[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Diomidis Spinellis]

Since early 2013 I've occasionally asked this list for help, and shared
the progress regarding the creation of a Unix Git repository containing
Unix releases from the 1970s until today [1].

On Saturday I presented this work [2, 3] at MSR '15: The 12th Working
Conference on Mining Software Repositories, and on Sunday I discussed
the work with the participants over a poster [4] (complete with commits
shown in a teletype (lcase) and a VT-220 font).  Amazingly, the work
received the conference's "Best Data Showcase Award", for which I'm
obviously very happy.

I'd like to thank again the many individuals who contributed to the
effort. Brian W. Kernighan, Doug McIlroy, and Arnold D. Robbins helped
with Bell Labs login identifiers. Clem Cole, Era Eriksson, Mary Ann
Horton, Kirk McKusick, Jeremy C. Reed, Ingo Schwarze, and Anatole Shaw
helped with BSD login identifiers. The BSD SCCS import code is based on
work by H. Merijn Brand and Jonathan Gray.

A lot of work remains to be done.  Given that the build process is
shared as open source code, it is easy to contribute additions and fixes
through GitHub pull requests on the build software repository [5], but
if you feel uncomfortable with that, just send me email. The most useful
community contribution would be to increase the coverage of imported
snapshot files that are attributed to a specific author. Currently,
about 90 thousand files (out of a total of 160 thousand) are getting
assigned an author through a default rule. Similarly, there are about
250 authors (primarily early FreeBSD ones) for which only the identifier
is known. Both are listed in the build repository's unmatched directory
[6], and contributions are welcomed (start with early editions; I can
propagate from there). Most importantly, more branches of open source
systems can be added, such as NetBSD OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and illumos.
Ideally, current right holders of other important historical Unix
releases, such as System III, System V, NeXTSTEP, and SunOS, will
release their systems under a license that would allow their
incorporation into this repository.  If you know people who can help in
this, please nudge them.

--Diomidis

[1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
[2]
http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/Spi15c.html
(HTML)
[3]
http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/Spi15c.pdf
(PDF)
[4]
http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/poster.pdf
(105MB)
[5] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-make
[6]
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-make/tree/master/src/unmatched

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo]

Diomidis Spinellis <dds at aueb.gr> writes:

> Since early 2013 I've occasionally asked this list for help, and shared
> the progress regarding the creation of a Unix Git repository containing
> Unix releases from the 1970s until today [1].

This is so cool!  Great work!  :)

> Most importantly, more branches of open source systems can be added,
> such as NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and illumos.

Getting early NetBSD in there would help complete the continuity, seeing
as NetBSD was a fork of 386BSD, and FreeBSD a later fork of NetBSD.

-tih
-- 
Popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity.  --Niles Crane, "Frasier"

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Erik E. Fair]

Congratulations!

The NetBSD source repository has not changed source control systems since project inception - we're still using CVS, and the whole thing can be browsed at anoncvs.netbsd.org. A bunch of stuff is now "in the attic" (nominally "deleted" from the repository, but so far as I know that just means it's not fetched by default with an unadorned "get" command - it's still in the repository archive).

The history you're looking to collect is available for copy any time.

	Erik <fair at netbsd.org> (among other addresses)

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Jacob Goense]

On 2015-05-19 12:04, Erik E. Fair wrote:
> The NetBSD source repository has not changed source control systems
> since project inception - we're still using CVS, and the whole thing
> can be browsed at anoncvs.netbsd.org. A bunch of stuff is now "in the
> attic" (nominally "deleted" from the repository, but so far as I know
> that just means it's not fetched by default with an unadorned "get"
> command - it's still in the repository archive).
> 
> The history you're looking to collect is available for copy any time.

There is a pile of "revision #.# intentionally removed" in there. See
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/09/14/netbsd_future.html?page=2
for Hannum's story behind it.

Deadly quote "and nobody cares about that early code history any more
--so this is all water under the bridge."

They are available in a manilla folder through a coughing man in a
raincoat if you know in which parking garage you have to look. Not
sure what the consequences are if they appear as a pull request for
dspinellis's truly awesome unix-history-repo.


