On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 2:21 PM, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
I wonder why the unchallenged existence of Unix clones like COHERENT and Minix wasn't enough to kill the trade secret argument before it even got out of the gate.
It was a V7 clone (like Minix). I've forgotten but I thought it originally ran on 286 (again like Minix).
But,
I'm not sure why it was not as popular. Maybe the difference was that it was a V7 clone and closed source as it were
, while
Minix was a tad cheaper and you got the sources.
Also it (again like Minix) was floppy based. By that time AT&T UNIX or BSD Unix is running on 'JAWS' [just another workstation] those systems tended to have disks in them and UNIX really need one in practice. As Ted points out and I agree (as pointed out by Jolitiz in his DDJ articles, I was partly responsible for the original BSD/386 hard disk driver), the Linux support for ST506 and ESDI disks was very early and actually pretty stable in the earliest versions of Linux. In fact, because I was
familiar
with the HD stuff from BSD/386 it was one the first things I had personally checked out and was pleased to see was solid.
Clem, is your paper online somewhere?
Not yet - I'll send out an URL when the conference papers all go on line, but if you privately send me a message I'll send you a PDF. Note, a couple of you have an earlier (near final) draft, so send me a note if you want the printed one. The differences are minor-> some clarification/some small rewording to dealing with English colloquialisms that were not understood by the French.