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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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  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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