/Jacob

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

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Jacob Goense <dugo at xs4all.nl> wrote:
 |On 2015-05-19 12:04, Erik E. Fair wrote:
 |> The NetBSD source repository has not changed source control systems
 |> since project inception - we're still using CVS, and the whole thing
 |> can be browsed at anoncvs.netbsd.org. A bunch of stuff is now "in the
 |> attic" (nominally "deleted" from the repository, but so far as I know
 |> that just means it's not fetched by default with an unadorned "get"
 |> command - it's still in the repository archive).
 |> 
 |> The history you're looking to collect is available for copy any time.
 |
 |There is a pile of "revision #.# intentionally removed" in there. See
 |http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/09/14/netbsd_future.html?page=2
 |for Hannum's story behind it.
 |
 |Deadly quote "and nobody cares about that early code history any more
 |--so this is all water under the bridge."
 |
 |They are available in a manilla folder through a coughing man in a
 |raincoat if you know in which parking garage you have to look. Not
 |sure what the consequences are if they appear as a pull request for
 |dspinellis's truly awesome unix-history-repo.

I also thought that was bad advise – Jörg Sonnenberger of NetBSD
converted the repository to Fossil.  I have lost that address; he
automatically converts _that_ to git(1) on github [1], which
i track myself, however.

Note that he is the one who is developing the used converter, and
that in turn had some errors in the past, resulting in history to
become invalid.  That didn't happen for quite a while now (afaik!)
but since it was very weird about two years ago and occasionally
happened still last year one possibly should ask him before
integrating all those millions of objects into such a large
repository.

  [1] https://github.com/jsonn/src

--steffen

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[SPC]

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Congratulations !

Gracias | Regards - Saludos | Greetings | Freundliche Grüße | Salutations
​
-- 
*Sergio Pedraja*
-- 
mobile: +34-699-996568
twitter: @sergio_pedraja | skype: Sergio Pedraja
--
http://plus.google.com/u/0/101292256663392735405
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiopedraja
http://www.quora.com/Sergio-Pedraja
http://spedraja.wordpress.com
https://www.xing.com/profile/Sergio_Pedraja <http://spedraja.wordpress.com/>
-----
No crea todo lo que ve, ni crea que está viéndolo todo


2015-05-19 15:48 GMT+02:00 Steffen Nurpmeso <sdaoden at yandex.com>:

> Jacob Goense <dugo at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>  |On 2015-05-19 12:04, Erik E. Fair wrote:
>  |> The NetBSD source repository has not changed source control systems
>  |> since project inception - we're still using CVS, and the whole thing
>  |> can be browsed at anoncvs.netbsd.org. A bunch of stuff is now "in the
>  |> attic" (nominally "deleted" from the repository, but so far as I know
>  |> that just means it's not fetched by default with an unadorned "get"
>  |> command - it's still in the repository archive).
>  |>
>  |> The history you're looking to collect is available for copy any time.
>  |
>  |There is a pile of "revision #.# intentionally removed" in there. See
>  |http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/09/14/netbsd_future.html?page=2
>  |for Hannum's story behind it.
>  |
>  |Deadly quote "and nobody cares about that early code history any more
>  |--so this is all water under the bridge."
>  |
>  |They are available in a manilla folder through a coughing man in a
>  |raincoat if you know in which parking garage you have to look. Not
>  |sure what the consequences are if they appear as a pull request for
>  |dspinellis's truly awesome unix-history-repo.
>
> I also thought that was bad advise – Jörg Sonnenberger of NetBSD
> converted the repository to Fossil.  I have lost that address; he
> automatically converts _that_ to git(1) on github [1], which
> i track myself, however.
>
> Note that he is the one who is developing the used converter, and
> that in turn had some errors in the past, resulting in history to
> become invalid.  That didn't happen for quite a while now (afaik!)
> but since it was very weird about two years ago and occasionally
> happened still last year one possibly should ask him before
> integrating all those millions of objects into such a large
> repository.
>
>   [1] https://github.com/jsonn/src
>
> --steffen
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Clem Cole]

Diomidis,

What a wonderful gift to the community.   Thank you.

