it for a couple months and have been quite happy with it on a remote dev machine. I believe it only runs on xorg currently.

      1. https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/

    • jnpnj 2 days ago

      A blend of nextstep and macos classic somehow.

  • mrweasel 2 days ago

    Unless it's true that they lost it, I really see no reason why HPE doesn't just release the official IRIX source code. It cannot be worth much at this point.

    Maybe there's 3rd party code which SGI/HPE licensed? That's apparently why we can't have Operas Presto.

    • pm215 2 days ago

      Even if there isn't any 3rd party code, the whole process of going through the codebase to confirm there really isn't any 3rd party code, and generally getting the legal department to sign off on it, is a lot of work in itself. My impression is that this kind of "historic source" release typically only happens if somebody sufficiently senior in the company cares enough to actively push it through. The default is that nobody does care that much, and it doesn't happen.

      "Do nothing" has essentially zero downside for a big company that happens to have something of niche interest like this in its vaults.

      • miki123211 2 days ago

        third-party code is one thing, political correctness is another. What was acceptable in 90s brogrammer culture may not be considered acceptable by PR obsessed corporate types now.

        To put this more charitably, the only reason to release something like this is to get some good PR, but if not carefully controlled, such a release could create more bad PR than good PR.

        • actionfromafar 2 days ago

          How?

          • mrweasel a day ago

            I don't recall which product it was, it may have been Microsoft, that needed to sanitizes their code before releasing it. There where a lot of not so nice comments about other companies and oh so much swearing. Not really the type of language a company would have their name attached to.

            • actionfromafar a day ago

              Hm, it could be done with llm today. Or remove all comments

    • throw0101a 2 days ago

      > Maybe there's 3rd party code which SGI/HPE licensed?

      IIRC, this was one of the complication of open sourcing Solaris back in the day.

      • linolevan 2 days ago

        Yep, I recall one of the big components being libc i18n

    • fredoralive 2 days ago

      An obvious source for 3rd party code is that it’s a real UNIX System V derivative, so the AT&T code would need to be cleared.

  • sedawkgrep 2 days ago

    As a long-time AIX admin I'd LOOOOOVE to see some of the AIX source.

    I used to be connected to the community where stuff like this was passed around. But that was a long, long time ago.

  • mrpippy 2 days ago

    This leak has been floating around for years, and it's not even close to everything (i.e. no GUI pieces)

  • dboreham 2 days ago

    Interesting that GitHub recognizes "Roff" as a language.

  • johnthescott a day ago

    brings back happy memories of my indigoII.

  • andsoitis 2 days ago

    isn't this violating copyright?

    • majorchord 2 days ago

      The mods do not seem to care about pirated software (or links to tons of it) being posted here, I have seen people doing it for years now.

    • sedawkgrep 2 days ago

      Dunno but the repo is 4+ years old.

  • oldnetguy 2 days ago

    Is this real?