[COFF] [TUHS] 386BSD released

[John P. Linderman]

Ted observed:

I always thought the implementation of /bin/true, which was a shell
script where the license statement proclaiming AT&T's copyright was
longer than the "exit 0" line, was both incredibly funny, and
incredibly sad.


It's been a long time since I looked at the AT&T source, but I recall that
the version number was pushing 2 digits. It's hard to get it "wrong" on the
first try
(although I could possibly do it). More likely, the version numbers
reflected
changes to the licensing wording. -- jpl


On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 1:38 PM Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 10:50:07AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> >
> > Ted -- yes, your generation put a >>name<< to the behavior, which is a
> > wonderful thing and something you can be proud.  But the behavior of
> openly
> > sharing your work product with the community long predates, Linux, the
> > wider Internet, *et al. * It is sad a minimum, if not downright
> > disingenuous to say "open source" was created at that point.
>
> No one said that "open source" was created at that point.  The perl,
> BSD, FSF's emacs, gcc, and other software published under the GPL all
> predated the definition of the **term** "Open Source".
>
> However, I strongly contest the claim that Unix was "Open Source".
> Unix was the UNPUBLISHED TRADE SECRET of AT&T, and students exposed to
> Unix source code became contaminated with AT&T's "methods and
> concepts" clause.  So they couldn't even *reimplement* Unix without
> potentially getting sued by AT&T.
>
> I always thought the implementation of /bin/true, which was a shell
> script where the license statement proclaiming AT&T's copyright was
> longer than the "exit 0" line, was both incredibly funny, and
> incredibly sad.
>
> Cheers,
>
>                                                 - Ted
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