Getting sort of off-topic, but...

Toru Nishimura wrote: 
|  Joel Kershner <jkershner@students.jccc.net> wrote;
|  
|  > And the only stable OS available for SGI MIPS machines is IRIX, which 
|  > has some truly bizarre licensing schemes, which make getting a hold of
|  > IRIX for a used machine an arduous task

Every SGI system ever shipped has a unix license.  All you need to
do is show that somebody hasn't somehow tried to transfer that license
without the machine (which violates the license terms, so that's not
that hard).  That said, it's always been a pain to get new media shipped,
and SGI does charge for it.

|  It would take long time for NetBSD to surpass IRIX.  At the same time,
|  choosing and maintaining the right IRIX for given hardwares is the
|  administrative horror.

Not at all.  5.3 for all r3k systems (there were only two versions of
5.3, and the second only matters for the r5k indy), and 6.5 for
everything else, where 6.5 is the current .X release, and all values of
.X are free (download) once you have the base 6.5 media, which costs
$600 US for an upgrade from any other pre-6.5 release (if you didn't
have support).

NetBSD does have advantages over IRIX since IRIX never really released
IPV6, IPSec was extra cost, etc.  On the downside, for workstations with
accelerated graphics, it's unlikely that anything would ever catch up
with IRIX on the graphics performance or capabilities.

Dave Olson
olson@bengaltech.com
http://www.bengaltech.com/public/dave