[TUHS] forgotten versions

Rob Pike robpike at gmail.com
Fri Jun 17 09:06:16 AEST 2022


Excited as I was to see this history of Unix code in a single repository:

https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo

it continues the long-standing tradition of ignoring all the work done at
Bell Labs after v7. I consider v8 v9 v10 to be worth of attention, even
influential, but to hear this list talk about it - or discussions just
about anywhere else - you'd think they never existed. There are exceptions,
but this site does reinforce the broadly known version of the story.

It's doubly ironic for me because people often mistakenly credit me for
working on Unix, but I landed at the Labs after v7 was long dispatched. At
the Labs, I first worked on what became v8.

I suppose it's because the history flowed as this site shows, with BSD
being the driving force for a number of reasons, but it feels to me that a
large piece of Unix history has been sidelined.

I know it's a whiny lament, but those neglected systems had interesting
advances.

-rob
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