After Copland was killed Solaris and Windows NT were the first options Apple considered. They also had discussions with Be before finally going with NeXT.
This was all pre Cathedral and Bazaar (1997) so Linux wasn't really on the radar at most companies.
Back in 2000 I found we had a Power Mac 6100/60 at work which had the Copland developer preview loaded on it. I've never seen a copy of it since. I wonder if anyone still has the media, I looked all around the office for it, I'd love to take a look at it again. One of those rare birds from Apple, like MAE. Although, I think MAE could actually run some programs unlike the Copland DR. I don't remember being able to do anything in it. If I found a copy of MAE I would totally go get myself an Ultra 1 from eBay all setup just for the thrill :-)
I'm pretty sure I have a copy of MAE on cd around somewhere - possibly multiple versions. If you really want it let me know and I'll see if I can dig it up.
Yeah, send me message at s.d.m at ieee.org. The only time I got to play with it, was at the Sun office here in Seattle. We tossed out all our Sun gear years ago now but I saved all the media and books going back to Solaris 2.6 in case I ever wanted to setup a system again.
True dat. MkLinux was someone's pet project, much like Apple Dylan. It was never internally considered a contender for the future of Mac OS.