Clem Cole

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 4:07 PM, Diomidis Spinellis <dds at aueb.gr> wrote:

> Since early 2013 I've occasionally asked this list for help, and shared
> the progress regarding the creation of a Unix Git repository containing
> Unix releases from the 1970s until today [1].
>
> On Saturday I presented this work [2, 3] at MSR '15: The 12th Working
> Conference on Mining Software Repositories, and on Sunday I discussed
> the work with the participants over a poster [4] (complete with commits
> shown in a teletype (lcase) and a VT-220 font).  Amazingly, the work
> received the conference's "Best Data Showcase Award", for which I'm
> obviously very happy.
>
> I'd like to thank again the many individuals who contributed to the
> effort. Brian W. Kernighan, Doug McIlroy, and Arnold D. Robbins helped
> with Bell Labs login identifiers. Clem Cole, Era Eriksson, Mary Ann
> Horton, Kirk McKusick, Jeremy C. Reed, Ingo Schwarze, and Anatole Shaw
> helped with BSD login identifiers. The BSD SCCS import code is based on
> work by H. Merijn Brand and Jonathan Gray.
>
> A lot of work remains to be done.  Given that the build process is
> shared as open source code, it is easy to contribute additions and fixes
> through GitHub pull requests on the build software repository [5], but
> if you feel uncomfortable with that, just send me email. The most useful
> community contribution would be to increase the coverage of imported
> snapshot files that are attributed to a specific author. Currently,
> about 90 thousand files (out of a total of 160 thousand) are getting
> assigned an author through a default rule. Similarly, there are about
> 250 authors (primarily early FreeBSD ones) for which only the identifier
> is known. Both are listed in the build repository's unmatched directory
> [6], and contributions are welcomed (start with early editions; I can
> propagate from there). Most importantly, more branches of open source
> systems can be added, such as NetBSD OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and illumos.
> Ideally, current right holders of other important historical Unix
> releases, such as System III, System V, NeXTSTEP, and SunOS, will
> release their systems under a license that would allow their
> incorporation into this repository.  If you know people who can help in
> this, please nudge them.
>
> --Diomidis
>
> [1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
> [2]
>
> http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/Spi15c.html
> (HTML)
> [3]
> http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/Spi15c.pdf
> (PDF)
> [4]
> http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/poster.pdf
> (105MB)
> [5] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-make
> [6]
> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-make/tree/master/src/unmatched
>
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Warner Losh]

> On May 19, 2015, at 3:24 AM, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih at hamartun.priv.no> wrote:
> 
> Diomidis Spinellis <dds at aueb.gr> writes:
> 
>> Since early 2013 I've occasionally asked this list for help, and shared
>> the progress regarding the creation of a Unix Git repository containing
>> Unix releases from the 1970s until today [1].
> 
> This is so cool!  Great work!  :)
> 
>> Most importantly, more branches of open source systems can be added,
>> such as NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and illumos.
> 
> Getting early NetBSD in there would help complete the continuity, seeing
> as NetBSD was a fork of 386BSD, and FreeBSD a later fork of NetBSD.

FreeBSD was never a fork of NetBSD. OpenBSD was a later fork of NetBSD.
FreeBSD and NetBSD both forked from the patch kits that were produced for
the 386BSD project.

Warner

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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo]

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Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> writes:

>> Getting early NetBSD in there would help complete the continuity, seeing
>> as NetBSD was a fork of 386BSD, and FreeBSD a later fork of NetBSD.
>
> FreeBSD was never a fork of NetBSD. OpenBSD was a later fork of NetBSD.
> FreeBSD and NetBSD both forked from the patch kits that were produced for
> the 386BSD project.

I stand corrected!  Looking at Éric Lévénez' time line of Unix, I see
that you're right.  In my own recollection, the FreeBSD split, which
happened a few months after Chris Demetriou and others started NetBSD,
was out of NetBSD -- but it seems it was, after all, a parallel fork
from Bill Jolitz' code base.  (The whole thing triggered because he
didn't adopt the patch kits, and the NetBSD/FreeBSD separation taking
place because of differences of opinion on multi-architecture support.)

And, while it's a subject: the split was on very friendly terms.  :)

-tih
-- 
Popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity.  --Niles Crane, "Frasier"

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih at hamartun.priv.no>
wrote:

> And, while it's a subject: the split was on very friendly terms.  :)


​Yes, they had different goals.   Jordan wanted to create a 386/PC friendly
install - be a low/no cost answer to MSFT when the target was Intel HW that
could be bought anywhere - i.e. HW purchased from "computer shopper".
[The port to other HW like Alpha would not come until much later]

NetBSD wanted to take the CRSG token make a solid system for research that
ran everywhere - i.e. lots of different target HW - 68K many different
vendors, Vax, Power, sparc, much less x86.  In fact, they would take back
from FreeBSD a lot of the 386 work eventually.

The NetBSD/OpenBSD fork would happen much later in time and that was based
on personalities and group management [that one was sad, but knowing both
group of people, understandable].

BTW: Linux would eventually take much of the install work that FreeBSD
originally developed - particularly in set up/install provisioning.​  At
the time, the Linux installs were pretty weak.

I know in my own case, many of us were worried that the AT&T/BSDi/UCB case
was going to make a "freely available" UNIX unable to happen.  Little did
we know that if AT&T had won, Linux (and all of the "clones") would have
been in violation of the AT&T IP - the trade secrets - and they would have
had to be removed from the market also.   I've often wondered what would
have really happened if that had occurred.

Instead, of course, a lot of hackers (myself included) quickly downloaded
Linux and started hacking and moving linux from toy to something real.

That said, I run the MacOS Unix flavor on my desk (and my wife, and each
child), FreeBSD & OpenBSD on my servers at home, but progam Linux for my
job these days.

Clem
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Tom Ivar Helbekkmo]

Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:

> That said, I run the MacOS Unix flavor on my desk (and my wife, and each
> child), FreeBSD & OpenBSD on my servers at home, but progam Linux for my
> job these days.

I sysadmin Linux for a living, but at home I run NetBSD on Intel (and
have done so ever since it was called "386bsd 0.0"), 4.3BSD on VAXen,
and 2.11BSD on PDP-11 systems.  :)

-tih
-- 
Popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity.  --Niles Crane, "Frasier"

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[cowan]

Clem Cole scripsit:

> NetBSD wanted to take the CRSG token make a solid system for research that
> ran everywhere - i.e. lots of different target HW - 68K many different
> vendors, Vax, Power, sparc, much less x86.  In fact, they would take back
> from FreeBSD a lot of the 386 work eventually.

The Hannum interview says that portability wasn't the focus in the *very*
beginning, and that getting NetBSD running on different architectures
was because they had a lot of different architectures around.  So it
was making a virtue of what started out as necessity.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Do what you will / this Life's a Fiction
And is made up of / Contradiction.  --William Blake

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Andy Kosela]

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 1:55 PM,  <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> Clem Cole scripsit:
>
>> NetBSD wanted to take the CRSG token make a solid system for research that
>> ran everywhere - i.e. lots of different target HW - 68K many different
>> vendors, Vax, Power, sparc, much less x86.  In fact, they would take back
>> from FreeBSD a lot of the 386 work eventually.
>
> The Hannum interview says that portability wasn't the focus in the *very*
> beginning, and that getting NetBSD running on different architectures
> was because they had a lot of different architectures around.  So it
> was making a virtue of what started out as necessity.

In the *very* beginning Hannum wasn't even there to testify about it.
NetBSD was basically a project of Chris Demetriou (what is he doing
these days?) with the help of Theo, who made the second commit to the
tree.

And Warner is right about FreeBSD beginnings.  There was a lot of
personalities clashes in those early days.  I still believe that if we
were able to come up with one project instead of three, *BSD would be
much more successful and would displace Linux easily in the server
market.

--Andy

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Derrik Walker v2.0]

On 05/18/2015 04:07 PM, Diomidis Spinellis wrote:
> Since early 2013 I've occasionally asked this list for help, and shared
> the progress regarding the creation of a Unix Git repository containing
> Unix releases from the 1970s until today [1].
>
> On Saturday I presented this work [2, 3] at MSR '15: The 12th Working
> Conference on Mining Software Repositories, and on Sunday I discussed
> the work with the participants over a poster [4] (complete with commits
> shown in a teletype (lcase) and a VT-220 font).  Amazingly, the work
> received the conference's "Best Data Showcase Award", for which I'm
> obviously very happy.
>
This work is AMAZING!  I've been collecting UNIX source code and 
documents since the mid '90's.  I have accumulated more that 20 gig of 
stuff ( including goodies like the NCD contributed CD they use to 
distribute with their X-tubes and one release of the Prime Time Freeware 
for UNIX ), and papers as PDF files I've found here and there ( like 
dmr's web page ).

But, my stuff is just a pile of barely organized sub-directories under 
~/unix on my main Linux system.  This work however ... is very well done.

