From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
To: Eric Allman <tuhs@eric.allman.name>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] a book (was Re: PWB vs Unix/TS)
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2019 16:12:17 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OgO5WCd-qgvvArbvOCFHsJ-m4o9vQf0hLJzDVKkMJSGg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d7377aaf-9342-9c8f-9ea7-24c11ab3be4e@neophilic.com>
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On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 12:16 AM Eric Allman <tuhs@eric.allman.name> wrote:
> On 2019-09-14 17:58, Adam Thornton wrote:
> > I...have never been all that impressed with Salus's work. It's not
> _bad_ but it's also not terribly insightful.
> I think Peter's work was an amazing effort to collect and disseminate
> facts, and despite a few gaps (inevitable) he did a great job. But
> Peter's works were more collections of facts than attempts to interpret,
> contextualize, or otherwise put the facts into a larger narrative.
+1 Amen, bro.
For many of us that lived the time he covered, which was the first 25
years, it's awesome and frankly, I don't look for it for insights, as that
was to me not what he was after doing. He was trying to create a
narrative that documented what happened. Yes, he left things out, but
pretty much go it right.
> Honest historians can disagree on the role of written histories. A pure
> "just the facts ma'am" history avoids context and interpretation but
> tends to be fairly dry. This was Peter's approach.
I agree. Moreover, as Jon points out, I'm not sure even if was made widely
available, other than people like those on this list, I'm not sure it will
be really that interesting.
> But it's impossible to completely avoid bias because you have to pick and
choose the facts you include.
And this is the biggest issue. And I have observed (maybe I'm wrong - but
it seems to me ...) that the people that I know today, that dislike Peter's
work dislike that Linux is not huge part of it. Or more importantly that
it was the emergence of the *Internet and UNIX that were enablers for Linux*.
As Jon has suggested, it should not be Gnu/Linux but rather Internet/Linux.
Contextualizing history inevitably leads to interpretation
> which leads to some amount of bias, but interesting or even gripping
> histories read like a novel that unfolds before you.
*i.e.* Peter is not David McCullough and we don't seem to have David coming
to us to write his next book.
I've believed for a long time that when the definitive history of Unix
> is written, Peter's books will be a major (albeit not "primary", in the
> technical sense) source material.
Absolutely. It needs to be the place where a historian starts.
I salute him for all his hard (and early) work. I hope that someone will
> step
up to do this larger history (much of which happened after Peter's
> publication
dates) before we all die off.
+1 A louder *amen*....
> And I have to say, It looks like Warner's research (with all the
> abundant help from this group) the last week or two is amazing.
I agree - as much as I offered some additions and corrections it is well
done -- thank you, Warner.
> .... I deeply regret that I never had an opportunity to meet Joe Ossanna.
Indeed.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-09-15 20:12 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 82+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-09-09 6:25 [TUHS] PWB vs Unix/TS Warner Losh
2019-09-09 6:36 ` arnold
2019-09-10 15:16 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-11 0:28 ` Steve Johnson
2019-09-11 3:53 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-11 15:36 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-11 16:55 ` [TUHS] IBM Unix source licenses [was " Charles H Sauer
2019-09-12 19:31 ` Kevin Bowling
2019-09-12 20:59 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-12 21:09 ` [TUHS] IBM Unix source licenses - Series/1 NUXI Ronald Natalie
2019-09-12 21:31 ` [TUHS] IBM Unix source licenses [was Re: PWB vs Unix/TS Warner Losh
2019-09-12 22:30 ` jcs
2019-09-12 23:12 ` reed
2019-09-12 23:22 ` jcs
2019-09-12 23:29 ` [TUHS] IBM Unix source licenses Warren Toomey
2019-09-13 7:06 ` arnold
2019-09-13 8:30 ` SPC
2019-09-14 18:29 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-12 21:29 ` [TUHS] IBM Unix source licenses [was Re: PWB vs Unix/TS Charles H Sauer
2019-09-11 17:49 ` [TUHS] " Richard Salz
2019-09-11 17:52 ` ron
2019-09-11 21:44 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-11 18:11 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-11 18:18 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-11 18:54 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-11 21:05 ` Steve Johnson
2019-09-11 21:34 ` Steve Johnson
2019-09-11 21:57 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-11 22:50 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-09-11 21:59 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-11 21:50 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-11 22:49 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-12 3:43 ` [TUHS] SCCS Larry McVoy
2019-09-12 4:20 ` George Michaelson
2019-09-12 4:31 ` [TUHS] [SPAM] SCCS Larry McVoy
2019-09-12 13:44 ` Tony Finch
2019-09-13 4:11 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-13 5:54 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-13 8:00 ` Peter Jeremy
2019-09-13 15:23 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-13 21:36 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-12 4:28 ` [TUHS] SCCS Jon Forrest
2019-09-12 4:33 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-12 6:12 ` William Corcoran
2019-09-12 14:35 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-13 5:22 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-13 5:50 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-12 16:45 ` Eric Allman
2019-09-12 17:29 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-12 17:47 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-13 8:12 ` emanuel stiebler
2019-09-13 21:11 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-13 21:17 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-13 21:48 ` Bakul Shah
2019-09-13 23:12 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-13 23:03 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-14 1:55 ` [TUHS] [SPAM] SCCS Larry McVoy
2019-09-16 17:23 ` [TUHS] SCCS Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-16 20:31 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-17 17:57 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-18 8:48 ` Eric Allman
2019-09-18 17:33 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-09-12 20:07 ` Nemo
2019-09-11 16:05 ` [TUHS] PWB vs Unix/TS Paul Winalski
2019-09-11 17:14 ` ron
2019-09-14 0:44 ` [TUHS] a book (was Re: PWB vs Unix/TS) reed
2019-09-14 2:53 ` Warner Losh
2019-09-15 2:18 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-15 2:39 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-15 3:24 ` Adam Thornton
2019-09-14 22:46 ` Clem cole
2019-09-15 0:58 ` Adam Thornton
2019-09-15 3:30 ` Eric Allman
2019-09-15 4:21 ` Larry McVoy
2019-09-15 5:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-15 20:14 ` Clem Cole
2019-09-15 20:21 ` Jon Steinhart
2019-09-15 20:12 ` Clem Cole [this message]
2019-09-15 21:28 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-09-15 23:27 ` Clem cole
2019-09-15 23:45 ` Richard Salz
2019-09-15 7:43 ` Andy Kosela
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