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Bell Labs Unix Group Disbanded

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the sad-days-of-history dept.

wandazulu writes "Peter Salus over at UnixReview.com is reporting that AT&T Department 1127, responsible for creating and maintaining Unix, has been officially disbanded. The article provides an interesting "where are they now?" list of the original authors of Unix."

12 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. we've still got Google, for now by yagu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think this is sad, and a little ominous. I worked at a telco years ago, and managed to fanagle a chat on the phone with Ritchie one time when a Bell worker was on site for some software installations. Cool.

    Anyway, in my arguments to encourage research into trying new ways of doing things, I always used Bell Labs as my favorite example/reason why we should. Guess I won't have that anymore. Sigh.

    What I fear most is the lack of research for research's sake. A lot of things we use today are a direct or indirect result of companies allowing a certain amount of "what if" thinking and activity to go on. Even better, some companies, like Bell Labs actually allocated specifically for that.

    I don't think research in commercial context is really research at all and may even be counterproductive in creating new and better technology (if commercial research into products were for "quality", would there even be a Britney Spears?).

    The last bastion I know of and trust is Google. They seem to be dedicated to the cause. But, they're young, they're new, and they haven't had to deal with stockholders in bad times yet.

    1. Re:we've still got Google, for now by CondeZer0 · · Score: 5, Informative
      First of all, Linux is just an Unix clone, and it never had many fans at Bell Labs.

      And Bell Labs gave up Unix _long_ ago:
      Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad. -- Rob Pike circa 1991

      Bell Labs moved from Unix to Plan 9 in the late 80' and then went on to work on Inferno.

      Both Plan 9 and Inferno are Open Source now and live on outside Bell Labs, but their developers like to be very quiet, they rather code than talk or maintain websites.

      But here are a couple of links:


      And also many of the ideas of Plan 9 and Inferno live on as part of other projects like v9fs(9P distributed file system protocol support for Linux), Plan 9 from User Space(a port of many Plan 9 components to Unix), and wmii(a window manager partially inspired by Acme.)
      --
      "When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
    2. Re:we've still got Google, for now by JoeBuck · · Score: 5, Insightful
      No, there isn't high-quality research going on in garages and dorm rooms. Lots of entrepreneurs doing skunk-works projects, and that's great. But they don't have the level of funding, or the long-term perspective, that would let them invent the next laser or the next transistor (both products of Bell Labs), and they are too focused on a quick killing to discover the microwave remnant of the Big Bang (also from Bell Labs).

      We still have the universities, and IBM still has a sizable research division. But the exclusive focus by most of today's companies on the next quarter's revenue means we're eating the seed corn.

    3. Re:we've still got Google, for now by demachina · · Score: 5, Insightful

      An important thread to note here is that none other than Carly Fiorina is the one of the principals in spinning off Lucent and Bell Labs from AT&T. She looked like a superstar for it though in fact Lucent was mostly just a beneficiary of being a telecom/networking company during the bubble when none could fail. Their stock history is interesting from a peak around $80 in 2000 to $2.88 today. Carly's time in the sun at Lucent was from the spinoff in 1996 until she jumped to HP in 1999. Here is a glowing Businessweek article on her when she took the helm at HP then. One interesting quote:

      "she helped to turbocharge product development by the long-coddled Bell Labs engineers."

      A guy told me once on an airplane beware any company or person who makes the cover of Businessweek because it usually means they've peaked and are starting down. He said it in context of SGI and its a rule that worked just as well for Carly.

      Hindsight being 20/20 you have to wonder if Carly didn't get lucky at Lucent thanks to the bubble and she was made to look like a superstar when in fact she was a one women wrecking ball for research and development at both Lucent/Bell Labs and HP and its labs.

      Another Carly theme at Bell Labs, if you go to their web site today they are a case study in out sourcing with their greatest achievement today looking to be the fact that they have labs in China, India and Ireland.

      --
      @de_machina
    4. Re:we've still got Google, for now by fbg111 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Google doesn't do any research. What does google do?

