From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2020 17:56:09 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Standing on the shoulders of giants, free or not In-Reply-To: References: <20200218225824.GB152025@mit.edu> <20200219015446.GC30841@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20200219075609.GA16943@minnie.tuhs.org> I'll put in my own $0.05 with my story about why TUHS was created. I fell in love with Unix in the late 80s, first on a Pyramid 90x running OSx (dual AT&T/BSD userland), followed by a sysadmin stint on the Pyramid and a Sun 2 box running SunOS. No access to source code, except for what I could download from the Usenet comp.sources.* newsgroups. Then the university I worked for purchased Minix 1.1 and I was a pig in mud: I could look at the source, apply the patches from the Minix newsgroup and rebuild the entire system. Still no access to Unix source code. I took a new job (early 90s on Sun 3s) and started to pester people to try and get a copy of V7 Unix, as I knew I wouldn't be able to get the SunOS source. Luckily, someone sent me an RL02 disk image with (modified) V7 on it. Then I found out that my new employer (UNSW) actually had a Unix source license. It was at that point that I began the quest to get the "ancient" Unix sources put under a free/cheap licence. Cheers, Warren