[TUHS] forgotten versions

[George Michaelson]

Another take on this is Mike Lesk's saying "its easy to occupy a
vacuum its harder to push something aside" said of UUCP.

v7 exploded into the world, and made BSD and SunOS happen.

v8 and 9 and 10 had to work harder to get mindshare because something
was already there.

things like rc were too "confrontational" to a mind attuned to bourne
shell.  Sockets (which btw, totally SUCK PUS) were coded into things
and even (YECHH) made POSIX and IETF spec status. Streams didn't stand
a chance.

basically, v7 succeeded too well, for v8/9/10 to get mindshare. I
agree it sucks they aren't documented, its just wrong: Serious OS
history needs to look beyond the narrow path in view. I'd say anyone
who doesn't write about them at length hasn't done their homework.

-G

On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 9:18 AM George Michaelson <ggm at algebras.org> wrote:
>
> you're not wrong, but the other take on this is that the AT&T
> licensing and some other things tended to make the circle of people
> who could "see" this code significantly smaller than those feeding off
> Unix 32V/v7 -> BSD -> Solaris.
>
> this isn't meant to imply you did anything "wrong" -It was probably a
> huge distraction having randoms begging for a tape of v8/9/10 with low
> to no willingness to "give back"
>
> -G
>
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 9:06 AM Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> >