Of course, I've snarked your paper and poster pdf's and am cloning the 
repository as I type this for my collection ( I only have the BSD stuff 
that's in the Archive ).

Congrats on the award.  It's well deserved!  And thanks for doing this!

I was wondering if you were planning on adding any of the Solaris stuff 
( I managed to get one source release of open Solaris before Oracle 
bought out sun ) or Darwin? Unfortunately, I don't seem to have the 
Darwin source anymore  ( some bits of my collection have been lost to 
time ), but I can contribute what I have of Open Solaris if you want it.

-- 
-- Derrik

Derrik Walker v2.0, RHCE
dwalker at doomd.net

"Those UNIX guys, they think weird!" -- John C. Dvorak

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Diomidis Spinellis]

On 21/05/2015 04:42, Derrik Walker v2.0 wrote:
> I was wondering if you were planning on adding any of the Solaris stuff
> ( I managed to get one source release of open Solaris before Oracle
> bought out sun ) or Darwin? Unfortunately, I don't seem to have the
> Darwin source anymore  ( some bits of my collection have been lost to
> time ), but I can contribute what I have of Open Solaris if you want it.

I was thinking about this.  The candidates are illumos and OpenIndiana,
which contain commits until the present time.

The first commit on illumos is from 2005.

commit 7c478bd95313f5f23a4c958a745db2134aa03244
Author: stevel at tonic-gate <none at none>
Date:   Tue Jun 14 00:00:00 2005 -0700

    OpenSolaris Launch

This leaves a long dark period between 32V and 2005.  It'd therefore
prefer to wait, until we can get System V and early versions of SunOS
available under some type of open source license.

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[cowan]

Diomidis Spinellis scripsit:

> This leaves a long dark period between 32V and 2005.  It'd therefore
> prefer to wait, until we can get System V and early versions of SunOS
> available under some type of open source license.

It might be possible to get the vanilla-from-AT&T System V Releases 1-3
freely licensed, though Novell is presumably still making money from AIX,
which descends from SVR3.  SVR4 has proprietary Microsoft (Xenix) and
SunOS (Oracle) code in it, plus being the ancestor of still-current HP/UX.
Scrubbing proprietary third-party code to make an open-source release
of any of these ancient versions, as had to be done for Solaris (and Java),
is almost certainly too much work for anyone to want to undertake today.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes.
        --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Clem Cole]

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​below.​

On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:09 AM, <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:

> It might be possible to get the vanilla-from-AT&T System V Releases 1-3
> freely licensed, though Novell is presumably still making money from AIX,
> which descends from SVR3.
>
Hmm ..I thought all of the majors >>except<< for DEC​ bought out their
licenses at some point.   I admit I've forgotten the specifics, but  that
is my recollection.




> SVR4 has proprietary Microsoft (Xenix) and
> SunOS (Oracle) code in it, plus being the ancestor of still-current HP/UX.
>
​HP/UX is an SVR3 & OSF/1 ancester.   Solaris is SVR4.  In fact it was the
SVR4 license and deal between Sun and AT&T)​ that forced the whole OSF
creation.  One of the "principles" of the OSF was "Fair and Stable" license
terms.

Which begs a question - since Solaris was SVR4 based and was made freely
available via OpenSolaris et al, does that not make SVR4 open?   I'm not a
lawyer (nor play one on TV), but it does seem like that sets some sort of
precedent.



> Scrubbing proprietary third-party code to make an open-source release
> of any of these ancient versions, as had to be done for Solaris (and Java),
>
​Interesting - how did they "scrub" SVR4 from it?   The whole idea was to
take SVR4 and "enhance it" using the SVR4 API's.  ​



> is almost certainly too much work for anyone to want to undertake today.
>
​Agreed, unless there is a clear statement from the owners, it's going to
be hard; which is a shame from a historical stand point, but I agree.
C
​lem​
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Jacob Ritorto]

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On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> ​HP/UX is an SVR3 & OSF/1 ancester.   Solaris is SVR4.  In fact it was the
> SVR4 license and deal between Sun and AT&T)​ that forced the whole OSF
> creation.  One of the "principles" of the OSF was "Fair and Stable" license
> terms.
>
> Which begs a question - since Solaris was SVR4 based and was made freely
> available via OpenSolaris et al, does that not make SVR4 open?   I'm not a
> lawyer (nor play one on TV), but it does seem like that sets some sort of
> precedent.
>
>
I hope not to hijack the thread, but those are interesting tidbits of info,
there, Clem.  Are these strategic license moves chronicled anywhere at the
moment?  It'd be interesting to read exactly who sued whom, who asked for
permission vs. who begged for forgiveness, etc.