      I don't know about that. Google's mission is to "Organize the world's information". Considering such an undertaking has never before been attempted on such a scale (unless you count Yahoo's manual indexing), then I suspect Google engages in quite a bit of advanced research. Why else would they hire brilliant, accomplished PhDs and encourage them to research and publish. It's certainly not to master AJAX web scripting techniques. Granted, Google's research is in more nebulous areas of unstructured datamining, information retrieval, algorithms, AI, OS & filesystem design, and maybe they won't develop the next general, purpose Unix or better materials for spaceship construction, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they don't do research. A brief list of their research areas are:
      • algorithms
      • artificial intelligence
      • genetic algorithms
      • machine learning
      • natural language processing
      • robotics
      (From Papers by Googlers)

      You might say they're standing on the shoulders of the giants of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, but in terms of computer science, show us someone who isn't. That doesn't mean Google's research could be any less important or ground breaking. And don't underestimate the value of the knowledge aggregation and improving language translation ability of their search engine. Who knows how this could affect human civilization, maybe even to the point of speeding up our advancement by connecting minds with more relevant information more quickly than the printing press, the worthless main stream media, and even P2P email allowed. Only time will tell...
      --
      Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
  2. The real question is by igny · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is cooking at Department # 1337.

    --
    In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
    1. Re:The real question is by paulius_g · · Score: 5, Funny

      They're just a bunch of 14 year olds playing Counter-Strike and "pwning n00bs".

      Very complicated stuff, I must admit.

      --
      The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
  3. Good times by saddino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill from 1985 through 1989, and though I did not work in Dept 1127, I did get the amazing chance to see what Bell Labs was all about: the incredible, vibrant home to tremendously talented scientists from the UNIX gurus to the low temperature physics gods. As a young high school and then college student, aspiring to join their ranks full time, I was mesmerized by the environment where a 2pm coffee break could evolve into a deep discussion of networking theory and then reflect sincerely on the goings-on in the world. Bell Labs was a magical place, and hopefully, the seeds of similar pure research incubators are being sewn in today's tech powerhouses such as Google.

  4. Re:Serious question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    dude, they wrote UNIX. Buy a clue (or some Ritchie/Kernighan editions) and get back to installing your nightly windoze patches.

  5. Re:Insensitive by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For politics, and religion is all. She was nothing but a vegtable. I feel sorry for her husband who had to be dragged through the mud by GWB, Jeb, Frist, Focus on the Family, etc. Even after it was over, Jeb tried anything that he could to make him look bad for simply doing what his wife wanted in the first place.

    Personally, I would love to see him sue all of them. But I am guessing that he just wants it over with and to be away from all the idiots.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  6. Re:Serious question... by quanticle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does the invention of the entire C programming language count?

    --
    We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
  7. What is Salus talking about? by Marc+Rochkind · · Score: 5, Informative
    I was at Bell Labs from 1970 to 1982, and I don't remember any Dept. 1127. My 1980 Bell Labs Directory shows a Dept. 1271, led by McIlroy, consisting of Cherry, Morris, Thompson, Aho, Baker, Lengaauer, Syzmanski, Weinberger, and Yannakakis. Its sibling, Dept. 1273, led by Fraser, consisted of Chesson, Kernighan, Ritchie, Stroustrup, Vollaro, Johnson, Ditzel, Elliott, and Feldman. (No Pike--I don't think he was at Bell Labs yet.)

    I guess everyone thinks that Thompson and Ritchie were in the same department during the 1970s, but I do remember always knowing that they were not.

    Note that by 1980 UNIX-related OS research at Bell Labs was nearly completed. Development of UNIX, which is where I worked, was very active and remained so for another 10+ years, but that's different from research. (Center 127 did research in many areas unrelated to UNIX.)

    So, undoubtedly there was a recent reorg and some department went away, and maybe it was even 1127, but what that means, if anything (since Thompson, Kernighan, and others left a while ago), I have no idea.

    Anyway, I think the gist of the article and most of the responses here is that it's sad that AT&T and Lucent are no longer combined and able to spend as lavishly on research as they once did. That part of this thread is true.

    A few posts are from Bell Labs people who said it was a great place to work, and that's true, too.