Re: [9fans] from slashdot

[Sape Mullender <sape@plan9.bell-labs.com>]

> 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