thx
jake
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Clem Cole]

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I never took those kinds of notes.  We certainly talked about it and we
used to have know who had what at Locus since all of the majors were our
customers and we had to be very, very careful to not cross pollinate.
Sometimes we would do specific work in different offices, just to make the
firewall easier to manage.  For instance the Ultrix and Tru64 work we did
for DEC, as well as the HP work was done in Boston.  Most of the IBM work
was done in the LA office, and Intel work was led in San Diego.

There was a time when I had the release schedules of DEC, IBM, HP and Sun
taped the wall behind my desk, because we had teams delivering things to
all 4 of them.

That said, if you talked to one of the UNIX press of the old days, like the
old "UNIXgram/X" folks, you could put together the chronology. However, I
don't know that any of that is on line anywhere to search.   But that would
be the documentation I would look if I was a lawyer trying to demonstrate
who did what in what order.   Some of those folks are still around and
writing, I saw something from Timothy Pickering Morgan just yesterday
talking about Linux and I see some of the other names pop up in the blogs
and journals at different times.

On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>> ​HP/UX is an SVR3 & OSF/1 ancester.   Solaris is SVR4.  In fact it was
>> the SVR4 license and deal between Sun and AT&T)​ that forced the whole OSF
>> creation.  One of the "principles" of the OSF was "Fair and Stable" license
>> terms.
>>
>> Which begs a question - since Solaris was SVR4 based and was made freely
>> available via OpenSolaris et al, does that not make SVR4 open?   I'm not a
>> lawyer (nor play one on TV), but it does seem like that sets some sort of
>> precedent.
>>
>>
> I hope not to hijack the thread, but those are interesting tidbits of
> info, there, Clem.  Are these strategic license moves chronicled anywhere
> at the moment?  It'd be interesting to read exactly who sued whom, who
> asked for permission vs. who begged for forgiveness, etc.
>
> thx
> jake
>
>
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[scj]

My contribution to the author attribution is to point out that, at least
in the Research Bell Labs days, there was a unique but very effective
rule--if you touch it, you own it!  People were encouraged to hack the
code rather than complain to the previous authors.  But when they did,
they owned the result, bugs and all.

For example, I invented the first "at" command.  My contribution was
primarily the name and some of the syntax.  My implementation was as a
shell script, which absolutely revolted Dennis.  Within a couple of days
he had replaced it with a jewel that not only ran the command at the
correct time, but from the correct directory and with the correct
permissions.  I never touched it again...

I've never again worked with a group that took such an approach to
ownership, and I have frequently missed it...

Steve

> The most useful
> community contribution would be to increase the coverage of imported
> snapshot files that are attributed to a specific author. Currently,
> about 90 thousand files (out of a total of 160 thousand) are getting
> assigned an author through a default rule. Similarly, there are about
> 250 authors (primarily early FreeBSD ones) for which only the identifier
> is known. Both are listed in the build repository's unmatched directory
> [6], and contributions are welcomed (start with early editions; I can
> propagate from there). Most importantly, more branches of open source
> systems can be added, such as NetBSD OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and illumos.
> Ideally, current right holders of other important historical Unix
> releases, such as System III, System V, NeXTSTEP, and SunOS, will
> release their systems under a license that would allow their
> incorporation into this repository.  If you know people who can help in
> this, please nudge them.
>
> --Diomidis
>

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[John Cowan]

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Clem Cole scripsit:

> Which begs a question - since Solaris was SVR4 based and was made freely
> available via OpenSolaris et al, does that not make SVR4 open?   I'm not a
> lawyer (nor play one on TV), but it does seem like that sets some sort of
> precedent.

The fact that a specific copy bears a specific license may affect the
license on later copies by a means such as the GPL, but can't possibly
affect earlier copies, which are still bound by the earlier grave and
perilous license.  So you can use any SVR4 bits that are still part of
OpenSolaris freely within the terms of the CDDL, but not so any other
SVR4 bits.

