Article 3625 of alt.folklore.computers: Path: altitude!news3.spinne.com!news.spinne.com!news-peer-east.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!news.research.bell-labs.com!news From: Dennis Ritchie Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: AT&T vs BSD Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 03:00:37 +0000 Organization: Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies Lines: 38 Message-ID: <346678D5.2DD1@bell-labs.com> References: <643it3$sur@stratus.CAM.ORG> Reply-To: dmr at bell-labs.com NNTP-Posting-Host: cebu.cs.bell-labs.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; U) Pierre Sarrazin asked > If my understanding is correct, AT&T licensed Unix to universities > in the seventies and these universities did some operating systems > research which eventually led to BSD. What I don't understand is > why AT&T allowed the creation of a competing version of Unix? and Sander van Malssen replied > Unix wasn't a "product" then, it was just an in-house hack by some guys > at AT&T's research labs that AT&T was very hard trying not to sell or > officially support in any way whatsoever (due to monopoly regulations, > or fear thereof). Only after AT&T was broken up did they begin to treat > Unix as commercial property. The truth is somewhat in between (Sander's more correct). Unix was in fact licensed tocommercial and government organizations starting in 1973 or just a bit later, and did garner a modest revenue stream, but it's true that it wasn't a "product" and was marketed on an as-is basis and without support. Until the 1984 divestiture, AT&T was basically restricted to being in the telephone business, and software and other offshoots could be propagated only by way of getting a bit of revenue from activities undertaken for internal purposes. On the other hand the company could have prevented Berkeley or anyone else from using it or making changes and then propagating them, and there are still a few at AT&T and Lucent who believe this would have been a good idea. I think they're thoroughly wrong, and regret that there was not better cooperation between the Unix development group and UCB during the late 70s and early 80s. (Fortunately, good relations prevailed between the BSD folk and us in Bell Labs research during that time). Still, I must give credit to to the company for encouraging the Berkeley work by allowing the BSD distributions. They were certainly vital in creating an industry. Dennis Ritchie