“With QNX now firmly roadmapped at RIM and Android spreading among vendors like a virus, I wanted to point out that these operating systems share one ancestor: Unix.
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There is some poetic justice in its comeback. Unix could have become a default for desktop computers. When Windows emerged from the shadow of DOS, Microsoft had the option to base NT on a flavor of Unix.
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The death of Unix(tm) was also forestalled because of the efforts of others. Sun, IBM and even a startup called NeXT kept development alive. When NeXT was acquired by Apple, OS X was born and in 2000 Unix was once again on the desktop.
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As a kernel, Unix was modular which allowed it to scale both down to devices and up to mainframes. It could conform to the applications above it (like being a server or being an embedded controller)…
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The modular Unix just keeps conforming to new applications. It helps that it’s open source but the open sourcing is a result of the modularity not the cause for it. So far, it looks like there is no stopping the revenge of Unix. It’s been a long journey for Unix and I, for one, am cheering the comeback.”
