[9fans] from slashdot

[9fans] from slashdot

[andrey mirtchovski]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/2225215


Peter Salus over at UnixReview.com is reporting that AT&T Department 1127, responsible for creating and maintaining Unix, has been officially disbanded. The article provides an interesting "where are they now?" list of the original authors of Unix.


and the article itself:

http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9846/ur0508l/ur0508l.html

text:

Dept.  1127: going, Going, GONE!  by Peter H. Salus

In 1969, UNIX was created at Bell Labs.

For decades, the source of the AT&T dialect of UNIX came from the
researches of workers in department 1127.

When the "Baby Bells" split from "Ma Bell," department 1127 survived.
When AT&T and Lucent split, 1127 survived.

But the new reorg at Bell Labs finally breaks up what's left of 1127
entirely.  Theory people will go to one place, systems people to
another, I'm told.  I'm not sure what happens to those who fall in
neither camp.  There was no malice, so far as I can tell — just an
administrative reorg forced by recent cutbacks and layoffs and
departures that left the whole research area with too many managers
and too few researchers.

Ken Thompson retired to California.  Brian Kernighan is a Professor at
Princeton.  Doug McIlroy is a Professor at Dartmouth.  Rob Pike and
Dave Presotto and Sean Dorward are at Google.  Tom Duff is at Pixar.
Phil Winterbottom is CTO at Entrisphere.  Gerard Holzmann is at
NASA/JPL Lab for Reliable Software.  Bob Flandrena is at Morgan
Stanley.

To the best of my knowledge, Dennis Ritchie and Howard Trickey remain,
enisled.  A former employee at 1127 remarked:

    "My take is that 1127 probably reached Schiavo status when Rob,
    Presotto, et al.  fled west to Google.  "But it's still sad to see
    the final demise, both of a particular institution and as a
    further nail in the coffin of the sort of research environment
    Bell Labs once represented."

That may be the worst effect.  DEC Labs are gone.  XEROX PARC
transmogrified into "Palo Alto Research Center Inc." on 4 January
2002.  It's a waning of research potential.

Ave atque vale, guys.  "And thanks for all the fish."

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Tim Newsham]

> http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9846/ur0508l/ur0508l.html

Does this have any impact on Jim and Russ?
Will this affect the sources and web infrastructure at all?

Tim Newsham
http://www.lava.net/~newsham/

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Sape Mullender]

> and the article itself:
> 
> http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9846/ur0508l/ur0508l.html
> 
> text:
> 
> Dept.  1127: going, Going, GONE!  by Peter H. Salus
> 
> In 1969, UNIX was created at Bell Labs.
> 
> For decades, the source of the AT&T dialect of UNIX came from the
> researches of workers in department 1127.
> 
> When the "Baby Bells" split from "Ma Bell," department 1127 survived.
> When AT&T and Lucent split, 1127 survived.
> 
> But the new reorg at Bell Labs finally breaks up what's left of 1127
> entirely.  Theory people will go to one place, systems people to
> another, I'm told.  I'm not sure what happens to those who fall in
> neither camp.  There was no malice, so far as I can tell — just an
> administrative reorg forced by recent cutbacks and layoffs and
> departures that left the whole research area with too many managers
> and too few researchers.

1127 ceased to exist some time ago.  The department was renamed and
got a much longer number which, of course, I can no longer remember.
The current split of what's left of 1127 is not considered to be a big deal
by most members of the department.  There have always been many
interdepartmental collaborations, so 1127 has always been more of a
management entity than a group/club/fraternity.

The big blow to our group came when Lucent shrunk to one fifth of its
original size and it became clear there was much less room for free
research.  Thus operating systems research became too
far removed from Lucent's core business to allow it to continue.

Nevertheless, Plan 9 is alive and reasonably well as our current vehicle
for wireless systems research.  Plan 9 has gone embedded (but rest
assured, all our wireless software runs in user space, using Plan 9's
real-time scheduler to make sure it runs when it needs to.

Using Plan 9, wireless code becomes useful in a fraction of the time
that code can be made to run on all those commercial embedded
operating systems (which I do not care to mention) and also much
quicker than on Linux which I am sorry to say is just too large and
illegible.

> Ken Thompson retired to California.  Brian Kernighan is a Professor at
> Princeton.  Doug McIlroy is a Professor at Dartmouth.  Rob Pike and
> Dave Presotto and Sean Dorward are at Google.  Tom Duff is at Pixar.
> Phil Winterbottom is CTO at Entrisphere.  Gerard Holzmann is at
> NASA/JPL Lab for Reliable Software.  Bob Flandrena is at Morgan
> Stanley.

