From: Earl Baugh <earl.baugh@gmail.com>
To: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2020 13:01:54 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANcLFn6ZFs_tvDv0ckSKTR_q8RSNZF5b7Fnfw-SFKioCRJRbBQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200219044444.GO30841@mcvoy.com>
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What was more frustrating to Sun users was that there WAS a compiler
included in Sun OS,
but it went away with Solaris. I saw a noticeable change in code available
in binary form only after that.
At least until the GNU stuff got stable enough to use...
(I was a customer of MIke's when he first start Cygnus for support of the
GNU compilers...
I was working in a secured facility and multiple times I spoke with him on
the phone typing in patches
by hand -- as he relayed them -- because of the time and hassle it took to
get a tape in with the patch...)
Earl
On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 11:45 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 12:22:56PM -0800, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > At the times I referred to the lack of freely available AT&T source code
> > was extremely limiting in how people viewed the availability of such
> > "add-on" tools for Unix -- including the C compiler!
>
> This wasn't just an AT&T thing, Sun and SGI and everyone charged for their
> C compiler. I sort of get it, writing a good compiler is up there with
> writing a good kernel in effort, not quite the same, but probably the
> 2nd hardest thing to do. So the compiler people cost a lot, companies
> wanted to get that cost back.
>
> It was stupid. Having a free compiler meant that more people would
> write apps for your platform. It should have been a loss leader.
>
> > > For folks running binary only systems from Masscomp/Sun/DEC/HP/IBM and
> the
> > > like, it is possible it was different.
> >
> > It was _very_ different.
> >
> > If you weren't out in the trenches of end-user Unix-based systems at the
> > time it may not have been as obvious as to just how restrictive it was
> > to have proprietary fee-based licensing of such add-on software. Most
> > end-users couldn't even pay their vendors for ditroff -- their vendors
> > didn't want to have to license it from AT&T, even when they had
> > advocates inside the companies (e.g. I did some work supporting software
> > for a couple such vendors and was never able to convince them). Some,
> > as you mention, were all-in, but it wasn't until UNIX System V Release 4
> > became more widely available that systems based on it were more likely
> > to have ditroff, and sometimes (though much more rarely) the "new" dpost
> > post-processor was also included. I don't know if there were different
> > licensing terms for SysVr4 or not. Don't get me started on how hard it
> > also was to get some end users to buy a C compiler too.
>
> Yep, lived through this as well. I fought with Sun to make more stuff
> free for developers, it just didn't make sense to not do that but the
> powers that were didn't get it.
>
> One thing that Sun did do, probably in spite of itself, was fund
> Michael Tiemann's work on C++. He worked out some deal that that
> work would be open source and he pretty much made GNU C++ work
> for some definition of work (C++ is a mess).
>
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-02-19 18:02 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 83+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-02-17 15:20 Doug McIlroy
2020-02-17 16:47 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-17 18:09 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 18:39 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-17 21:16 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 22:50 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-17 23:22 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-18 0:56 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-18 3:33 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 7:27 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-18 0:03 ` Richard Salz
2020-02-18 0:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-18 0:54 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-18 1:05 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-18 7:40 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-18 7:45 ` arnold
2020-02-18 20:24 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-18 11:22 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-18 12:28 ` arnold
2020-02-18 12:49 ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2020-02-18 13:23 ` arnold
2020-02-18 15:11 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 15:28 ` arnold
2020-02-18 15:36 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-18 15:43 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-18 15:52 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 16:40 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-02-18 18:39 ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-18 21:26 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 21:29 ` Wesley Parish
2020-02-19 4:52 ` [TUHS] Open source or free software? (was: man Macro Package and pdfmark) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-02-18 15:48 ` [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark Clem Cole
2020-02-18 16:02 ` Chet Ramey
2020-02-18 16:28 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-18 17:49 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-18 21:46 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-18 16:47 ` Henry Bent
2020-02-18 20:22 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-02-19 4:44 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-19 18:01 ` Earl Baugh [this message]
2020-02-19 18:12 ` Emile Bye
2020-02-19 20:18 ` Michael Huff
2020-02-19 20:34 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-19 21:09 ` Henry Bent
2020-02-20 7:27 ` arnold
2020-02-20 7:43 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 13:15 ` Dan Cross
2020-02-20 16:23 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-20 16:34 ` Arthur Krewat
2020-02-20 17:06 ` Al Kossow
2020-02-20 17:24 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-20 17:48 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 20:10 ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-20 20:18 ` Rich Morin
2020-02-20 16:48 ` Nemo
2020-02-20 17:00 ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-20 19:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-20 23:45 ` Doug McIntyre
2020-02-21 0:18 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-21 1:14 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-02-21 8:19 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-21 8:17 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-02-21 10:17 ` arnold
2020-02-21 10:37 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-21 18:34 ` Heinz Lycklama
2020-02-21 18:59 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-21 21:10 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-21 21:46 ` David Barto
2020-02-22 6:48 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 10:42 ` Al Kossow
2020-02-22 11:01 ` Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 16:38 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-22 18:11 ` arnold
2020-02-22 23:41 ` [TUHS] Mini-UNIX Warren Toomey
2020-02-22 11:08 ` [TUHS] man Macro Package and pdfmark Ed Bradford
2020-02-22 16:40 ` Warner Losh
2020-02-22 16:46 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-22 17:51 ` Heinz Lycklama
2020-02-17 18:55 Noel Chiappa
2020-02-17 20:13 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-17 21:06 ` CHARLES KESTER
2020-02-18 0:36 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-02-18 13:13 Don Hopkins
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