> > Scrubbing proprietary third-party code to make an open-source release
> > of any of these ancient versions, as had to be done for Solaris (and Java),
> 
> ​Interesting - how did they "scrub" SVR4 from it?   The whole idea was to
> take SVR4 and "enhance it" using the SVR4 API's.  ​

I wasn't speaking of SVR4, but other non-Sun cruft that accumulated
between SVR4 and Solaris 10.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
What has four pairs of pants, lives in Philadelphia,
and it never rains but it pours?
        --Rufus T. Firefly

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Mary Ann Horton]

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Is the original SVR4 around somewhere (even if still considered trade 
secret or copyrighted?)

I'm getting ready to have my collection of 9 track magtapes recovered, 
(Sydex sounds very reasonable) and I find I have 5 AT&T SVR4 tapes among 
them (all different, I think, but I won't know until I read them.)  They 
are labeled Proprietary and Copyright, and I claim no special rights to 
them other than as an ex AT&T employee.

Is it worth recovering them?

     Mary Ann

On 05/21/2015 11:04 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
> I never took those kinds of notes.  We certainly talked about it and 
> we used to have know who had what at Locus since all of the majors 
> were our customers and we had to be very, very careful to not cross 
> pollinate.   Sometimes we would do specific work in different offices, 
> just to make the firewall easier to manage.  For instance the Ultrix 
> and Tru64 work we did for DEC, as well as the HP work was done in 
> Boston.  Most of the IBM work was done in the LA office, and Intel 
> work was led in San Diego.
>
> There was a time when I had the release schedules of DEC, IBM, HP and 
> Sun taped the wall behind my desk, because we had teams delivering 
> things to all 4 of them.
>
> That said, if you talked to one of the UNIX press of the old days, 
> like the old "UNIXgram/X" folks, you could put together the 
> chronology. However, I don't know that any of that is on line anywhere 
> to search.   But that would be the documentation I would look if I was 
> a lawyer trying to demonstrate who did what in what order.   Some of 
> those folks are still around and writing, I saw something from Timothy 
> Pickering Morgan just yesterday talking about Linux and I see some of 
> the other names pop up in the blogs and journals at different times.
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Jacob Ritorto 
> <jacob.ritorto at gmail.com <mailto:jacob.ritorto at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com
>     <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>> wrote:
>
>         ​ HP/UX is an SVR3 & OSF/1 ancester. Solaris is SVR4.  In fact
>         it was the SVR4 license and deal between Sun and AT&T)​ that
>         forced the whole OSF creation.  One of the "principles" of the
>         OSF was "Fair and Stable" license terms.
>
>         Which begs a question - since Solaris was SVR4 based and was
>         made freely available via OpenSolaris et al, does that not
>         make SVR4 open?   I'm not a lawyer (nor play one on TV), but
>         it does seem like that sets some sort of precedent.
>
>
>     I hope not to hijack the thread, but those are interesting tidbits
>     of info, there, Clem.  Are these strategic license moves
>     chronicled anywhere at the moment?  It'd be interesting to read
>     exactly who sued whom, who asked for permission vs. who begged for
>     forgiveness, etc.
>
>     thx
>     jake
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[John Cowan]

Mary Ann Horton scripsit:

> Is it worth recovering them?

Only you can judge whether the price (whatever that may be) is worth it
to you.  I think they're historically very important, and I doubt anyone
would sue you if you posted them somewhere.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There are
no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that
they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --The Hobbit

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Cory Smelosky]

On Mon, 25 May 2015, Mary Ann Horton wrote:

> Is the original SVR4 around somewhere (even if still considered trade secret 
> or copyrighted?)
>

I don't believe so, but possibly in some obscure SCADA systems?  Counting 
hobbyists running it on 3B2s or excluding that? ;)

I think only derived systems remain.

> I'm getting ready to have my collection of 9 track magtapes recovered, (Sydex 
> sounds very reasonable) and I find I have 5 AT&T SVR4 tapes among them (all 
> different, I think, but I won't know until I read them.)  They are labeled 
> Proprietary and Copyright, and I claim no special rights to them other than 
> as an ex AT&T employee.
>

All different?  I am very interested.

> Is it worth recovering them?

I believe it is, but I'd recover and archive most anything UNIX.

Any bits of CB Unix on there?

>
>    Mary Ann
>

-- 
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Scot Jenkins]

Mary Ann Horton <mah at mhorton.net> wrote:

> Is the original SVR4 around somewhere (even if still considered trade 
> secret or copyrighted?)


