From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 20:44:44 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200219044444.GO30841@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m1j49OT-0036tRC@more.local>
On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 12:22:56PM -0800, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> At the times I referred to the lack of freely available AT&T source code
> was extremely limiting in how people viewed the availability of such
> "add-on" tools for Unix -- including the C compiler!
This wasn't just an AT&T thing, Sun and SGI and everyone charged for their
C compiler. I sort of get it, writing a good compiler is up there with
writing a good kernel in effort, not quite the same, but probably the
2nd hardest thing to do. So the compiler people cost a lot, companies
wanted to get that cost back.
It was stupid. Having a free compiler meant that more people would
write apps for your platform. It should have been a loss leader.
> > For folks running binary only systems from Masscomp/Sun/DEC/HP/IBM and the
> > like, it is possible it was different.
>
> It was _very_ different.
>
> If you weren't out in the trenches of end-user Unix-based systems at the
> time it may not have been as obvious as to just how restrictive it was
> to have proprietary fee-based licensing of such add-on software. Most
> end-users couldn't even pay their vendors for ditroff -- their vendors
> didn't want to have to license it from AT&T, even when they had
> advocates inside the companies (e.g. I did some work supporting software
> for a couple such vendors and was never able to convince them). Some,
> as you mention, were all-in, but it wasn't until UNIX System V Release 4
> became more widely available that systems based on it were more likely
> to have ditroff, and sometimes (though much more rarely) the "new" dpost
> post-processor was also included. I don't know if there were different
> licensing terms for SysVr4 or not. Don't get me started on how hard it
> also was to get some end users to buy a C compiler too.
Yep, lived through this as well. I fought with Sun to make more stuff
free for developers, it just didn't make sense to not do that but the
powers that were didn't get it.
One thing that Sun did do, probably in spite of itself, was fund
Michael Tiemann's work on C++. He worked out some deal that that
work would be open source and he pretty much made GNU C++ work
for some definition of work (C++ is a mess).
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-02-19 4:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 83+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-02-17 15:20 Doug McIlroy
2020-02-17 16:47 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-17 18:09 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 18:39 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-17 21:16 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 22:50 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 23:22 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-18 0:56 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-18 3:33 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 7:27 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-18 0:03 ` Richard Salz
2020-02-18 0:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-18 0:54 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-18 1:05 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-18 7:40 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-18 7:45 ` arnold
2020-02-18 20:24 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-18 11:22 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-18 12:28 ` arnold
2020-02-18 12:49 ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2020-02-18 13:23 ` arnold
2020-02-18 15:11 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 15:28 ` arnold
2020-02-18 15:36 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-18 15:43 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-18 15:52 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 16:40 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-02-18 18:39 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-18 21:26 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 21:29 ` Wesley Parish
2020-02-19 4:52 ` [TUHS] Open source or free software? (was: man Macro Package and pdfmark) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-18 15:48 ` [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark Clem Cole
2020-02-18 16:02 ` Chet Ramey
2020-02-18 16:28 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 17:49 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-18 21:46 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-18 16:47 ` Henry Bent
2020-02-18 20:22 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-19 4:44 ` Larry McVoy [this message]
2020-02-19 18:01 ` Earl Baugh
2020-02-19 18:12 ` Emile Bye
2020-02-19 20:18 ` Michael Huff
2020-02-19 20:34 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-19 21:09 ` Henry Bent
2020-02-20 7:27 ` arnold
2020-02-20 7:43 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 13:15 ` Dan Cross
2020-02-20 16:23 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-20 16:34 ` Arthur Krewat
2020-02-20 17:06 ` Al Kossow
2020-02-20 17:24 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-20 17:48 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 20:10 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-20 20:18 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 16:48 ` Nemo
2020-02-20 17:00 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-20 19:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-20 23:45 ` Doug McIntyre
2020-02-21 0:18 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-21 1:14 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-02-21 8:19 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-21 8:17 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-21 10:17 ` arnold
2020-02-21 10:37 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-21 18:34 ` Heinz Lycklama
2020-02-21 18:59 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-21 21:10 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-21 21:46 ` David Barto
2020-02-22 6:48 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 10:42 ` Al Kossow
2020-02-22 11:01 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 16:38 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-22 18:11 ` arnold
2020-02-22 23:41 ` [TUHS] Mini-UNIX Warren Toomey
2020-02-22 11:08 ` [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 16:40 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-22 16:46 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-22 17:51 ` Heinz Lycklama
2020-02-17 18:55 Noel Chiappa
2020-02-17 20:13 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-17 21:06 ` CHARLES KESTER
2020-02-18 0:36 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 13:13 Don Hopkins
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