[Raion]

Hello everyone!

I've been quite busy the last couple weeks with the mouse pad sales but I didn't forget about May 21st. It's been 5 years since Nekochan's demise. 

However I didn't want to dwell on the sadness that such an anniversary might bring and in combination with some good news I wanted to instead announce the next project that is going to be around.

IRIX-32, so named for its basis on kernel and APIs of the last 32-bit compatible IRIX (5.3) is a proposed reverse engineering project to be conducted by a team of developers in the US and the EU.

Purpose: We will reverse engineer the version 5.3 kernel with future goal of producing a fully open source reference implementation. This is the first major step and the delivery will be documentation and reference material to enable effective emulation and driver development for IRIX.

Cost: The cost of the project is set at $6500 USD. We will need to fundraise this, but I am also contributing an additional $1000 USD, plus another thousand from three businesses that still use IRIX and I've a long term relationship with for support and training. Thus the TOTAL cost, including externally sourced funds is a minimum of $8500 USD. There are additional goals we will consider if the funding ends up exceeded. I do not feel comfortable asking tens of thousands up front, so instead we will try to keep this incremental. 

Now I will answer some burning questions:

Why IRIX 5.3?

The primary reason is cost and complexity. It's about 1/3 the size of 6.5.22's kernel. The goal is to see if there is significant financial interest for an open source IRIX and this serves as a way to do that on a small trial scale. Many of the APIs and interfaces used by 5.3 are similar to 6.2 and 6.5 varieties of IRIX. The work here will serve as a future basis for IRIX's FOSS future. 

5.3 has an added benefit, as it contains 4.x compatibility code as well. We will be including that in our scope.

What is the timeframe for the project?

18-24 months is our best estimate. This is subject to change, especially if the scope creeps. 

Why should I be interested? 

Even if you don't use IRIX 5.3 this stands to benefit everybody. Namely, having a reference and documentation will improve hardware support for emulation of various devices, and this will serve at a major stepping stone towards a fully usable, fully FOSS IRIX implementation. This is a substantially cheaper and less dangerous option than trying to reason with large companies like HP Enterprise. 

Should we be worried about patents, infringement or anything?
 
IRIX's patents in the US have expired long ago. Patents have strict time limits and those by now have expired. 

Nothing proposed or offered is in any way a violation of US law. We will not be releasing any of HPE's proprietary code and we will be following all best practices and ethical guidelies. 

What platform will be used to fundraise?

That is undecided at this very moment. I have to talk this over with the team but a follow-up will be made. Until then if you want to invest more than a few hundred in the project and help make this a reality feel free to message me. Any private investments we receive will obviously knock down the price goal, and we will be very transparent on the use of funds.