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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. -- -- Jerry Feldman <[hidden email]> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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