From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: clemc@ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2017 10:02:22 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other In-Reply-To: <20170221120218.E07BA18C10B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20170221120218.E07BA18C10B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:02 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who > were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix > derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux > history? If not, there should be.) > ​I​'ve thought and written a bit about this question a bit [ Would it be possible/advantageous to rewrite the Linux kernel in Rust when the language is stable? & Why did Unix succeed and not Multics ] ​ ​ and I'll not repeat all of here but ​as one of the people that did switch from 386BSD to linux at the time, the reason for me was purely because of the AT&T/BSDi case. You are right, I wanted a "free" (i.e. very inexpensive) UNIX for the 386 and the "big guns"​ were not going to give it. I thought we had it the 386 port BSD which I had helped in a small way to create. ​But I like, most hackers of the day, misunderstood incorrectly​ the case to be about *trade secret *and the all based around the 1956 consent decree, IBM vs AT&T; telephones and the computers. I was worried AT&T would win because it was going to hard to cleaim that that the BSD code was not a derivative work of the AT&T *copyright code base *(not understanding the *trade secret* and the *copyright* difference mattered). So...I switched to Linux *not because I thought it was "better"* - in fact, I b*tched (and still do) about many gratuitous differences, but as I knew that we needed something for "consumer" HW (which was bring driven by the WINTEL economics), and I was willing to use the "lessor" technology (Linux) because it was "good enough" and gave me what I needed (UNIX on a PC/386). I thought (incorrectly) somehow original Linux's European authorship was going to protect me and my fellow hackers ever though it was not as good as my beloved BSD system. Simple put - using Christiansen's theories: Linux "won" because: - it was "good enough", - had a lot of people behind it that valued that was there and invested in making it "better", and - the economics of the platform (PC/386 - WINTEL etc) was on the fastest grow curve [and its Christiansen's economic disruption was displacing the Mini & Workstation]. BTW: at the time, I argued with the Roger Gourd and the OSF folks, that if they released (sold) the OSF/1 RI uK which had not AT&T technology in it (again thinking Copyright not Trade Secret); I was suggesting $100/copy there was a market for it. I just could not get them interested. Sun has done the RoadRunner and had their 386 port of Solaris; but again. All the "UNIX" folks were still interested in pushing out "iron" so were blind to the WINTEL economic disruption. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda .... sigh Clem -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: