The product and its advertising tag line still exist: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Black-Flag-Roach-Motel-Insect-Glue-Traps-2-Count-HG-11020-1/204237338 https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/e8dd1acb-7a49-40ce-8ae2-c582c8bda9a2/svn/brown-black-flag-insect-traps-hg-11020-1-64_1000.jpg Note the red rectangle-with-rounded-corners under the large yellow word 'Motel' on the front of the box. - Aron On 12/13/24 16:27, Rob Pike wrote: > To answer your actual question, it is of course a riff on a TV ad for > a cockroach trap in the 1980s. The sentiment of the quote, as I saw it > (it's possible I was the one who added it to the fortunes file after > ken saw the SCCS burble at the top of some file from USG and laughed), > was primarily a reaction to the taint it added to the previously > annotation-free top of the file. It was also a response to the march > of corporate code management stepping into the research world, or > perhaps the hacker world. It's a philosophical thing, a feeling, not > an argument. > > It all seems so quaint now. > > -rob > > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2024 at 8:22 AM Rob Pike wrote: > > According to the Unix room fortunes file, the actual quote is > > SCCS: the source-code motel -- your code checks in but it never > checks out. > Ken Thompson > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2024 at 3:52 AM Marc Rochkind > wrote: > > IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering has asked me to > write a retrospective on the influence of SCCS over the last > 50 years, as my SCCS paper was published in 1975. They > consider it one of the most influential papers from TSE's > first decade. > > There's a funny quote from Ken Thompson that circulates from > time-to-time: > > "SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!" > > But nobody seems to know what it means exactly. As part of my > research, I asked Ken what the quote meant, sunce I wanted to > include it. He explained that it refers to SCCS storing binary > data in its repository file, preventing UNIX text tools from > operating on the file. > > Of course, this is only one of SCCS's many weaknesses. If you > have anything funny about any of the others, post it here. I > already have all the boring usual stuff (e.g., long-term > locks, file-oriented, no merging). > > Marc Rochkind > mrochkind.com > > > >