AIX community edition for QEMU/KVM

AIX will remain the leading UNIX operating system for mission-critical environments for many years to come. It has performance, security and ease of administration features that make it a very interesting option for new deployments complementing the IBM i and Linux offerings in Power.

It is necessary to facilitate its access and learning to new generations of system administrators, who unlike the previous ones will not make their "transition" from UNIX to Linux, but most likely come from Linux, Solaris or Windows and might want to try AIX for the first time. 

Environments like PowerVS, although they are great, have some entry barriers like initial configuration and recurring cost that make it not ideal for students or people who just want to try it out.

It is currently technically possible to run AIX 7.2 on x86 using QEMU (https://community.ibm.com/community/user/powerdeveloper/blogs/hugo-b/2024/01/17/aix-virtualization-x86-kvm-qemu) but there are legal uncertainties and technical difficulties with version 7.3. Similar projects like Hercules, have had a very positive impact on raising awareness of the Z environments. 

I suggest that IBM help make its AIX 7.3 version work on QEMU (https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/1501) and allow its use legally through some kind of educational / non-commercial license, providing a qcow2 image or .iso file so that anyone who wants to can run it "at home" from x86 (obviously with all its performance limitations).