<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">👍<br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 2:56 AM <<a href="mailto:arnold@skeeve.com" target="_blank">arnold@skeeve.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">The "odd only" policy may be true, but it's not what I was told; I<br>
was told that the policy was to release externally one version behind<br>
what was being run internally.<br></blockquote><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">That's how I remember Otis Wilson explaining it to us as commercial licensees at a licensing meeting in the early 1980s.</span> </div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">We had finally completed the PWB 3.0 license to replace the V7 commercial license (AT&T would rename this System III - but we knew it as PWB 3.) during the negociations   Summit had already moved on to the next version - PWB 4.0.  IMO: Otis was not ready to start that process again.</div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<br>
With the consent decree done and Divestiture in the works, AT&T was<br>
going to be allowed get into the computer business.</blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Exactly, and Charlie Brown wanted to compete with IBM in particular—which was an issue—by the time of Judge Green, the microprocessor-based workstations had started to make huge inroads against the mini-computers. AT&T management (Brown <i>et al</i>), still equated the "computer business" with mainframes running Wall Street.</div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> So at some point,<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>someone decided that for System V, the current system would be released<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>externally.<br></blockquote><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Right—that would have had to have been someone(s) in AT&T UNIX marketing </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">in North Carolina—the folks that gave us the "<i>Consider it Standard</i>" campaign.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<br>
I doubt we'll ever know the exact truth.<br></blockquote><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">I agree.  I take a WAG, though.   I >>suspect<< it was linked to the attempt to sell the 3B20S against the DEC Vax family and the then IBM model 140 (which was the "minicomputer" size IBM mainframe system).   By that time, System V was the OS Summit had supplied for it. If there were going to be in the commercial </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">hardware business, the OS SW had to match what the HW used.</span></div><div> </div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Clem</div><br></div></div><div hspace="streak-pt-mark" style="max-height:1px"><img alt="" style="width:0px;max-height:0px;overflow:hidden" src="https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=78cb37bb-bdd0-4a2c-b84c-80b6aa10097c"><font color="#ffffff" size="1">ᐧ</font></div></div><div hspace="streak-pt-mark" style="max-height:1px"><img alt="" style="width:0px;max-height:0px;overflow:hidden" src="https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=017a2669-826b-44a0-8566-706cd626cd2b"><font color="#ffffff" size="1">ᐧ</font></div>