Dan & Larry thank you -- this helps me understand and I'm going reply you both in line hopefully without screwing up either of your messages as I try...

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 11:28 PM, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

The universities you are mentioning here are top-tier for CS. But please do bear in mind that if you were not at one of those institutions (for whatever reason), asking for that code might well have gotten you the hairy eyeball from folks you didn't want giving you a furry look.

Unfortunately, I can see that. Sad, but probably a reality. Again, "he who has the gold, rules." Funny thing about gatekeepers. Larry's closing comment about Bill Shannon walling off the Research kernels was the same thing, and IT folks often seem to be like that too. My wife likes referred this behavior just this AM at breakfast, she calls "can't" a "magic button word" for me. I hate it when providers say things like that. Pisses me off and something go off to prove otherwise. ;-)

....Small anecdote: I got access to NetBSD fairly quickly (but it still had this feeling of not *really* being Unix, for some odd reason). I suppose I must have installed 0.8. I switched to FreeBSD once I realized one could install via FTP instead of a myriad of floppies. I ran Linux on one machine but some folks I regarded gave me guff about it and I switched to the publicly available BSD stuff shortly thereafter.

FYI: I ran them both in the early days. @ the time, *BSD was more "finger ROM" compliant(still is). I preferred Slackware for Linux because it was more BSD-like, and seemed a little less hackneyed but as you say the floppy distro just sucked.

As someone once said, BSD is what you get when Unix folks port to the PC; Linux is what you get when PC folks build a Unix.

I love it, never heard that and in fact that helps with Noel's original question, I think. It all comes back to the Christiansen disruption theory.

...
A self-deprecating anecdote.

I had to laugh a little when I read all that. I'm going to reply to something Larry said in a minute and this all related. Yeah, Larry's right, places like CMU, MIT, UCB are elite schools and yes, I have too solid board scores etc. As I like to say I have "the usual degrees from the usual institutions" - i.e. I have my union card. But I'm nothing special. You're from Penn State or UWisc (aka "UC Madison" - a lot of my class from UCB is the core of the faculty there). Hey, I believe Seymour Cray did his undergrad at St. Olaf's, a school better know for music - i.e. a small liberal arts school in Northfield, MN.

I've never really cared where you went to school, what your score were, what your degrees are etc. I'm a hacker, and proud of being that. The schools, as you and Larry correctly point out, gave me opportunity and access. So I have network from them. But its what you do with it that matters to me.

Two stories about me. First, I have always said, the greatest gift I was ever given was not getting a scholarship to MIT. I would have gone there and likely been "The nerd down the hall" - either that or flunked out. Who knows, as I later got to know folks that went there, it would not have been a good match for me as an undergrad. CMU (as screwed up as it was at time) was a better match for my personality.

The fact is, I did not know know enough about the MIT culture when I was in HS (I was a faculty brat - i.e. scholarship student -- from a Philadelphia prep school - my Sr year in college 7 of the 7 Ivy League Squash Captains are my classmates from said prep school). That HS pushed me to MIT because I wanted to an engineer and that's all they knew. I did not even know about CMU until it was suggested by a family friend who was professor in the B School there. But in the end, it was about $. CMU offered me a scholarship, MIT did not and tricky Dick wanted to put a gun in hand. It was an easy choice. What was lucky for me was it a reasonably good culture match... mostly because of the close friends I made there ... out side of the EE, Math and CS Depts (two weekend ago I was a party with some of them that has occurred for 40 years on the same weekend since). Point is, I got lucky...

Second, the proudest moment for me was watching my children pick colleges. Unlike me, I swore they would know about the culture of the schools and make darned sure that where they went matched their personalities and not rely on luck (and I'm very pleased to say that worked well with my daughter and seems to be working with my son). So to me, what the school you one too says about you is the network you have, who are your friends and the culture you learned. It tells me a little about how I can expect you to have been versed as a starting point, but I'm really much more interest want you do, have done.

