[TUHS] Re: NFS 40th anniversary event

["Charles H. Sauer (he/him)" <sauer@technologists.com>]

On 8/13/2025 7:31 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 10:18:34AM -0400, Dan Cross wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 10:00 AM Douglas McIlroy
>> <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>> I was always sorry that Peter Weinberger's RFS never made it outside
>>> Bell Labs. It allowed networking between separately administered
>>> systems by mapping UIDs.
>>
>> I believe it did?  If I recall correctly, it was available with System
>> V, though perhaps I am misremembering.
>>
>> I have no doubt that RFS was technically superior to NFS, but Sun had
>> non-technical market advantages. Assuming that I am remembering
>> correctly, I suspect it was unsuccessful commercially for two reasons:
>>
>> 1. Sun gave NFS (and the associated RPC layer) away for free, under a
>> particularly liberal license, which lead to lots of interoperability
>> (Larry's and Dave's comments notwithstanding). I suspect by the time
>> RFS was available, it was much more expensive and less interoperable
>> across heterogeneous systems.
> 
> The NFS reference code was licensed under NDA with some cost involved
> according to Rick Macklem who wrote the NFS code in 4.3BSD-Reno.
> 
> Rick Macklem post to comp.protocols.nfs Aug 6, 1999
> https://groups.google.com/g/comp.protocols.nfs/c/npQbxPe_ZeQ/m/Z_yQcsh56mkJ
> 
> The userland RPC part was under different terms.
> 
> "Sun will publish the source code for the user-level libraries that
> implement RPC and XDR."
> 
> Bill Shannon post to net.unix-wizards Jan 13, 1985
> https://groups.google.com/g/net.unix-wizards/c/PkJdZgCbrC4/m/u0kt3eeFSt4J
> 
> Sun RPC sources were later posted to mod.sources and included
> on USENIX tapes.

That's consistent with my memory. In particular, if I recall correctly, 
when I was still at IBM and we wanted to include NFS in AIX 3, it was 
challenging ($$$) to negotiate a satisfactory license for NFS, but we 
eventually obtained a license to include NFS in all IBM products (not 
just AIX).
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