[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Marc Rochkind]

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In another thread there's been some discussion of Coherent. I just came
across this very detailed history, just posted last month. There's much
more to it than I knew.

https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-mark-williams-company

Marc

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Heinz Lycklama]

Interesting little history about Coherent. They were
one of a few companies building UNIX-like systems
from scratch without using UNIX source code in the
early 1980's. Robert Schwartz represented the Mark
Williams Company on the /usr/group standards
effort resulting in the /usr/group Standard in 1984.
Robert was very insistent that members of the
/usr/group standards group did not have to be
UNIX source licensees.

Heinz

On 3/14/2024 8:45 PM, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> In another thread there's been some discussion of Coherent. I just 
> came across this very detailed history, just posted last month. 
> There's much more to it than I knew.
>
> https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-mark-williams-company
>
> Marc
>

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Rob Pike]

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Another detail. There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen, and
we (127) were asked to find ways to test, absent their source, whether they
had just stolen our source and built the binaries. It was soon concluded
that there were enough details different to definitively say that at least
most of the work was done in a clean room, as advertised, but the piece I
liked best is that their PPT(1) program (ASCII art showing a paper tape
rendering the argument text) did not include the original, and just
discovered, bug that mispunched, if I remember right, the letter 'R'.

-rob


On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 4:16 PM Heinz Lycklama <heinz@osta.com> wrote:

> Interesting little history about Coherent. They were
> one of a few companies building UNIX-like systems
> from scratch without using UNIX source code in the
> early 1980's. Robert Schwartz represented the Mark
> Williams Company on the /usr/group standards
> effort resulting in the /usr/group Standard in 1984.
> Robert was very insistent that members of the
> /usr/group standards group did not have to be
> UNIX source licensees.
>
> Heinz
>
> On 3/14/2024 8:45 PM, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> > In another thread there's been some discussion of Coherent. I just
> > came across this very detailed history, just posted last month.
> > There's much more to it than I knew.
> >
> > https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-mark-williams-company
> >
> > Marc
> >
>
>

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dan Cross]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 3:00 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> Another detail. There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen, and we (127) were asked to find ways to test, absent their source, whether they had just stolen our source and built the binaries. It was soon concluded that there were enough details different to definitively say that at least most of the work was done in a clean room, as advertised, but the piece I liked best is that their PPT(1) program (ASCII art showing a paper tape rendering the argument text) did not include the original, and just discovered, bug that mispunched, if I remember right, the letter 'R'.

Along those lines, Dennis Ritchie wrote up a summary of the event on
USENET; apparently in 1998 (I had no idea it was this late):
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ

COHERENT (version 4) was my introduction to Unix (or Unix-like)
systems. I bought it from an ad in the back of "Computer Shopper" or
one of those things; my first inkling that it was rather different
from actual Unix was that the `lc` command they had picked up
(probably from York or Toronto) was not present on SunOS or 4.3BSD.
Similarly, the manual was rather different: it didn't have the usual
sectioned Unix manual, but rather an alphabetical "Lexicon" and
chapters discussing specific topics (editors, UUCP, etc); in
retrospect I thought their manual and its format was rather nice; it
was certainly well-written and beautifully typeset. Regardless of
that, I pretty quickly left COHERENT behind for NetBSD.

COHERENT was an early casualty of Linux's success, and I don't think
it ever occupied much more than a niche, but it was an interesting
system. I've booted it a few times under emulation out of nostalgia.

I had a very small hand in the opening of their sources. I knew that
Stephen Ness had archived copies, at the request of Bob Swartz, and I
wrote to him about the system overall and ended with something like,
"if those sources are available, I'd love to see them."  He responded
that due to my message, he'd corresponded with Swartz, who had agreed
to release the sources under the 3 clause BSD license.

Incidentally, Robert Swartz was the father of the late Aaron Swartz.

        - Dan C.

