Re: Linus Geek of the Week

["Jerry Feldman-2" <user=4@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:48:15 -0400 (EDT) 
[hidden email] wrote: 

> 
> Had BSD been available in the early 90s at the various "computer flea 
> markets," there would have been no reason to even start Linux. Linus would 
> have used BSD instead of MINIX, in fact, MINIX would not have been written 
> by Tannenbaum because he would have been able to continue to teach his 
> operating systems class on unix. 

This might be true. BSD was certainly available, but not free and not 
on PC.  In the 1980s there was SCO and a few others on the PC, but all 
were licensed by AT&T. 

> It may be more important to you *now* but, at the time when BSD's future 
> was in question and you couldn't get it without paying for an AT&T license 
> that had real stopping force. Seriously, BSD was "there" it was working, 
> it was mostly open, had AT&T NOT had the legal psychosis to think it could 
> steal the work of thousands of students and professors, Linux would have 
> no reason to exist. GNU, in fact, would not exist. The computer world 
> would have been completely different. Windows may not have even been made. 
> It is incalculable the effect that AT&T's move on BSD has had. 

I would not characterize AT&T trying to steal. They developed Unix, 
which was itself derived from Multics. They invented the C and C++ 
languages. In those days, the OpenSource movement was just getting 
started and proprietary software was essentially the norm. While 
Berkeley (Bill Joy et. al.) certainly did a lot of work on BSD Unix, 
but it was still part of Unix. After the settlement, there was a bit of 
work to cleanse the BSD trees of all AT&T encumbrances, but as I 
mentioned the suit was not just a copyright suit, it was on the look 
and feel. 


-- 
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Jerry Feldman <[hidden email]> 
Boston Linux and Unix 
PGP key id: 537C5846 
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