[TUHS] Re: Fwd: [simh] Announcing the Open SIMH project

[Yeechang Lee <ylee@columbia.edu>]

David Arnold says:
> I think a similar pattern was true for many of my era (late
> 80’s/early 90’s). It was quite a bit easier to get a Linux system
> running while retaining a DOS, Windows or Minix system as a backup,
> and so that was how it evolved.
>
> It had nothing (directly) to do with the legal issues.

This is consistent with my experience. Until 1999 I used SunOS, then Solaris, as both student and student employee of Columbia's computing group. But I doubt that I would have installed SunOS at home even if free.

Linux, on the other hand, was seemingly everywhere: Shelves of books (some bundling a CD-ROM of some distribution) at bookstores, _Linux Journal_, Usenet discussions, online HOWTOs, others around me installing Linux at home and at work. BSD? It didn't get 10% of the mindshare.

Maybe that was a result of litigation, but I can 100% say for sure that my choosing in 1995 to go with Red Hat 2.1 for a brand new Pentium had nothing directly to do with any BSD-related litigation, because I wasn't aware of any such in the first place.

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