From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dpeschel@eskimo.com (Derek Peschel) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 21:56:10 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] UNIX turns forty In-Reply-To: ; from newsham@lava.net on Fri, May 15, 2009 at 06:48:46AM -1000 References: Message-ID: <20090519215610.A10612@eskimo.com> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 06:48:46AM -1000, Tim Newsham wrote: > So when do the official celebrations begin? What's a good estimate > of the month and date in 1969 when it all began? Interesting question! And related questions -- When did the current start of the epoch get chosen? Were there any false starts or early changes? (I seem to recall reading about one change, moving forward by a year.) And were there ever any dates in the system that couldn't be correctly recorded, because the epoch started too late? The other question is what the official celebrations should celebrate. Personally, I'd chip in on a big cake with one candle for each year that a reasonable amount of UNIX source code was available. No way was UNIX ever open source in the modern sense, but it did set a precedent and things could have been much worse. When you consider the Bell System's normal attitude toward proprietary information, the UNIX sources look even more valuable. -- Derek