It's sad, that Penn State and UWisc had walled areas like both described. Sadly I saw the same thing at UCB, certainly of the undergrads. I have nothing but respect for the young folks that did an undergrad at UCB, because it was definitely different as a grad student. To me that's about respect for the individual and helping them grown up to be their best - creating opportunity. But I fear you are right. If things like UNIX access were walled off at places like that, then as you both point out, people we search for it where they could find it, what is sad is that BSD UNIX was available at the time Linux was available. The problem was that too few knew it, although many did (more in a minute).

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 11:17 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

... Yup, source was there. Access was restricted, you had to get a login on slovax, and you had to be
"somebody" to get that login. I don't remember how I got access, I just knew I wanted it. So I probably just begged and eventually one of the admins took pity on me? Dunno.

Fair enough... that's me... I don't take no for answer either ;-).

I can easily imagine that the CMU CS department let all
their students have access to the source if they wanted it.

Sort of... when you took the OS course, since we used V6, everyone signed a "sub-license" from the CMU lawyers saying you were bound by the same rules as CMU, subject to being drawn and qtr'ed or otherwise severely admonished.

I don't think that was anywhere near as common as Clem thinks it was.

I have to accept that, as strange as it seems to me. But I can see it happening.

My guess is that Clem interacted with a bunch of people who were his peers (aka
pretty elite people) and all those guys had source access.

Maybe... I accept that view, but I don't think it was intended that way by the >>developers<<. Security by obscurity more than intent I actually think. But people that >>owned<< the computers, did tend to put up the walls. I saw that. The problem was that the cost of those systems was very high, so making the available to "anyone" was a hard thing to "justify." Only pretty "enlighten" folk knew it was in their self interest to do so. Places like CMU, MIT and Stanford where the computing was pretty available to anyone who asked, were probably fewer than place like what two have described... sigh.

Us unwashed masses had to work a lot harder to get it.

Fair enough - on the other side, you could not tell the difference and I'll grant that. But I don't think it was intended. In fact, just the opposite was intended I think. If you look at the core of things like the GNU project for the 386BSD / Jolitix it was all about trying get a code available to anyone. The "hacker philosophy" really was of science and computing for all.

Once 386BSD came out, yeah, source was easy. Not before.

Maybe... As I said, the ftp address to download the original Jolitz 386 stuff (before the BSDi) split, was a poorly kept secret.

I think I can date this sketch because as I remember it, it happened very near the time I was about to leave for my honeymoon. So that would have made it sometime in 2nd qtr of 1990. But around that time, I was consulting for NCR and during that gig, I was helping Bill with the disk driver for what would be BSD for the PC/386 (Bill references in the DDJ article BTW).

Because of my working NCR, I had access to the documentation for the WD disk controller used in the PC/AT. Jollitz had tried to write the driver by reverse engineering the AT BIOS ROMS. But since I had access to the actual docs, I was able to tell what board was supposed to be doing, so I was able fix the driver to work correctly. I also think I added the original SCSI support of the WD7000 which they had just released and NCR was using (which is pre CAM BTW). Anyway, I remember trying to upload a new copy of the driver to the UCB ftp server and having issues, and i wanted to get it done before I left and was not available for a month. IIRC, Bostic told me that earlier that week the reason I was having issues, was the path for the ISO download for "hidden" 386 bits had been posted on Netnoise or the like and hehe ftp server was getting slammed.

The point is that the if you knew where to look, the BSD UNIX was out there and people that were listening were finding it. And that was before Linus released Linux (or BSDi was forked or the court case etc...).

But as I said, after the case, those of that wanted a PC/UNIX switched to Linux because we were worried we were going to lose the BSD base and Linux was good enough to get us going. That was my point.

I think your counter point is that while I believe folks like yourselves or Linus could have gotten BSD UNIX if you had tried to find it it was available and folks like Keith and Bill were trying to get it out the door, but have suggest that you don't think so. You think the walls were too high, the access was only for the "chosen few" and a difference was the Linux really was available to what Larry referred to as the great unwashed.

To that I say, fair enough. You could be right, I do hope you are not. I don't think that was the intention/theory - but in practice, it seems different.

As I said -- thanks.

Clem