[TUHS] old X versions (was:X and NeWS history)

[Clem Cole]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:16 AM, Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Wasn't the original project called "Athena", and wasn't it pursued by
> one of the many Labs at MIT?


​Greg - not quite right, although I can see how I might look that way from
the outside.   The Athena project was MIT's reaction to the CMU Andrew​
Project.  I'll not bring the somewhat humorous history but basic question
asked was simple... assume CMU succeeded in building the proposed 3M
'SPICE' system for Andrew.   MIT wanted to know: How would you deploy it?
Athena set out to figure that out...

It's interesting the two pieces of Athena that actually still live are X
and Kerberos where were developed as part of the Athena project.   I
understand why Kerberos and much of that tech was needed if you were going
to deploy hundreds of computers.   I don't remember the argument for
writing X - i.e. why it was needed, you'd have to ask Dan Geer (I've
forgotten).

FYI: In the case of Andrew, Mach and some of the AFS technology (and I've
heard some suggest it helped to move IBM into the doing RIOS which
eventually lead to Power/PC).

Clem
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