IBM is trying to promote the next version of its Unix operating system variant by opening up the beta testing program to any customer or developer who wants to kick the tires.
AIX 6 is not expected until the fourth quarter of this year, but IBM has already received hundreds of responses to its open beta for the product earlier this week. Big Blue traditionally limited the beta for AIX to a couple of dozen participants. Jay Kruemcke, IBM's AIX program director, said AIX 6 will be binary compatible with version 5, and despite several planned additional features, he said it could have been labelled as a point release.
"We primarily (called it AIX 6) for marketing purposes. We decided it was the first time to rev the version, let clients know that the future is assured," he said, adding that the product will remain proprietary despite the beta program. "It's not open source. We just mean that anybody can go to the Web site, click to accept the licence and have the ability to download the code."