In addition, Sean Quinlan went to Google and Peter Weinberger ended
up there too.

> To the best of my knowledge, Dennis Ritchie and Howard Trickey remain,
> enisled.  A former employee at 1127 remarked:
> 
>     "My take is that 1127 probably reached Schiavo status when Rob,
>     Presotto, et al.  fled west to Google.  "But it's still sad to see
>     the final demise, both of a particular institution and as a
>     further nail in the coffin of the sort of research environment
>     Bell Labs once represented."

That was not a very nice thing to say.  There are some fairly capable
people left at Lucent although they may not be working on general
purpose operating systems.  There still is a lot of fun working on
other systems issues — wireless, in my case.

> That may be the worst effect.  DEC Labs are gone.  XEROX PARC
> transmogrified into "Palo Alto Research Center Inc." on 4 January
> 2002.  It's a waning of research potential.
> 
> Ave atque vale, guys.  "And thanks for all the fish."

	Sape

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Vester Thacker]

On 8/17/05, Sape Mullender <sape@plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:

> That was not a very nice thing to say.  There are some fairly capable
> people left at Lucent although they may not be working on general
> purpose operating systems.  There still is a lot of fun working on
> other systems issues — wireless, in my case.

I concur that statement was in poor taste. 

Thanks for the update. Many of us were concerned.

--vester

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Sape Mullender]

>> http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=9846/ur0508l/ur0508l.html
> 
> Does this have any impact on Jim and Russ?
> Will this affect the sources and web infrastructure at all?

No.

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Charles Forsyth]

> Ken Thompson retired to California.

he is still listed at www.entrisphere.com, so perhaps he still
writes the odd line of code

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Skip Tavakkolian]

>> Ken Thompson retired to California.
> 
> he is still listed at www.entrisphere.com, so perhaps he still
> writes the odd line of code

brucee was kind enough to share some of his memories of
the labs and of Ken. I understand when the man says something,
every word is a pearl.

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Sape Mullender]

>>>I don't anticipate any change to the sources and web infrastructure.
> 
> i thought the more important thing would be
> what might happen to the espresso machine.

Don't worry about that.  We will hang on to that if it's the last thing we do.

	Sape
	

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Eric Van Hensbergen]

On 8/18/05, Nigel Roles <nigel@9fs.org> wrote:
> C H Forsyth wrote:
> 
> >>>I don't anticipate any change to the sources and web infrastructure.
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >i thought the more important thing would be
> >what might happen to the espresso machine.
> >
> >
> >
> Yes, a magnificent beast. I guess the best approach would be to make
> a key component of a proposed wireless infrastructure in need of
> research.
> 

The old girl was sounding kinda clanky when I visited a couple months
ago, but still put out a damn fine cup of coffee.  So good in fact
that I finally stopped complaining to our Lab Director about the lack
of a good machine at IBM, and just went out and bought one.

        -eric

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Joel Salomon]

On 8/18/05, Nigel Roles <nigel@9fs.org> wrote:
> C H Forsyth wrote:
> >i thought the more important thing would be
> >what might happen to the espresso machine.
> >
> Yes, a magnificent beast. I guess the best approach would be to make
> a key component of a proposed wireless infrastructure in need of
> research.

Give it a reference implementation of RFC 2324
<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2324.html>.

--Joel

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Nigel Roles]

C H Forsyth wrote:

>>>I don't anticipate any change to the sources and web infrastructure.
>>>      
>>>
>
>i thought the more important thing would be
>what might happen to the espresso machine.
>
>  
>
Yes, a magnificent beast. I guess the best approach would be to make
a key component of a proposed wireless infrastructure in need of
research.

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[C H Forsyth]

>>I don't anticipate any change to the sources and web infrastructure.

i thought the more important thing would be
what might happen to the espresso machine.

Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Trickey, Howard W (Howard)]

> Does this have any impact on Jim and Russ?
> Will this affect the sources and web infrastructure at all

Sape already answered this, but let me just confirm.
Jim and Russ (as consultant) continue to have a welcome home in Bell Labs in a new "Computing Systems Research" department that I will lead in a larger center whose mission is software in various forms (under Sid Ahuja). We will try to keep the 1127 spirit alive in its new home.

I don't anticipate any change to the sources and web infrastructure.

I also agree with everything else Sape said in his longer message responding to the article.

- Howard Trickey