Antonio Olivares wrote:
--- On Thu, 7/17/08, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
To: "For users of Fedora" <fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008, 12:33 PM
Rick Stevens wrote:
The history is really much more complex than this.
Wikipedia has a
nice graphic of how the open/commercial parts
developed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix. But basically
since the
government-regulated monopoly (AT&T) that did
the initial work could
not sell it directly, they licensed it for
research purposes to
universities where the original BSD additions were
components that had
to be installed on top of the AT&T code.
I've known Wikipedia stuff to be wrong and part of
this is. In the old
days, you couldn't call it "Unix" unless
you had a source code license
from Bell Labs (not AT&T). I know, I was involved
in the negotiations
our company had with BL to get System V source. They
wanted, IIRC, $50K
in 1982. We said "too much, guys."
You could, however, get a license for BSD for a LOT
less ($5k, I think),
and that's what a LOT of people did (including
Sun, DEC, IBM, Data
General, Silicon Graphics and others too many to
name).
This doesn't make much sense until the completion of
the standalone BSD
that I thought happened a lot later. Originally you had to
have an AT&T
license to run the BSD additions. And at these prices
it's pretty easy
to see why everyone was running Windows a few years later -
I still
blame AT&T for that.
Many companies DID use SVR4.2 as the base for later
versions of their
OSes. Sun's Solaris (SunOS 5.x) is SVR4.2-based,
whereas the original
SunOS (SunOS 4.x) was BSD-based. They renamed it
Solaris to
differentiate it from the BSD-based earlier OS.
DG's later versions of
their DG/UX was SVR4.2-based. The first PC-esque
SVR4.2 I used was on a
(blast from the past) Amiga 2000 (Motorola 68020),
followed by "E-NIX"
(from Everex Computers) on actual i386 hardware.
DEC got so pissed off at the Unix title owner that
they went to OSF/1
(Mach-based) for the Alpha products (eventually called
"Tru64") and
dropped BSD and SVR4.2 completely.
Sensible pricing could have changed everything. Dell had
one of the
least expensive versions of SysVr4 that was still around
$1k per box and
it was one of the few that would adapt to generic SCSI
drives instead of
being limited to the vendor's set compiled into the
kernel (like AT&T's
own retail version). It mysteriously disappeared right
when Windows95
came out. Of course after the court revelations about
Microsoft's
anti-competitive practices, it wasn't so mysterious.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
--
I have been keeping up with this thread and am actually surprised that no one has mentioned SCO, and if they did, I missed it:)
SCO is back at it again and they want Linux to pay for some stuff, and according to the arcticle(which follows) only Microsoft and SunOS are safe from their threats :(
http://linux.sys-con.com/read/614015.htm
They've never given up and the vast majority of their arguments are
specious at best. Several judges have already determined that SCO's
previous claims had no merit and the latest seem to simply be rehashes
of things they've claimed in the past. In some ways it's rather
pathetic. A company that can no longer compete effectively falls down
the pit of filing bogus suits in the hope that someone will give them
money to just "shut up and go away."
Note that the first SCO offering was called "Xenix" (not even they could
use "Unix" as they didn't have a license from Bell Labs...that ought to
tell you something). A large part of Xenix was written by Locus
Computing in Santa Monica, CA. Locus was also responsible for a huge
part of IBM's AIX operating system (again, no "Unix" because no source
license from Bell Labs and IBM could sure-as-hell afford one).
I have read somewhere(don't recall where) that many of the software that was written for BSD/SunOS made its way into linux since the previous were for pay. That is where Linux came in, then the big companies started selling it and now is getting bigger everyday, unfortunately there are many who do not like it like Microsoft, Apple, SCO, etc.
Despite the arguments into calling it GNU/Linux or simply Linux, it has its place for many of us users who are very happy to run it.
I think the consensus is that Linux is the kernel and Gnu makes up most
of the rest of the OS. Gnu can use Hurd as its kernel as well, but it's
nowhere nearly as common as a Linux kernel. I've seen Gnu run on a Mach
kernel as well.
As long as the kernel offers entry points and return values conforming
to the POSIX standard, I think Gnu will work with it. I could be wrong
as I've not dug really deeply into the guts of Gnu. I'm getting too old
to do that! :-)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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- Hosting Consulting, Inc. -
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- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a -
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