From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: wes.parish@paradise.net.nz (Wesley Parish) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2017 13:46:40 +1300 (NZDT) Subject: [TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX") In-Reply-To: References: <20170314224547.GB14659@naleco.com> <20170315192815.GA15120@naleco.com> Message-ID: <1489625200.58c9e07028fee@www.paradise.net.nz> One of the problems was the hardware system price ratio to software system price. When you could get a 486 PC for $5-10k and the SysV source license (for 4.3BSD!) was $100k, it seemed rather monstrously disproportionate. :) This mismatch didn't exist in the Minicomputer world, where a VAX cost rather more than $5-10k and the price for a source license was thus not disproportionate. FWVLIW Wesley Parish Quoting Clem Cole : > BTW Josh, I am trying to be respectful here. I suspect you are tad > younger > I am and your early introduction into UNIX was on the WINTEL platform, > not > on the DEC systems like mine. So, if I'm going to make a guess you were > not in a position when you were introduced to be able to get access to > the > sources. > > So in your experience the UNIX source were closed to you personally > (and > many others). I get that. But it does not change the fact it, there > were > available and there open and were not a secret. Which was very > different > from many of "closed" systems (says Cisco, or much of the other > infrastructure) of the day. They always have been. Even System V. > > It was quite easy to get source if you were willing (and could pay). > I'm > not suggesting that it was easy for you could and I understand that > frustration. I personally would not have been able to pay for the > licenses, but I was being employed by firms that could and valued my > abilities, so they did. This was also true for many educational > institutions. > > Sun and DEC actually were quite liberal with their source licenses, > because > AT&T had been. They had to be also - because their customer required > it. > > The point is there is a difference between "open" and "free." There are > a > lot of things that are open and we can look at but not touch or have > the > wearwithall to modify. But that does not change their openness - we can > still (and do) learn from them. > > Linus and many of us learned because UNIX (the ideas) and the basic > implementations were open. We talked about them, they were well > specified. > We wrote application that relied on those ideas, APIs etc. And Linus, > Andy Tannenbaum and Plaguer before them reimplemented those ideas and > created clones. *Unix was and is "open" and the implementations were > and > are available.* The problem for many is the price to look at the > implementations - that I grant. And for many, for some of those > implementations, can be high. But it does not make them "closed." > > The effect may seem that way to you, but it was not and is not the > same. > All, I'm asking you to say, is that traditional UNIX implementations > such > as System V were not "Free and Open," unlike Linux some of the other > Unix > clones. And that make all the difference. > > They were and still are open. > > On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Josh Good wrote: > > > On 2017 Mar 14, 21:11, Clem Cole wrote: > > > > > > My point is that you (and many others) equate "open" and "free" - I > ask > > > you to please not make that error. Open means we can talk about it > and > > > share it, see it. Which is exactly what we did "back in the day". > But > > as > > > people pointed out you had to pay AT&T to be a member of the UNIX > club if > > > you were commercial, although any University type could be apart > for > > free. > > > > What UNIX for PC in the '90s had the option to buy a source code > license > > for that specific version, so that PC hackers could write drivers for > > their hardware and tune the kernel internals to their liking, or be > able > > to fix themselves a bug in the serial port driver, etc.? > > > > Certainly not OpenServer, not UnixWare nor SCO Xenix. Did DELL Unix > > offered a payware source code license for their product? I'm not > aware > > of such. > > > > From System V onwards, UNIX became closed source in what matters, > that > > is, the version running on your hardware and the version with the > drivers > > you are using (unless you were an employee at IBM, DEC, HP or SUN > running > > propietary hardware and happened to be in the right group). > > > > It is obvious to me that RMS's GNU movement was aimed at solving that > > very problem. And if that was a problem, then the "UNIX openness" you > > talk about does not seem to have been very practical at all. At > least, > > it was totally useless to PC hackers, like Linus Torvalds - he had to > > write his own UNIX, because he was not able to get any UNIX source > code > > he could readily compile and run on his i386. > > > > -- > > Josh Good > > > > > "I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor, Method for Guitar "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn