Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe"

    > a goal of a triplicated complete archive of the world's software
    > history, including both open source and proprietary code.  They report
    > holding 200TB of data already, covering 80 million code projects.

I should ask them if they have a copy of MERT!

Now that we have Multics, ITS, PDP-7 UNIX and UNIX V0, etc MERT (which may
have been the first micro-kernel - although perhaps THE gets that palm) is
perhaps the most significant 'missing' OS.

If not, what am I missing? The Berkeley Genie OS for the SDS? (Dunno if that's
been saved.) The THE system? (Ditto - although I know someone has saved the
last X8.) The Atlas OS?

     Noel

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Noel Chiappa writes:
> If not, what am I missing? The Berkeley Genie OS for the SDS? (Dunno
> if that's been saved.)

I think it has.

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[jsteve]

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I'd say TripOS.  There is some surce fragments but I never could get any BCPL to cross build anything.

Also Mach 1.x to 2.5

Sent from my Windows 10 Nokia Lumia 1520

From: Noel Chiappa
Sent: Sunday, 7 October 2018 9:05 AM
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Cc: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

    > From: "Nelson H. F. Beebe"

    > a goal of a triplicated complete archive of the world's software
    > history, including both open source and proprietary code.  They report
    > holding 200TB of data already, covering 80 million code projects.

I should ask them if they have a copy of MERT!

Now that we have Multics, ITS, PDP-7 UNIX and UNIX V0, etc MERT (which may
have been the first micro-kernel - although perhaps THE gets that palm) is
perhaps the most significant 'missing' OS.

If not, what am I missing? The Berkeley Genie OS for the SDS? (Dunno if that's
been saved.) The THE system? (Ditto - although I know someone has saved the
last X8.) The Atlas OS?

     Noel


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Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: jsteve

    > I'd say TripOS.  There is some surce fragments but I never could get any
    > BCPL to cross build anything.

I'm somewhat stunned to hear that, given that Martin Richards did both! What kind
of things are the compilers complaining about? (And I'm also kind of amazed that
Cambridge didn't make an effort to save Tripos.)

	  Noel

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[arnold]

jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote:

>     > From: jsteve
>
>     > I'd say TripOS.  There is some surce fragments but I never could get any
>     > BCPL to cross build anything.
>
> I'm somewhat stunned to hear that, given that Martin Richards did both! What kind
> of things are the compilers complaining about? (And I'm also kind of amazed that
> Cambridge didn't make an effort to save Tripos.)
>
> 	  Noel

Isn't Martin Richards still around?  Can't someone "just" ask him?
See https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/

Arnold

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Tony Finch]

arnold@skeeve.com <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>
> Isn't Martin Richards still around?  Can't someone "just" ask him?

There's a TRIPOS archive on his web pages; I don't know if there's
anything more comprehensive dating back to when it was being used in the
1980s.

He retired in 2007, though I think he can be found in his college if not
in the Computer Lab.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/newlabphotos/MR-retirement/

A few notes on the pictures:

Maurice Wilkes can be seen on the left in photo 1967.

Chris Cheney is on the left in photo 8317. Chris invented his eponymous
copying garbage collector algorithm when working on ALGOL 68 with
Steve Bourne.

The green door was preserved from the original Mathematical Laboratory
building that housed EDSAC and its successors until about 1970; the brass
plaque records the names of those who worked in the old building and
stuck around long enough to retire after Wilkes.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot@dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Paul McJones]

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> On Oct 6, 2018 ,jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote:
> 
> Date: Sat,  6 Oct 2018 21:04:59 -0400 (EDT)
> From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu <mailto:jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (Noel Chiappa)
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news
> Message-ID: <20181007010459.9098E18C096@mercury.lcs.mit.edu <mailto:20181007010459.9098E18C096@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>>
> 
> If not, what am I missing? The Berkeley Genie OS for the SDS? (Dunno if that's
> been saved.) The THE system? (Ditto - although I know someone has saved the
> last X8.) The Atlas OS?

The Computer History Museum’s Donald Knuth digital archive project  (http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726297 <http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726297>) contains a scan of a listing of the source code of the THE Operating System by Bron, Dijkstra, et al. The finding aid for the collection is here: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/KnuthDigitalArchive-Index.html <http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/KnuthDigitalArchive-Index.html> — scan down for “Source code of the THE Operating System”.

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[TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

I've just finished reading another article in the latest print issue
of Communications of the ACM that arrived in my mailbox earlier this
week:

	Jean-Fran{\c{c}}ois Abramatic, Roberto Di Cosmo, and Stefano Zacchiroli
	Viewpoint: Building the universal archive of source code
	Comm. ACM 61(20) 29--31 October 2018
	https://doi.org/10.1145/3183558
	https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3281635.3183558

I draw it to your attention to it because it has favorable mention of
the Computer History Museum, and of Diomidis Spinellis's work on the
Unix source code archive, described in his article

	A repository of Unix history and evolution
	Empirical Software Engineering 22(3) 1372--1404 June 2017
	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-016-9445-5
	https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-016-9445-5

The project that Abramatic describe is impressive: a goal of a
triplicated complete archive of the world's software history,
including both open source and proprietary code.  They report holding
200TB of data already, covering 80 million code projects.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Nigel Williams]

On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 11:01 AM Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote:
> The project that Abramatic describe is impressive: a goal of a
> triplicated complete archive of the world's software history...

They have a website too: https://www.softwareheritage.org/

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[William Corcoran]

Half the programmers in this world could not code themselves out of a brown paper bag.  Sounds more like a software sewer than a great work of art.  

Bill Corcoran  

> On Oct 6, 2018, at 8:08 PM, Nigel Williams <nw@retrocomputingtasmania.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 11:01 AM Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@math.utah.edu> wrote:
>> The project that Abramatic describe is impressive: a goal of a
>> triplicated complete archive of the world's software history...
> 
> They have a website too: https://www.softwareheritage.org/

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Andy Kosela]

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On Saturday, October 6, 2018, William Corcoran <wlc@jctaylor.com> wrote:

> Half the programmers in this world could not code themselves out of a
> brown paper bag.  Sounds more like a software sewer than a great work of
> art.
>
> Bill Corcoran
>


Exactly my thoughts too.  Code inflation[1] is a huge problem today.  There
was a day when one person could understand the whole UNIX kernel... now
with millions of lines of code in Linux and FreeBSD I don't think this is
possible anymore and definitely it is not fun.  That is why you see more
and more paid code in Linux -- who else would like to debug this bloated
monster it became just for fun... like back in the days.

Programming these days (especially in bussiness sector with projects
written in C++ or Java) is not fun and I feel sorry for those poor people
that must maintain such projects.

We need to come back to simple and minimalistic systems, otherwise we will
all be buried soon underneath terabytes of unmaintainable bloated code...

--Andy

[1] Code Inflation, Gerald J Holzmann
https://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2015/04/mso2015020010.pdf

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Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2018, William Corcoran wrote:

> Half the programmers in this world could not code themselves out of a 
> brown paper bag.  Sounds more like a software sewer than a great work of 
> art.

These days, anyone who can do VB etc can call themselves a programmer; in 
my day, you had to know PDP-11 or VAX assembler...  Or Z-80...

-- Dave (An ROF, i.e. a Retired Old Fart)

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Steve Nickolas]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2018, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> On Sun, 7 Oct 2018, William Corcoran wrote:
>
>> Half the programmers in this world could not code themselves out of a brown 
>> paper bag.  Sounds more like a software sewer than a great work of art.
>
> These days, anyone who can do VB etc can call themselves a programmer; in my 
> day, you had to know PDP-11 or VAX assembler...  Or Z-80...

I know 65C02, is that good enough? xD

-uso.

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Dave Horsfall]

>> These days, anyone who can do VB etc can call themselves a programmer; 
>> in my day, you had to know PDP-11 or VAX assembler...  Or Z-80...
>
> I know 65C02, is that good enough? xD

I arrived too late for the 6502; my first was the Z-80 Microbee (when 
everyone else I knew was into the Apple-I; then again, I've never been a 
conformist, just like my RAF parents).

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

[Cornelius Keck]

Similar here... 6502 assembler on a CBM3032, while everybody else had an Apple II. Later 8080 on a simulator, Z80, 68000, Z8000, 8088, in that order. Z8000 is still my favourite, spent a lot of time with that.


Gesendet von meinem BlackBerry 10-Smartphone.
  Originalnachricht  
Von: Dave Horsfall
Gesendet: Dienstag, 9. Oktober 2018 18:03
An: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
Betreff: Re: [TUHS] Unix source code archive in the news

>> These days, anyone who can do VB etc can call themselves a programmer; 
>> in my day, you had to know PDP-11 or VAX assembler... Or Z-80...
>
> I know 65C02, is that good enough? xD

I arrived too late for the 6502; my first was the Z-80 Microbee (when 
everyone else I knew was into the Apple-I; then again, I've never been a 
conformist, just like my RAF parents).

-- Dave