[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Warren Toomey]

All, it's time to nudge the conversation away from debugging 2017 OOM issues
and the pre-UNIX history of the Arpanet.

We've been able to recover quite a deal of UNIX artifacts in the past two
decades, but what artifacts (in your opinion) are still out there that
we should try and unearth? Remember that the 50th anniversary is coming up
in 2019.

Here's my list:
 - more PDP-7 source code: the shell, the rest of the utilities
 - more 1st Edition source code: the rest of the utilities
 - ditto the missing bits of 3rd, 4th and 5th Editions
 - the Phil Foglio artwork that became a Usenix t-shirt (Armando, any ideas?)
 - more details on who was Ted Bashkow, and the story behind his (+ others?)
   analysis of the 1st Edition kernel at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v1/PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf
 - a firm date on the day that Ken added pipes to the kernel :)

What else should be we looking for? What physical artifacts (drawings,
artwork etc.) have we missed that should be sought after?

Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Robert Swierczek]

I would add the B and NB (New B) compilers and applications.  We have
the man pages and some tantalizing fragments of the run-time but
nothing else including not a single non-trivial application! (that I
am aware of)

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 5:21 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> All, it's time to nudge the conversation away from debugging 2017 OOM issues
> and the pre-UNIX history of the Arpanet.
>
> We've been able to recover quite a deal of UNIX artifacts in the past two
> decades, but what artifacts (in your opinion) are still out there that
> we should try and unearth? Remember that the 50th anniversary is coming up
> in 2019.
>
> Here's my list:
> - more PDP-7 source code: the shell, the rest of the utilities
> - more 1st Edition source code: the rest of the utilities
> - ditto the missing bits of 3rd, 4th and 5th Editions
> - the Phil Foglio artwork that became a Usenix t-shirt (Armando, any ideas?)
> - more details on who was Ted Bashkow, and the story behind his (+ others?)
>   analysis of the 1st Edition kernel at
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v1/PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf
> - a firm date on the day that Ken added pipes to the kernel :)
>
> What else should be we looking for? What physical artifacts (drawings,
> artwork etc.) have we missed that should be sought after?
>
> Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Angelo Papenhoff]

On 06/12/17, Warren Toomey wrote:
> All, it's time to nudge the conversation away from debugging 2017 OOM issues
> and the pre-UNIX history of the Arpanet.
> 
> We've been able to recover quite a deal of UNIX artifacts in the past two
> decades, but what artifacts (in your opinion) are still out there that
> we should try and unearth? Remember that the 50th anniversary is coming up
> in 2019.
> 
> Here's my list:
>  - more PDP-7 source code: the shell, the rest of the utilities
>  - more 1st Edition source code: the rest of the utilities
>  - ditto the missing bits of 3rd, 4th and 5th Editions
>  - the Phil Foglio artwork that became a Usenix t-shirt (Armando, any ideas?)
>  - more details on who was Ted Bashkow, and the story behind his (+ others?)
>    analysis of the 1st Edition kernel at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v1/PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf
>  - a firm date on the day that Ken added pipes to the kernel :)
> 
> What else should be we looking for? What physical artifacts (drawings,
> artwork etc.) have we missed that should be sought after?
> 
> Cheers, Warren

(Replied off list accidentally, sorry Warren)

I totally agree that having more of V2-V4 would be great.

Recently, I've become interested in the UNIX development at AT&T.
There is SysIII for PDP-11 and VAX and both work in simh.
With SysVR1 I only found the PDP-11 version, would be cool to have the
VAX version too. But turning to older stuff...there is not much info
about the UNICES that were to become SysIII. I'm talking PWB (there is
PWB/1.0 in the archive that I will try to get running soon, but I
understand there were more versions), CB UNIX (only scans of it it
seems) and the elusive UNIX/TS in various versions.
I'm aware that these were not released under the ancient UNIX license,
however the web source view on TUHS has the source code for SysIII and
SysV and most of it can be found on archive.org as well, so the fact
that they're not part of the public TUHS archive is a bit weird.

BTW, I'm currently putting together installation instructions for
various
old UNICES on http://a.papnet.eu/UNIX/. And I also ported aiju's blit
emulator to Unix recently (ran on plan 9 originally):
https://github.com/aap/blit So have fun running v8 with this.

aap

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Warner Losh]

Venix/86 and Venix/86R might be interesting... I have impure versions of
both...

Warner

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Angelo Papenhoff <aap at papnet.eu> wrote:

> On 06/12/17, Warren Toomey wrote:
> > All, it's time to nudge the conversation away from debugging 2017 OOM
> issues
> > and the pre-UNIX history of the Arpanet.
> >
> > We've been able to recover quite a deal of UNIX artifacts in the past two
> > decades, but what artifacts (in your opinion) are still out there that
> > we should try and unearth? Remember that the 50th anniversary is coming
> up
> > in 2019.
> >
> > Here's my list:
> >  - more PDP-7 source code: the shell, the rest of the utilities
> >  - more 1st Edition source code: the rest of the utilities
> >  - ditto the missing bits of 3rd, 4th and 5th Editions
> >  - the Phil Foglio artwork that became a Usenix t-shirt (Armando, any
> ideas?)
> >  - more details on who was Ted Bashkow, and the story behind his (+
> others?)
> >    analysis of the 1st Edition kernel at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/
> Distributions/Research/Dennis_v1/PreliminaryUnixImplementationD
> ocument_Jun72.pdf
> >  - a firm date on the day that Ken added pipes to the kernel :)
> >
> > What else should be we looking for? What physical artifacts (drawings,
> > artwork etc.) have we missed that should be sought after?
> >
> > Cheers, Warren
>
> (Replied off list accidentally, sorry Warren)
>
> I totally agree that having more of V2-V4 would be great.
>
> Recently, I've become interested in the UNIX development at AT&T.
> There is SysIII for PDP-11 and VAX and both work in simh.
> With SysVR1 I only found the PDP-11 version, would be cool to have the
> VAX version too. But turning to older stuff...there is not much info
> about the UNICES that were to become SysIII. I'm talking PWB (there is
> PWB/1.0 in the archive that I will try to get running soon, but I
> understand there were more versions), CB UNIX (only scans of it it
> seems) and the elusive UNIX/TS in various versions.
> I'm aware that these were not released under the ancient UNIX license,
> however the web source view on TUHS has the source code for SysIII and
> SysV and most of it can be found on archive.org as well, so the fact
> that they're not part of the public TUHS archive is a bit weird.
>
> BTW, I'm currently putting together installation instructions for
> various
> old UNICES on http://a.papnet.eu/UNIX/. And I also ported aiju's blit
> emulator to Unix recently (ran on plan 9 originally):
> https://github.com/aap/blit So have fun running v8 with this.
>
> aap
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171205/f7f050ee/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Dave Horsfall]

Is the source (and/or hardware description) for Belle available anywhere? 
I know that the box itself is at the Smithsonian.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Robert Swierczek]

I am also interested in the early development of networked GUI's that
led to the X Window System.  According to Wikipedia there was a W
Window System that predated X.  Early research on networked GUI's was
done on the V Operating System which included a Virtual Graphics
Terminal Service (VGTS) providing a modular window system for local
and remote clients (which led to W, which led to X.)

I suppose they are not on the main-line of UNIX artifacts, but they
definitely influenced the modern UNIX experience (the workstation era
onward to the present.)

None of my Google searching has yielded any scrap of those early efforts.

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/05/2017 05:00 PM, Robert Swierczek wrote:
> I am also interested in the early development of networked GUI's that
> led to the X Window System.

+1 for information on W.

> I suppose they are not on the main-line of UNIX artifacts, but they
> definitely influenced the modern UNIX experience (the workstation era
> onward to the present.)

If such is appropriate.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 3982 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171205/801d6ceb/attachment.bin>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Clem Cole]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1231 bytes --]

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 7:00 PM, Robert Swierczek <rmswierczek at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I am also interested in the early development of networked GUI's that
> led to the X Window System.  According to Wikipedia there was a W
> Window System that predated X.

W which was done at Stanford and is definitely related to (direct parent
of) X Windows.   Cheriton of course is the place to start, although I've
lost track of him.  He's in the valley somewhere, he made billions funding
Google ;-)

V Kernel and the Stanford University Network (SUN) terminals were all
developed around the same time as W.

FWIW: Gettys & Schiefler might have of the W ​sources squirreled away - as
they started with them at MIT; but rejected it as the base for a set of
reasons which I forget now; but did take a number of the ideas. Jim showed
me a demo of early X and W side-by-side a long time ago.  IIRC the basic
site protocol and the approach where the 'server' was on the local system
and the 'client' was remote came from W. [I'll try to ask Gettys what he
has off-line].

Clem
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171206/da44b01f/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[arnold]

Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> What else should be we looking for? What physical artifacts (drawings,
> artwork etc.) have we missed that should be sought after?

Schematics for the original Blit?  Any actual original Blits?

Arnold

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5992 bytes --]

Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> asks on Wed, 6 Dec 2017 08:21:13 +1000:

>>  - more details on who was Ted Bashkow, and the story behind his (+ others?)

I found a short obituary at

	http://engineering.columbia.edu/web/newsletter/spring_2010/memoriam

which is, in full:

>> ...
>> Theodore R. Bashkow Dr. Theodore R. Bashkow, professor emeritus of
>> electricial engineering and computer science, died Dec. 23, 2009, at
>> his home in Katonah, N.Y.  See PDF version
>> 
>> He was born in St. Louis, Mo., and attended Washington University,
>> where he received his BS degree in mechanical engineering. He went on
>> to receive his master’s and doctorate degrees at Stanford
>> University. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a first lieutenant
>> during World War II from 1943 to 1945.
>> 
>> While in the Air Force, he served as maintenance officer and helped to
>> stage the Enola Gay. In the 1950s, while at Bell Labs, Professor
>> Bashkow became well known for his development of a new method for
>> analyzing linear electrical networks, Professor Bashkow’s A matrix. He
>> also became involved with digital computers. He joined the faculty of
>> the Columbia Electrical Engineering Department in 1958 and helped
>> transform the Electrical Engineering Department into the Department of
>> Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
>> 
>> When, in 1979, this department was divided into the Electrical
>> Engineering and Computer Science departments, Bashkow became one of
>> the founding faculty members of Computer Science. He taught courses in
>> digital logic, computer organization, and computer programming. He did
>> research on parallel processing. In collaboration with Herbert
>> Sullivan, he pioneered a new approach to that subject through the
>> development of CHoPP, Columbia Homogeneous Parallel Processor, a
>> large-scale, homogeneous, fully distributed parallel machine. A number
>> of Columbia graduate students and a junior faculty member, David
>> Klappholz, were also involved at various stages.
>> 
>> In 1980, the Computer Science Department instituted an annual award in
>> his honor, the Theodore R. Bashkow Award. Among his many affiliations,
>> Professor Bashkow was an active member of IEEE, ACM, and Sigma Xi
>> organizations.
>> ...

He is apparently not in Wikipedia.

I then searched our local bibliography archives and found this
publication-title summary (Bashkow is an uncommon name, so I didn't
attempt to disambiguate the reported articles):

MariaDB [bibtex]> select filename, label, substr(title,1,80) from bibtab where (author like '%Bashkow%') order by year, filename;
+-------------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| filename                | label              | substr(title,1,80)                                                               |
+-------------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| jacm.bib                | Bashkow:1958:CPR   | A ``Curve Plotting'' Routine for the Inverse Laplace Transform of Rational Funct |
| ieeetranscomput.bib     | Bashkow:1963:RDA   | R63-106 The D 825 Automatic Operating and Scheduling Program                     |
| ieeetranscomput.bib     | Bashkow:1963:C     | Contributors                                                                     |
| ieeetranscomput.bib     | Bashkow:1963:PSD   | A Programming System for Detection and Diagnosis of Machine Malfunctions         |
| ieeetranscomput.bib     | Bashkow:1964:SCA   | A Sequential Circuit for Algebraic Statement Translation                         |
| fortran1.bib            | Bashkow:1967:SDF   | System Design of a FORTRAN Machine                                               |
| ieeetranscomput.bib     | Bashkow:1967:SDF   | System Design of a FORTRAN Machine                                               |
| ieeetranscomput1970.bib | Bashkow:1971:BSS   | B71-6 System Structure in Data, Programs, and Computers                          |
| ieeetranscomput1970.bib | Bashkow:1971:BIC   | B71-2 Introduction to Computer Organization                                      |
| ieeetranscomput1970.bib | Bashkow:1973:CRO   | Comment on Review of Operating Systems Survey                                    |
| ovr.bib                 | Sullivan77b        | A Large Scale, Homogeneous, Fully Distributed Parallel Machine                   |
| ovr.bib                 | Sullivan77a        | A Large Scale Homogeneous Fully Distributed Parallel Machine                     |
| sigarch.bib             | Sullivan:1977:LSHb | A Large Scale, Homogenous, Fully Distributed Parallel Machine, II                |
| sigarch.bib             | Sullivan:1977:LSHa | A large scale, homogeneous, fully distributed parallel machine, I                |
| ieeetranscomput1980.bib | Ghafoor:1989:BFT   | Bisectional Fault-Tolerant Communication Architecture for Supercomputer Systems  |
| super.bib               | Ghafoor:1989:BFT   | Bisectional Fault-Tolerant Communication Architecture for Supercomputer Systems  |
| ieeetranscomput1990.bib | Ghafoor:1991:SOG   | A study of odd graphs as fault-tolerant interconnection networks                 |
+-------------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
17 rows in set (2.67 sec)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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 at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 949 bytes --]


> We've been able to recover quite a deal of UNIX artifacts in the past two
> decades, but what artifacts (in your opinion) are still out there that
> we should try and unearth? Remember that the 50th anniversary is coming up
> in 2019.

I’d be interested in anything on Spider/Datakit networking in V4-V7.
(at them moment the trail starts at V8, with just a few hints in earlier
source materials, and the bits that Noel found).

My thinking is that there were two main lines of early networking development
on Unix (and I realise that this gross simplification excludes many other
worthy projects):

1. The “sockets” lineage from UoI NCP Unix -> BBN NCP Unix -> BBN TCP Unix
    -> 4.1a BSD -> 4.2 BSD

2. The “device” lineage from Spider -> Datakit -> UUCP -> streams
   -> STREAMS

In the first lineage there is much material available, in the second very
little. This is probably because Datakit was AT&T confidential at the time.

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 235 bytes --]


> Venix/86 and Venix/86R might be interesting... I have impure versions of
> both...

+1

Venix/86 is the first Unix to run on PC hardware that I’m aware of. It could
go together with Idris and Minix as examples of early PC Unix.

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Mutiny]

>Venix/86 is the first Unix to run on PC hardware that I’m aware of. It couldgo together with Idris and Minix as examples of early PC Unix.'A working version of Venix for the IBM PC XT was demoed at Comdex in May 1983. 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VenixXenix Initial release 1980;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XenixMore on Microsoft Short-lived Love Affair with Unix:'Microsoft licensed UNIX from AT&T in 1979.'http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/xenix_microsoft_shortlived_love_affair_with_unix.shtml
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171206/a4fa065f/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1210 bytes --]


That is a good point: early Xenix is still missing. It would make an excellent
public relations move for Microsoft if they would make early Xenix available
to celebrate 50 years of Unix.

Although Xenix predates Venix, I'm not sure it predates it on PC hardware. It
would seem to me that there both Venix and PC/IX preceded it:
http://seefigure1.com/2014/04/15/xenixtime.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporation

If Xenix 3.0 had an integrated source code base, it would be an excellent
example of the portability of early Unix across a wide range of architectures.

Paul

On 6 Dec 2017, at 13:58 , Mutiny wrote:

> 
> >Venix/86 is the first Unix to run on PC hardware that I’m aware of. It could
> go together with Idris and Minix as examples of early PC Unix.
> 
> 'A working version of Venix for the IBM PC XT was demoed at Comdex in May 1983. '
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venix
> 
> Xenix Initial release 1980;
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
> 
> More on Microsoft Short-lived Love Affair with Unix:
> 'Microsoft licensed UNIX from AT&T in 1979.'
> http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/xenix_microsoft_shortlived_love_affair_with_unix.shtml

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Clem Cole]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3160 bytes --]

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 9:33 AM, Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
>
> ​A​
> lthough Xenix predates Venix, I'm not sure it predates it on PC hardware.

​It really depends how you count.   I was there at time when AT&T was
negotiating the replacement for the V7 license with 10 of us (the 10 firms
included Microsoft - the only time I can say I was in the room with Willy
G. - but that's another story)​.  This work would become the System III
license.

​Xenix, which was V7 based originally, was target for the generic 8086
systems (as well as PDP-11, 68K and Z8000) but the Intel support was
generic so it included the PC.   The bigger problem is that it really
wanted a hard disk, which made its target a 'high end' computer in those
days.  Running on a floppy was sort of possible (besides slow, it tended to
wear out the oxide in the center of the disk where the superblock and
i-list was storied from all r/w - I used to have an 8" floppy sans case
hanging in my office).

But that said, the V7 based license was terrible for a 'small value system'
and I'm not sure Microsoft shipped much against it.   That was the primary
reason they wanted to a new license [Gate's line at the time: 'You guys
don't get it.  The only thing that matters is volume.'].   So until the
System III license, which is what Xenix 2.0 and later shipped, I don't
think Microsoft really had much presence.  But at that time, Microsoft [via
Bob Greenburg a founder and the only one of Gates roommates at Harvard to
graduate btw] was trying to a UNIX porting house, similar to HCR.   That
had been the original vision of Xenix, they would OEM the SW to other firms
that build HW, just like they did for BASIC and were beginning to do for
FORTRAN and COBOL.

As you point out, other firms such as ISC, HCR and Locus appeared on the
scene as more UNIX knowledgeable.   I also think IBM already had placed big
bets on Microsoft for DOS and BASIC, so they wanted to spread the risk a
little which is why ISC got the original UNIX for the PC HW deal.   Once
Microsoft had Xenix stable, IBM was already their customer so selling Xenix
on IBM was a secondary issue.

For a little more on the history front; my former boss, Phill Shevrin, who
would later switch from ISC to Locus where I worked for him, pulled what I
always thought was one of the great tricks of salesmanship in the UNIX
business.  When he was at ISC, he sold for $1.5M a 'port' to the 386 of
System III to each of IBM, AT&T and Intel.   He got paid three times for
same work and got to sell the result as their own product when they were
done.

Also, from a historical standpoint, I hope we do have the ISC 386 code base
- that was the first of the 32-bit linear UNIX ports for the x86 systems.
The other thing that we should try to find is the Phoenix Tech VP/IX code
base and the Locus Merge Code base.   These were the first VM/hypervisors.
They ran in PC/IX 386 and allowed Windows to run under it, long before
VMware existed.

Clem
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171206/8a5d8fb6/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1038 bytes --]


> On 6 Dec 2017, at 18:13, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 9:33 AM, Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
> ​A​lthough Xenix predates Venix, I'm not sure it predates it on PC hardware. 

> ​It really depends how you count.   I was there at time when AT&T was negotiating the replacement for the V7 license with 10 of us (the 10 firms included Microsoft - the only time I can say I was in the room with Willy G. - but that's another story)​.  This work would become the System III license.
> 
> ​Xenix, which was V7 based originally, was target for the generic 8086 systems (as well as PDP-11, 68K and Z8000) but the Intel support was generic so it included the PC.
[...]

Yes, you are correct: In november 1981 Xenix ran on the Altos 8600. Once you run on one 8086 machine, the next is minor step.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altos_Computer_Systems#ACS_8600

Your insights about licensing match with the chart on the ‘seefigure1’ website, and help explain some things about it.

Paul

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Jason Stevens]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4550 bytes --]

I know in ’87 Microsoft was working on ‘Football’ (http://www.os2museum.com/wp/playing-football/) which was what would eventually ship as OS/2 2.0, and Windows/386 launched in 1987, for the Compaq deskpro 386, and a NEC 386 model.  I see that VP/IX was announced in 1986, with a ship date for 87 as well (https://books.google.com.hk/books?id=C5n2J7iQenwC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=VP/IX+emulation+1987&source=bl&ots=4XABChXAMZ&sig=65eY7UV3UVjiji5mK8ZWrxFAc6k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZkqO6nffXAhULlJQKHXJlADkQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=VP%2FIX%20emulation%201987&f=false)

Not to mention products like VM/386 on the PC front.  The hypervisor market was pretty hot, but I guess the price of RAM basically cooled things off pretty quickly.

I had recently bought a copy of Citrix MULTIUSER 2.0 and it’s kind of weird trying to bring terminal functionality to OS/2.

Its funny how NT had a POSIX subsystem that really wasn’t much good for anything other than tar & vi, and decided that if the implementation was too strong nobody would write Win32 apps (much like what happened to OS/2).  Meanwhile a massive ecosystem built around Linux grew that they were unable to get people to use natively.



From: Clem Cole
Sent: Thursday, 7 December 2017 1:16 AM
To: Paul Ruizendaal
Cc: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?



On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 9:33 AM, Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
​A​
lthough Xenix predates Venix, I'm not sure it predates it on PC hardware. 
​It really depends how you count.   I was there at time when AT&T was negotiating the replacement for the V7 license with 10 of us (the 10 firms included Microsoft - the only time I can say I was in the room with Willy G. - but that's another story)​.  This work would become the System III license.

​Xenix, which was V7 based originally, was target for the generic 8086 systems (as well as PDP-11, 68K and Z8000) but the Intel support was generic so it included the PC.   The bigger problem is that it really wanted a hard disk, which made its target a 'high end' computer in those days.  Running on a floppy was sort of possible (besides slow, it tended to wear out the oxide in the center of the disk where the superblock and i-list was storied from all r/w - I used to have an 8" floppy sans case hanging in my office).  

But that said, the V7 based license was terrible for a 'small value system' and I'm not sure Microsoft shipped much against it.   That was the primary reason they wanted to a new license [Gate's line at the time: 'You guys don't get it.  The only thing that matters is volume.'].   So until the System III license, which is what Xenix 2.0 and later shipped, I don't think Microsoft really had much presence.  But at that time, Microsoft [via Bob Greenburg a founder and the only one of Gates roommates at Harvard to graduate btw] was trying to a UNIX porting house, similar to HCR.   That had been the original vision of Xenix, they would OEM the SW to other firms that build HW, just like they did for BASIC and were beginning to do for FORTRAN and COBOL.

As you point out, other firms such as ISC, HCR and Locus appeared on the scene as more UNIX knowledgeable.   I also think IBM already had placed big bets on Microsoft for DOS and BASIC, so they wanted to spread the risk a little which is why ISC got the original UNIX for the PC HW deal.   Once Microsoft had Xenix stable, IBM was already their customer so selling Xenix on IBM was a secondary issue.

For a little more on the history front; my former boss, Phill Shevrin, who would later switch from ISC to Locus where I worked for him, pulled what I always thought was one of the great tricks of salesmanship in the UNIX business.  When he was at ISC, he sold for $1.5M a 'port' to the 386 of System III to each of IBM, AT&T and Intel.   He got paid three times for same work and got to sell the result as their own product when they were done.

Also, from a historical standpoint, I hope we do have the ISC 386 code base - that was the first of the 32-bit linear UNIX ports for the x86 systems.  The other thing that we should try to find is the Phoenix Tech VP/IX code base and the Locus Merge Code base.   These were the first VM/hypervisors.  They ran in PC/IX 386 and allowed Windows to run under it, long before VMware existed.

Clem

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/33660880/attachment-0001.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2017, Paul Ruizendaal wrote:

> That is a good point: early Xenix is still missing. It would make an 
> excellent public relations move for Microsoft if they would make early 
> Xenix available to celebrate 50 years of Unix.

Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a 
flag for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC 
running Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit 
it?

I still have horrible memories of porting Unify (an early RDBMS) to Xenix, 
and getting tangled up in the poxy small/large memory models on the 
equally-poxy 286 (no, not the 386).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Jason Stevens]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1309 bytes --]

They might actually.  Gates isn’t in charge, and there has been a major effort to being Linux compatibility into the Windows 10 kernel.

The biggest issue will be the never ending tangle of licenses, if they had other stuff integrated into there.


From: Dave Horsfall
Sent: Thursday, 7 December 2017 6:33 AM
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
Subject: Re: [TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

On Wed, 6 Dec 2017, Paul Ruizendaal wrote:

> That is a good point: early Xenix is still missing. It would make an 
> excellent public relations move for Microsoft if they would make early 
> Xenix available to celebrate 50 years of Unix.

Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a 
flag for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC 
running Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit 
it?

I still have horrible memories of porting Unify (an early RDBMS) to Xenix, 
and getting tangled up in the poxy small/large memory models on the 
equally-poxy 286 (no, not the 386).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/702dd7eb/attachment-0001.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Dave Horsfall]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 682 bytes --]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2017, Jason Stevens wrote:

[ M$ donating Xenix or not ]

> They might actually.  Gates isn’t in charge, and there has been a major 
> effort to being Linux compatibility into the Windows 10 kernel.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong; in fact, I'll donate say $10 -- that's 
all I can afford -- to the TUHS Foundation (if there is one, otherwise the 
John Lions Chair) if it happens.  Who'll join me?

> The biggest issue will be the never ending tangle of licenses, if they 
> had other stuff integrated into there.

Shakespeare certainly had it right (Henry VI, Act 4, Part 2)...

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Andy Kosela]

On Wednesday, December 6, 2017, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Dec 2017, Paul Ruizendaal wrote:
>
> That is a good point: early Xenix is still missing. It would make an
>> excellent public relations move for Microsoft if they would make early
>> Xenix available to celebrate 50 years of Unix.
>>
>
> Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a
> flag for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC
> running Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit it?
>
> I still have horrible memories of porting Unify (an early RDBMS) to Xenix,
> and getting tangled up in the poxy small/large memory models on the
> equally-poxy 286 (no, not the 386).
>
>
I can understand no love for Xenix on this list, but actually M$ is part of
the UNIX history and was actually quite successful with Xenix[1].  In the
late 80s there were more computers running M$ Xenix than all other versions
of UNIX combined.

Some good history here:

http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/xenix_microsoft_shortlived_love_affair_with_unix.shtml

--Andy

[1]
https://books.google.com/books?id=UE1HODexHKoC&pg=PA44#v=onepage&q&f=false
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171206/42969fb0/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a flag 
> for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC running 
> Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit it?

Microsoft today is not the company of old.  In recent years Microsoft has 
participated in standards bodies and worked on interoperability with other 
browser vendors.  They even joined the Linux Foundation last year.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation/

Cheers,

Rob

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 10:56 PM, Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org>
wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Dec 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>
> Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a
>> flag for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC
>> running Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit it?
>>
>
> Microsoft today is not the company of old.  In recent years Microsoft has
> participated in standards bodies and worked on interoperability with other
> browser vendors.  They even joined the Linux Foundation last year.
>
> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation/


Yea, I wonder if there's anyway to get the early Xenix code bases? They are
the same age as the MS-DOS versions they released to the kinda-sorta-almost
public domain...

Warner
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171206/b36c6326/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/06/2017 11:07 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
> Yea, I wonder if there's anyway to get the early Xenix code bases?

I wonder how willing (the new) Microsoft would be to releasing Xenix 
code.  My main concern is that (as I understand it) SCO has some code 
decedent from Xenix in it.  Seeing as how SCO is still a current selling 
product (unlike MS-DOS) there may be some reluctance.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 3982 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/17b46cdb/attachment.bin>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Nigel Williams]

I would hope we will one day find more of the UNIX emulators that
existed over the years, my list includes:

PRIMIX for PRIME computers running PRIMEOS (had to cope with several
PRIME weirdnesses)

Eunice for VAX/VMS : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software)

0nix : A Unix emulator for VAX/VMS :
http://www.caam.rice.edu/caam/trs/82/TR82-08.pdf

I find attempts to make other systems behave like Unix fascinating and
the implementations inevitably embellished with interesting and
amusing hackery.

I have a long list of UNIX-hosted programming languages I would like
to find too, but that is wandering off-topic for this list.

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Jon Steinhart]

Robert Brockway writes:
> On Thu, 7 Dec 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> 
> > Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a flag 
> > for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC running 
> > Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit it?
> 
> Microsoft today is not the company of old.  In recent years Microsoft has 
> participated in standards bodies and worked on interoperability with other 
> browser vendors.  They even joined the Linux Foundation last year.
> 
> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation/
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rob

Don't know how much time you've spent on standards committees; I've done my
time.  Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks working to
make something great.  Much of the time people are there to prevent a standard
from interfering with their market, or to prevent a good standard from being
adopted.  The examples of the NSA participating on crypto committees to weaken
the standards got a lot of press and is emblematic of what happens.  Microsoft
has a well documented record of using standards to screw the competition so I
didn't read any goodness into their joining up.  I would agree that they're not
the company of old in that they got themselves trounced by Apple and are no
longer top dog and able to tell others what they're allowed to do.

Jon

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2017, Jon Steinhart wrote:

> Don't know how much time you've spent on standards committees; I've done 
> my time.  Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks 
> working to make something great.  Much of the time people are there to 
> prevent a standard from interfering with their market, or to prevent a 
> good standard from being adopted.  The examples of the NSA participating 
> on crypto committees to weaken the standards got a lot of press and is 
> emblematic of what happens.  Microsoft has a well documented record of 
> using standards to screw the competition so I didn't read any goodness 
> into their joining up.  I would agree that they're not the company of 
> old in that they got themselves trounced by Apple and are no longer top 
> dog and able to tell others what they're allowed to do.

