From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: cowan@ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 19:13:29 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20060517231329.GF13940@ccil.org> Stuart, Jon scripsit: > Perhaps an OSF1-"lite", on par with 4.4BSD-Lite which had the > copyrighted code removed, would be possible to get released. That was only possible because of the massive effort to rewrite all things AT&T out of the BSD source. > All of this, the closing of UNX, the loss of the VAX and now the dying > of the Alpha chip, is very disheartening. Although I'm lucky enough to > have access to 5 VAXen (running 4.3 BSD UNIX and one running Ultrix4), > it's tough for anyone to learn and play with this stuff, because they > are becoming so scarce (you can by a VaxStation/MicroVax on eBay, but > these will only run Ultrix and not 4.3 BSD, unfortunately). On come the emulators. > I guess I'm somewhat nostoglic about old UNIX, and I enjoy seeing it's > evolution. That's why whenever I'm able to view the source code of some > closed-source UNIX, it's very enjoyable to me. Old UNIX has a rustic > appeal to me. It's really "middle Unix" you are talking about. Old Unix and new Unix (and I don't agree that Linux/*BSD are not Unix) are both now open source. > It's unfortunate that it seems we must resign ourselves to a future of > x86-based OSs, such as Linux, or even Open/Free/NetBSD, which aren't > really UNIX (Linux definitely isn't, and the modern BSDs have changed > enough that they also aren't IMO). Unix is a local minimum in the design space. It can be reimplemented over and over. -- John Cowan cowan at ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan If he has seen farther than others, it is because he is standing on a stack of dwarves. --Mike Champion, describing Tim Berners-Lee (adapted)