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 4:16 PM Heinz Lycklama <heinz@osta.com> wrote:
>>
>> Interesting little history about Coherent. They were
>> one of a few companies building UNIX-like systems
>> from scratch without using UNIX source code in the
>> early 1980's. Robert Schwartz represented the Mark
>> Williams Company on the /usr/group standards
>> effort resulting in the /usr/group Standard in 1984.
>> Robert was very insistent that members of the
>> /usr/group standards group did not have to be
>> UNIX source licensees.
>>
>> Heinz
>>
>> On 3/14/2024 8:45 PM, Marc Rochkind wrote:
>> > In another thread there's been some discussion of Coherent. I just
>> > came across this very detailed history, just posted last month.
>> > There's much more to it than I knew.
>> >
>> > https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-mark-williams-company
>> >
>> > Marc
>> >
>>

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dan Cross]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 9:03 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 3:00 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Another detail. There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen, and we (127) were asked to find ways to test, absent their source, whether they had just stolen our source and built the binaries. It was soon concluded that there were enough details different to definitively say that at least most of the work was done in a clean room, as advertised, but the piece I liked best is that their PPT(1) program (ASCII art showing a paper tape rendering the argument text) did not include the original, and just discovered, bug that mispunched, if I remember right, the letter 'R'.
>
> Along those lines, Dennis Ritchie wrote up a summary of the event on
> USENET; apparently in 1998 (I had no idea it was this late):
> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ

Sorry, just to clarify: I meant I had no idea Dennis's posting about
the event happened so late; by 1998 USENET was basically overrun by
spam. Obviously, the inspection trip had happened much earlier.

        - Dan C.

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Marc Rochkind]

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I have already posted this in another thread (on non-BTL C compilers), but
it's more relevant here. My 1985 review of Coherent for BYTE Magazine:

https://www.mrochkind.com/mrochkind/docs/Byte-Pick-Coherent-Theos.pdf

I see that I went into some detail. For example:

"Of the 77 requests in the Version 7 nroff. only 31 are present in Coherent
(the most useful 31. however)."

And this, although I'm sure there were incompatibilities I didn't uncover:

"Coherent has all the Version 7 system calls except nice (which sets a
process's priority). and they seem to be used in the same way. It should be
easy to port C programs between Coherent and UNIX Version 7."

On the whole my review was very positive.

Marc

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 7:43 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 9:03 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 3:00 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Another detail. There was lawyerly concern about the code being
> stolen, and we (127) were asked to find ways to test, absent their source,
> whether they had just stolen our source and built the binaries. It was soon
> concluded that there were enough details different to definitively say that
> at least most of the work was done in a clean room, as advertised, but the
> piece I liked best is that their PPT(1) program (ASCII art showing a paper
> tape rendering the argument text) did not include the original, and just
> discovered, bug that mispunched, if I remember right, the letter 'R'.
> >
> > Along those lines, Dennis Ritchie wrote up a summary of the event on
> > USENET; apparently in 1998 (I had no idea it was this late):
> >
> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ
>
> Sorry, just to clarify: I meant I had no idea Dennis's posting about
> the event happened so late; by 1998 USENET was basically overrun by
> spam. Obviously, the inspection trip had happened much earlier.
>
>         - Dan C.
>


-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Paul Winalski]

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On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 3:00 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Another detail. There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen
>
> There were similar issues at DEC when we ported VAX Fortran to Ultrix.
Especially with the port of the VMS linker, the piece of the project I
worked on.  We had a member of the Ultrix team writing the code to convert
VMS object file debug information to a.out STABs, but other than that the
team doing the port stayed clear of the Ultrix sources.

-Paul W.

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 08:10:31AM -0600, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> I have already posted this in another thread (on non-BTL C compilers), but
> it's more relevant here. My 1985 review of Coherent for BYTE Magazine:
> 
> https://www.mrochkind.com/mrochkind/docs/Byte-Pick-Coherent-Theos.pdf

It's interesting that it says that $495 for Coherent was a good deal.
(That's over $1700 in 2024 dollars.)  On the other hand, in 1984, the
New York Times reported that IBM had "cut the price of the PC/XT" to
$2,520 for a machine with 256k RAM, a single disk drive, and a
monochrome display.  (That's over $7400 in 2024 dollars.)

It's amazing how much hardware and software has gotten cheaper in the
past four decades!

					- Ted

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Douglas McIlroy]

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Yes. The lawyer was walking on air when he got back to the office to tell
about it.

If I may digress into a personal story, somewhat pre-Unix. (I was nine
years old.)  I remember my father showing exactly the same excitement when
he returned from testifying as an expert witness for the plaintiff in a
near-electrocution case that left the victim paralyzed. A visitor touring a
substation had pointed to something to ask what it was, and got hit with a
33,000-volt arc. The defense lawyer tried to discredit the expert, a
professor who formerly had been an electrical engineer for a utility
company.

Lawyer: Have you ever designed a 33,000-volt indoor substation?
Prof: I have.
Lawyer, changing tactics after an unexpected answer: Do you recognize this
book?
Prof: I do.
Some discussion describing the book, an  inventory of utility facilities,
for the benefit of the jury.
Lawyer, with a hint of triumph: The inventory shows that your former
employer has no such substation.
Prof: Yes, after a few years we decided it was too dangerous and
decommissioned it.
...
Lawyer, showing a photo of the busbar that arced: Wouldn't someone have to
stretch unusually high to get near to it?
Prof: No. That picture was taken exactly [some measurement like 2'3"] from
the floor.
Lawyer: Do you mean to tell me you know where the picture was taken from,
without having been present when it was taken?
Prof, pointing to a blown-up engineering drawing on the courtroom wall:
This horizontal pipe is seen end-on in the photo. It  is dimensioned as
being 2'3" from the floor.

The plaintiff won.

Doug

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 8:28 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
> <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen.
> >
> > Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike
> programs. A quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our
> C source. Coincidentally, DEC had hired this person as a consultant in
> connection with cross-licensing negotiations with AT&T. Socializing at the
> end of a day's negotiations,  our lawyer somehow managed to turn the
> conversation to software piracy. He discussed  a case he was working on,
> and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled
> out a page disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to
> the consultant.
> >
> > After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary
> was obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the
> lawyer asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The
> consultant did not attend the following day's meeting.
>
> Fantastic story, and talk about a true "Perry Mason" moment for the
> lawyer. I'm sure it was also fertile material for stories at cocktail
> parties for the rest of his days.
>
>         - Dan C.
>

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dan Cross]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
> > There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen.
>
> Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike programs. A quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our C source. Coincidentally, DEC had hired this person as a consultant in connection with cross-licensing negotiations with AT&T. Socializing at the end of a day's negotiations,  our lawyer somehow managed to turn the conversation to software piracy. He discussed  a case he was working on, and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled out a page disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to the consultant.
>
> After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary was obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the lawyer asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The consultant did not attend the following day's meeting.

Fantastic story, and talk about a true "Perry Mason" moment for the
lawyer. I'm sure it was also fertile material for stories at cocktail
parties for the rest of his days.

        - Dan C.

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dave Horsfall]

[ Slowly going OT ]

On Sat, 16 Mar 2024, Rich Salz wrote:

> This was common practice among map publishers, called a trap street.

Yep; I've seen one myself.  A dead-end (where someone I knew lived, just 
right behind where I used to), suddenly vanished from one edition; one 
complaint later, and it reappeared in the next edition.

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Rich Salz]

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>
>
> . The Bells would deliberately put in bogus listings to see if the
> non-Bell phone books were stealing their data.
>

This was common practice among map publishers, called a trap street.

>

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Marc Rochkind]

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"...  literally bug-compatible ..."

When I used to work for the phone company.... wait, I mean Bell Labs ... I
was in a department (under Rudd Canaday!) that was building an application
to print phone books, so I got to learn a little about that side of the
business. The Bells would deliberately put in bogus listings to see if the
non-Bell phone books were stealing their data. (In the one case I was told
about, they were not. The Bell company had no idea how they were getting
the data.)

Marc

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 4:28 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Mar 2024, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary
> > was obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the
> > lawyer asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The
> > consultant did not attend the following day's meeting.
>
> Does anyone remember the case of the program that was literally
> bug-compatible?  That's mostly because the source had been pirated; the
> bug was obscure enough that it was unlikely to have been reproduced
> independently...
>
> -- Dave
>


-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2024, Douglas McIlroy wrote:

[...]

> After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary 
> was obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the 
> lawyer asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The 
> consultant did not attend the following day's meeting.

Does anyone remember the case of the program that was literally 
bug-compatible?  That's mostly because the source had been pirated; the 
bug was obscure enough that it was unlikely to have been reproduced 
independently...

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 05:23:44PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen.
> 
> Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike
> programs. A quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our
> C source. Coincidentally, DEC had hired this person as a consultant in
> connection with cross-licensing negotiations with AT&T. Socializing at
> the end of a day's negotiations,  our lawyer somehow managed to turn the
> conversation to software piracy. He discussed  a case he was working on,
> and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled
> out a page disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to
> the consultant.
> 
> After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary was
> obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the lawyer
> asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The consultant
> did not attend the following day's meeting.

Oh come on, you can leave that juicy story there.  What happened next?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat