In fact ATT legal had a document they sent to all commercial licensees around 1980 on proper use of the name. I wonder if I still have/can find a copy. But the lawyers were pretty clear. It was UNIX with ™ and later the R with a circle around beside the all caps letters after they registered it. It was that letter that started all the names like Xenix, Ultrix, HP-UX, SunOS, RTU etc. On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 4:06 PM Mary Ann Horton wrote: > I just finished Brian Kernighan's book (excellent!) and he addresses > this in section 7.6. (Yes, he wrote the book in troff.) > > He prefers "Unix" and wrote it that way except for this section. He says > "Bell Labs' legal guardians decided that the name Unix was a valuable > trademark that had to be protected..." Legal mostly required it to be > used as an adjective "The UNIX TM operating system", and how the ms > macros produced a small caps "UNIX" (and a footnote on the first > reference). He's clear that the 1127 folks hated the requirements from > legal. > > It is true that the file which contains the kernel was /unix, or /vmunix > for Berkeley Unix, but that's the name of the file, not the proper name > of the operating system for English prose. By convention, virtually all > Unix files were in lower case. > > Mary Ann > > On 11/9/19 12:36 PM, Derrik Walker v2.0 wrote: > > On 11/9/19 12:20 PM, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > >> I was reading the comments on Hackaday on UNIX at 50 > >> (https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/). > >> As expected, a lot of manure but some interesting comments from > >> seemingly knowledgeable people. > >> > >> One comment > >> ( > https://hackaday.com/2019/11/05/will-the-real-unix-please-stand-up/#comment-6192977), > > >> from a DDS, stated that (s)he worked at The Bell and they wrote it > >> "unix" (lower-case) to distinguish it from MULTICS. Anyone care to > >> comment on this? > >> > >> N. > > > > It was always my understanding, based totally on hearsay from > > engineers from both Sun and SGI back in my early days with it, UNIX is > > the OS, while unix, or vmunix is the kernel. Unix was deprecated by > > the time it became a real commercial product. > > > > So, right or wrong, I've always used UNIX for the OS, and unix, or > > vmunix as appropriate, to refer to the kernel. > > > > - Derrik > > > -- Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual