[NTLUG:Discuss] Killing Off Linux: It's All Academic

[Eric Schnoebelen]

Rusty Haddock writes:
- Steve Baker wrote:
-     >
-     >Those who are upset about this M$ tactic should recollect that
-     >AT&T used this exact tactic (giving away the OS for free to
-     >colleges) to promote UNIX.  Without *that* tactic, we might
-     >have a Linux that was a clone of - erm VM/CMS or VMS <shudder>
- 
- I'm sure many of the people on this list could hardly recollect back
- then -- before they were either born or cognizant of the world.  :-)
- 
- AT&T did no such thing to "promote" Unix by giving it away to educational
- institutions!  AT&T (before the Death Star) nor their Bell Laboratories
- really did anything to promote Unix and AT&T wasn't all that keen about
- being in the software business either (which wasn't much of a industry
- back then, circa 1976-79).  

	Actually, AT&T was actively dis-interested in selling
software.  Oh, they wanted to, but they were restricted by a
1950's era consent decree with the DOJ.  In the case of UNIX,
they really didn't know what they had, and weren't trying to
sell it other than for internal (to the Bell System) use.

-                            True, AT&T basically "gave away" Version 6
- Unix to universities but purely on a education discount which was "pay for
- the tape and a small handling fee".  Unix at that time was still *VERY*
- experimental and very "researchy" (in the OpSys field) even in the Labs
- yet it, like Linux of a few years ago, was getting a lot of work done for
- people.  It wasn't until the latter days of Version 7 and after that
- (System III, etc) when AT&T realized they had a product to sell and people
- were BEGGING for it.  It was Version 7 that the folks at Berzerkley took
- and added virtual memory to and ported it to those "nifty" new VAX-11/780's
- that Digital was introducing and selling like "virtual" [ouch] hotcakes. 

	Actually, it was 32V that Bill Joy and friends started
hacking to build 3BSD.  As I recall 32V was somewhere between V6
and V7 (really named after manual editions, and not formal releases.)
32V was a port of V6/7 to the VAX that was swapping only, it didn't
really make use of the VM hardware that the VAX family offered.
I take it back, PWB/DWB (programmers/ documentors workbench -- UNIX
was the major document processing system with in the Bell System
at the time) was the release between V6 and V7, not 32V.

	Predating 3BSD were patch tapes for the PDP11 based UNIX,
which evolved into 2BSD (which is still alive and under development
as 2.11BSD.)

	There are many interesting twists and turns on the UNIX
linages over the years.  It can be fun to go exploring in them
and learning what happened.  It is great fun to listen to Dennis
Richtie speak on the topic, as well as other members of the
early eras.  I've had the pleasure of listening to Dennis a
number of times in recent years, usually at a USENIX conference,
which Dennis (and others of the early days) still attend
regulary.

--
Eric Schnoebelen		eric at cirr.com		http://www.cirr.com
	"Ford, If I were to ask where in the hell we are, would I
		 regret it?" -- Arther Dent, HHGG