From: George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org>
To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question")
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 13:51:55 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKr6gn3Vhzn=g_55NdOQfQCUqi9YBSBZNbjM+YMoS8cg82PSbQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m1itNo9-0036tPC@more.local>
It does me no credit, that I initially reacted very badly to 386BSD,
and the initial {Net,Free,Open} situation.
I found all this "fragmentation" pretty hard to understand. -BSDI felt
like it had occupied the space, and I couldn't entirely understand
what was going on, or why any of it mattered.
I also reacted very badly to the public dirty linen spats around the
Jolitz's IPR, and who-did-what to-whom in woodshed, with colonel
mustard and the lead pipe.
What worried me was the loss of intellectual capital. People I liked
online, and respected, seemed to be running to the four winds. Why was
something I worked with turning to suck?
What I think I missed (didn't understand) was how draining support was
for Berkeley, and in the absence of a sugar daddy (Earth Sciences?
DOE? IBM?) and loss of contracts like the NSFNet support for BSD-rt
(they stopped using PC-Rt as a platform for routing) It was
increasingly hard for a teaching and research institution to justify
what was going on. Sun spun out of Stanford. MIT was doing the Gui
work. Compilers had gone really funny with Gnu and an income stream
had evaporated, and a lawsuit was in the offing, and people who hadn't
done full on DOTCOM boom vesting suddenly found growing old and not
having a 401k at the scale they needed to maintain a wine cellar ...
What I also missed is that it stopped innovating. People were
innovating in other places, doing things I didn't understand. I
totally did NOT get what 8th ed. and Plan9 was on. Drugs I couldn't
fathom.
Nothing lasts forever. Had you said to me "ha.. VMS is going to die,
and Dec is going to die, and Sun is going to fold into Larry Ellisons
personal empire" I'd have taken every one of those bets on what turned
out to be the loosing side.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-01-20 3:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-01-17 16:01 [TUHS] On the origins of Linux - "an academic question" Arrigo Triulzi
2020-01-17 16:53 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-17 17:08 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2020-01-17 17:25 ` Brantley Coile
2020-01-17 19:59 ` Arno Griffioen
2020-01-18 3:50 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-18 4:19 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-18 15:25 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-18 16:19 ` reed
2020-01-19 2:49 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-19 3:12 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 3:47 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Warren Toomey
2020-01-19 3:51 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 3:58 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 13:25 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-19 13:48 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 3:32 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-20 3:51 ` George Michaelson [this message]
2020-01-20 3:59 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Jon Forrest
2020-01-20 17:19 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Clem Cole
2020-01-20 17:49 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-20 19:00 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 18:04 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-20 18:09 ` David Barto
2020-01-20 18:34 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Arthur Krewat
2020-01-20 19:18 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Clem Cole
2020-01-20 19:46 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-20 20:15 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 6:58 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Lars Brinkhoff
2020-01-21 14:30 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 17:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-21 17:22 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 17:25 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-21 18:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 18:44 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 19:14 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 20:27 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-22 0:14 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg A. Woods
2020-01-21 0:44 ` Bakul Shah
2020-01-20 19:09 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-20 19:51 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 23:04 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-21 0:13 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 23:45 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-18 15:30 ` [TUHS] On the origins of Linux - "an academic question" Larry McVoy
2020-01-17 23:11 ` Andrew Warkentin
2020-01-17 23:20 ` Rob Pike
2020-01-17 23:38 ` Brantley Coile
2020-01-18 0:23 ` Wesley Parish
2020-01-18 15:35 [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Jason Stevens
2020-01-18 15:49 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-19 14:17 Noel Chiappa
2020-01-19 20:49 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-01-19 16:05 Noel Chiappa
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