Ambient air aged anodically etched porous silicon (PS) and spark-processed silicon (sp-Si) show interesting similarities and dissimilarities in some of their luminescence-related properties. Among these similarties are: (1) the photoluminescence (PL) peak maximum in the blue/violet (410 nm);(2) the blue/violet PL peak positions are essentially unchanged with temperature ; (3) PL decay times in the nanosecond region which are independent of the detection wavelength, which is much faster in decay times compared to that of observed decay time in $SiO_2$.Among the dissimilarities are: (1) the PL intensity of blue/violet luminescence, namely, the PL intensity of sp-Si is at least 2 orders of magnitude larger than that of an ambient air aged PS; (2) the blue/violet PL intensity of sp-Si is more stable than that of ambient air aged PS under UV illuminations; (3) FTIR spectra of sp-Si favor those modes, which involve silicon -oxygen bonds in $SiO_2$ stoichiometry, whereas ambient air aged PS can be considered as a nonstoichiometric oxide judging from the observed vibrational spectra