I found this several years ago.  Not sure who posted it.

https://archive.org/details/ATTUNIXSystemVRelease4Version2

scot

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Doug McIntyre]

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 09:42:21PM -0400, Derrik Walker v2.0 wrote:
> I was wondering if you were planning on adding any of the Solaris stuff 
> ( I managed to get one source release of open Solaris before Oracle 
> bought out sun ) or Darwin? Unfortunately, I don't seem to have the 
> Darwin source anymore..

Darwin has quite a lot of material available at http://opensource.apple.com/
(ie. the xnu- packages are the kernel source code).

Sun released Solaris 8 source code, but I don't remember what license. At
the time it wasn't quite like today with license terms fully spelled out.
And of course OpenSolaris for some period.

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Mary Ann Horton]

Thanks for this link.  There is some good stuff there!  Every piece of 
source I looked for is there.  The ex/vi "ex.news" was certainly a trip 
down memory lane.  But it's amazing how compact this distribution is.

I'll go ahead and have the tapes read.  Who knows, I might find some new 
goodies.

     Mary Ann

On 05/26/2015 10:55 AM, Scot Jenkins wrote:
> Mary Ann Horton <mah at mhorton.net> wrote:
>
>> Is the original SVR4 around somewhere (even if still considered trade
>> secret or copyrighted?)
>
> I found this several years ago.  Not sure who posted it.
>
> https://archive.org/details/ATTUNIXSystemVRelease4Version2
>
> scot

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Berny Goodheart]

> 
>    On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>
>    <mailto:clemc at ccc.com <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>>> wrote:
> 
>        ? HP/UX is an SVR3 & OSF/1 ancester. Solaris is SVR4.  In fact
>        it was the SVR4 license and deal between Sun and AT&T)? that
>        forced the whole OSF creation.  One of the "principles" of the
>        OSF was "Fair and Stable" license terms.
> 
>        Which begs a question - since Solaris was SVR4 based and was
>        made freely available via OpenSolaris et al, does that not
>        make SVR4 open?   I'm not a lawyer (nor play one on TV), but
>        it does seem like that sets some sort of precedent.

This is indeed an interesting question. During the IBM vs SCO debacle,
IBM requested the use of TMGE to be used as an example for proof of
how the SVR4 kernel algorithms were already out in the public domain
and thus set the precedent. And this was also (eventually) approved by
AT&T for publication.
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[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Mary Ann Horton

    > I have 5 AT&T SVR4 tapes among them .. Is it worth recovering them?

I would say that unless they are _known_ to be in a repository somewhere, yes
(unless it's going to cost a fortune - SVR4 isn't _that_ key a step in the
evolution, I don't think [but I stand to be corrected :-]).

	Noel

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[scj]

There was a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Sam Morgan once told a caller
"Hold on.  I'll transfer you to the Unix room.  One of the boys up there
can help you..."


>> > an honorary Unixian.
>
>> Did that term actually have currency in the Elder Days, or did you
>> make it up just now?  I note the comparable term "Multician"
>
> A nonce imitation of "Multician". The Unix room was universally
> known as such, but there was no distinctive moniker for its
> inhabitants.
>
> Doug
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Doug McIlroy]

> > an honorary Unixian.
  
> Did that term actually have currency in the Elder Days, or did you
> make it up just now?  I note the comparable term "Multician"

A nonce imitation of "Multician". The Unix room was universally
known as such, but there was no distinctive moniker for its
inhabitants.

Doug

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[cowan]

Doug McIlroy scripsit:

> an honorary Unixian.

Did that term actually have currency in the Elder Days, or did you
make it up just now?  I note the comparable term "Multician"
<http://multicians.org>

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
MEET US AT POINT ORANGE AT MIDNIGHT BRING YOUR DUCK OR PREPARE TO FACE
WUGGUMS

[TUHS] A repository with 44 years of Unix evolution gets the MSR '15 Best Data Showcase Award

[Doug McIlroy]

A fantastic curatorial exploit!              

> Deadly quote "and nobody cares about that early code history any more
> --so this is all water under the bridge."

This particular metaphor always reminds me of the Farberism: "That's
water over the bridge." Dave, a major presence at Bell Labs, master
malaprop, friend of many and collaborator with several of the early
Unix team, may be counted as an honorary Unixian.

Doug