[Discuss] Old Unix humor/history "The Unix Cult"

[bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)]

"The Unix Cult"
Peter Collinson (1986)

"This paper was written for the Winter Usenix in 1986. David Tilbrook
had arranged a `history of UNIX' day, with speakers on different
aspects of what UNIX meant. He asked me to do `the social side'. Like
an idiot, I accepted. It was hard to think of a way of illustrating
what it all meant without being crass. So, on a long car journey, the
idea of the paper was born. I think that some of the jokes did work
and there are one or two really good phrases. Take a look."
http://www.hillside.co.uk/articles/cult.html

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Commentary from Bill (aka wdr & n1vux) --

I was using Unix then, lived through the last few years of that
history and knew the rest of it as our pre-history.
(First Unix i used was PWB (after Bell v.6, before Bell/ATT v.7) on
11/45, quickly upgraded to BSD3 on 11/70; and soon thereafter our
department bought a share of a small early VAX with BSD4. Much
upgrades were done there as usage grew ... )

It's recognizable history, but written before Gnu (let along
Linux/Gnu) was obviously viable.
(Gnu manifesto had been declared, but before the first coherent GCC
and usertools release.)

(Since Dennis Ritchie was my Scotch and Internet-pre-history mentor
MAP's officemate until Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS at MIT LCS/MAC,
MAP always refereed to Unix as Dennis's idiot child. Since dmr had
said Unix was one of whatever Multics was many of, to refute the
"Multics castrated" obvious pun, this was not as untoward as one might
think.  The Aunt that Dennis roomed with while on MULTICS project was
a volunteer at The Computer Museum Boston with me. Small world!)