I'm not suggesting any sort of altruism on the part of MS (or any other 
company).  I have been very critical of MS in the past and was initially 
skeptical when they started to open up.  IIRC one of the first signs of 
change was when they called the Mozilla Foundation and asked for a 
meeting.  They met with the Mozilla Foundation and started working on 
interoperability.  Many in the FOSS community were skeptical but that was 
a lot of years ago.  I haven't seen any "embrace and extend" for many 
years.  I'd be interested if anyone else has.

The evidence I'm seeing suggests that today they consider working with 
others to be in their best interests.

As you note they can no longer throw their weight around in the way they 
used to.  No doubt that's a driver for change.

If someone had told me 20 years ago that I'd be sitting here today 
defending Microsoft's involvement in FOSS... ;)

Rob

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Jon Steinhart]

Robert Brockway writes:
> On Wed, 6 Dec 2017, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> 
> > Don't know how much time you've spent on standards committees; I've done 
> > my time.  Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks 
> > working to make something great.  Much of the time people are there to 
> > prevent a standard from interfering with their market, or to prevent a 
> > good standard from being adopted.  The examples of the NSA participating 
> > on crypto committees to weaken the standards got a lot of press and is 
> > emblematic of what happens.  Microsoft has a well documented record of 
> > using standards to screw the competition so I didn't read any goodness 
> > into their joining up.  I would agree that they're not the company of 
> > old in that they got themselves trounced by Apple and are no longer top 
> > dog and able to tell others what they're allowed to do.
> 
> I'm not suggesting any sort of altruism on the part of MS (or any other 
> company).  I have been very critical of MS in the past and was initially 
> skeptical when they started to open up.  IIRC one of the first signs of 
> change was when they called the Mozilla Foundation and asked for a 
> meeting.  They met with the Mozilla Foundation and started working on 
> interoperability.  Many in the FOSS community were skeptical but that was 
> a lot of years ago.  I haven't seen any "embrace and extend" for many 
> years.  I'd be interested if anyone else has.
> 
> The evidence I'm seeing suggests that today they consider working with 
> others to be in their best interests.
> 
> As you note they can no longer throw their weight around in the way they 
> used to.  No doubt that's a driver for change.
> 
> If someone had told me 20 years ago that I'd be sitting here today 
> defending Microsoft's involvement in FOSS... ;)
> 
> Rob

Yeah, I could have put it slightly better, which is that working on standards
is working on standards and doing good is doing good but working on standards
does not automatically equate to doing good.

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Dec 06, 2017 at 10:14:15PM -0800, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Robert Brockway writes:
> > On Thu, 7 Dec 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > 
> > > Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a flag 
> > > for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC running 
> > > Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit it?
> > 
> > Microsoft today is not the company of old.  In recent years Microsoft has 
> > participated in standards bodies and worked on interoperability with other 
> > browser vendors.  They even joined the Linux Foundation last year.
> > 
> > https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation/
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Rob
> 
> Don't know how much time you've spent on standards committees; I've done my
> time.  Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks working to
> make something great.  Much of the time people are there to prevent a standard
> from interfering with their market, or to prevent a good standard from being
> adopted.  The examples of the NSA participating on crypto committees to weaken
> the standards got a lot of press and is emblematic of what happens.  Microsoft
> has a well documented record of using standards to screw the competition so I
> didn't read any goodness into their joining up.  I would agree that they're not
> the company of old in that they got themselves trounced by Apple and are no
> longer top dog and able to tell others what they're allowed to do.

My first job at Sun was POSIX conformance.  As such, I worked a lot with
the Sun POSIX guy, Don Cragun.  He must have been the exception that proves
your rule because he definitely matched the description of an altruistic
person trying to make things better.   They aren't all bad.

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Steve Simon]

i would like to see plan9 source for the 1st and 2nd editions if p9 on the tuhs archive - assuming the community would accept it.

the 3rd edotion was a snapshot and is public and the 4th is still in use (a little)

I can get access to the 1st ed (universities only) and am a 2nd ed licensee but it would be great if the lawyers where to allow those to be opened.

Russ Cox did a fantastic online history/diff - though the only copy i could find was in the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080226055938/http://swtch.com:80/cgi-bin/plan9history.cgi

-Steve

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/2d3b9054/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Chet Ramey]

On 12/7/17 9:59 AM, Larry McVoy wrote:

> My first job at Sun was POSIX conformance.  As such, I worked a lot with
> the Sun POSIX guy, Don Cragun.  He must have been the exception that proves
> your rule because he definitely matched the description of an altruistic
> person trying to make things better.   They aren't all bad.

Agree. Don's a good guy.

In my Posix standardization experience, most of the participants really are
trying to improve the standard and ineroperability, within some fairly
serious constraints.


-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Clem Cole]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2158 bytes --]

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 1:14 AM, Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:

> Don't know how much time you've spent on standards committees; I've done my
> ​ ​
> time.
>

​So true for many of us on this list ;-)
​

> Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks working to
> make something great.

​I would modify that to be: are not *ALL *filled​

There are some members that want the right thing and yet can be conflicted
too.

