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The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-quite-over-the-hill dept.

riverat1 writes "After AT&T dropped the Multics project in March of 1969, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs continued to work on the project, through a combination of discarded equipment and subterfuge, eventually writing the first programming manual for System I in November 1971. A paper published in 1974 in the Communications of the ACM on Unix brought a flurry of requests for copies. Since AT&T was restricted from selling products not directly related to telephones or telecommunications, they released it to anyone who asked for a nominal license fee. At conferences they displayed the policy on a slide saying, 'No advertising, no support, no bug fixes, payment in advance.' From that grew an ecosystem of users supporting users much like the Linux community. The rest is history."

4 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Future by masternerdguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can see some form of UNIX making it to the 22nd century and beyond.

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  2. Not directly related to telephones? by cashman73 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Since AT&T was restricted from selling products not directly related to telephones or telecommunications, they released it to anyone who asked for a nominal license fee.

    It's interesting how AT&T couldn't support it for this reason, because today, UNIX is at the heart of both iOS and Android, which run some of today's most popular telephones.

    1. Re:Not directly related to telephones? by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since AT&T was restricted from selling products not directly related to telephones or telecommunications, they released it to anyone who asked for a nominal license fee.

      It's interesting how AT&T couldn't support it for this reason, because today, UNIX is at the heart of both iOS and Android, which run some of today's most popular telephones.

      Also at the heart of OS X. One of the smartest moves by Apple and Jobs, replacing the hideous old Mac OS with something built on Mach and borrowing heavily from BSD. Apple made the painful leap and it paid off handsomely.

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  3. Re:No support, no bug fixes by darkonc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, if you read the Microsoft EULA, you'll notice that they don't promise bug fixes either. It just isn't advertised that way (although they definitely do supply advertising)... and sometimes the support just consists of "yes, I think that's unfortunate, too".

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