I remember at an later /usr/group meeting (before we became the POSIX
committee) we were discussing case folding.  From a historical stand point case
flowing is left over from the 60s when files names were stored in 5 bits
and ASR33s could not easily generate upper and lower case - as I like to
point out in Kindergarten, kind Mrs Munger taught there was big A and
little a and they were different.

Anyway, at the time it was interesting the two folks from DEC were really
conflicted.   All of us there agreed that case folding was a no-no, but
thanks to VMS and the layer DEC was starting to develop, they knew that it
was going to be a fight inside of DEC.

Doug's observation about malloc(0) and mine on case-foldin; the problem is
'self interest' - when is the 'good of the community at large' out weights
the good of the on; but the one just happened to have the
largest economic incentive.

If I recall when we started that work, Sun might not have yet existed or
was at its infancy.   So the big player was DEC,  and we were trying to get
HP, IBM, *etc*. to join to fray.  The economic argument won out, we wanted
to big guys with us if we were going to succeed, so we backed off that
requirement.

Political flame to follow ...

This is why things like Net Neutrality matters IMHO.   Doing the right
thing for everyone, means a few big players have to make changes that cost
them money.    They don't like being told to do that.   They are
applying the economic golden rule (he who has the gold, makes the rules).

Clem
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/2c419385/attachment-0001.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Clem Cole]

s/case flowing/case folding/ -- dylexia and autocorrect be bad  ...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/852ea753/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Warner Losh]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1767 bytes --]

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 4:25 AM, Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:

>
> > Venix/86 and Venix/86R might be interesting... I have impure versions of
> > both...
>
> +1
>
> Venix/86 is the first Unix to run on PC hardware that I’m aware of. It
> could
> go together with Idris and Minix as examples of early PC Unix.
>

I have a set of both the original Venix/86R disks (From Venturicom) as well
as the Boston Software Works modifications (which made it usable,
honestly). I also have ported the v7 date code to this and fixed the y2k
bug in it. Is any of that interesting to TUHS?

I have a low-priority project that I'm working on towards the 40th
anniversary of V7: I'd like to reconstruct the complete sources to the
version of Venix that I have and have it running on my DEC Rainbow 100B in
time based on sources I've compiled from scratch. It looks like about 90%
of the system is there unmodified....

I also had a crazy pipe dream of getting Ultrix-11M ported over once I had
the machine dependent files from Venix... But the lack of any network cards
(at least available network cards) for my Rainbow has put a bit of a damper
on my enthusiasm for that (since the 11M port was basically V7 + bug fixes
- packet interface + sockets).

Then again, someone else mentioned hypervisors... I was looking at hacking
FreeBSD's BHYVE to emulate the old hardware so I can run things faster (but
there's issues with timing loops in the old software that I'm sure will
bedevil any such road).

If only my body could execute fast enough on the things my brain thinks
would be cool to do...

Warner
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171206/0514ed45/attachment.html>

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Rudi Blom]

Regarding Theodore Bashkow I found a reference in this article
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.53.880&rep=rep1&type=pdf

"[Jain 90a], N. Jain, M. Schwartz and T. R. Bashkov, "Transport
Protocol Processing at GBPS Rates.",
Computer Communications Review, Vol. 20 (4), 1990, pp. 188-199."

No idea if this 'bashkov' is the  'bashkow' in the 'what's missing' discussion.

Cheers,
rudi

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Larry McVoy

    > an altruistic person trying to make things better.  They aren't all bad.

I would echo that. During my time on the IESG, I'd say the vast majority of
the people in the IETF really did want to make things better for everyone.

Of course, that statement covers a vast range of subtle variations, from
people who had nothing at all to gain personally, and thus really were pushing
what they thought was best; through people who did stand to gain, but truly
thought that what they were advocating was in everyone's interest; etc.

But the people who I felt were deliberately and knowingly putting their own
interests before the community's, i.e. recommending something they knew to be
harmful because it was good for them - they were very rare.

My recollection is now somewhat dim (too much was happening, at too high a
pace) of the details of those later days (well, 'later' only in that they were
considerably later than the very early days :-), but my sense is that people
like that didn't last long in the community; I have the distinct impression
that people figured them out, and as an eventual result, they tended to fade
from the scene. The IETF culture was not welcoming to that kind of thinking.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being naive (and I would certainly welcome correction
if I'm wrong), but that's how I saw it.

   Noel

[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

[Nevin Liber]

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 9:14 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: Larry McVoy
>
>     > an altruistic person trying to make things better.  They aren't all
> bad.
>
> I would echo that. During my time on the IESG, I'd say the vast majority of
> the people in the IETF really did want to make things better for everyone.
>

And as someone who has been involved with the C++ standardization effort
for the last seven years, let me echo that as well.  Most (if not all, as I
cannot think of any exceptions to this) of us are involved because we want
to make a better language, even if no two of us can agree on what that is.
And that most certainly includes the folks that Microsoft sends to the
meetings.
-- 
 Nevin ":-)" Liber  <mailto:nevin at eviloverlord.com>  +1-847-691-1404
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20171207/395c0081/attachment.html>