[TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code?

Charles H Sauer (he/him) sauer at technologists.com
Mon May 2 06:37:11 AEST 2022


Except to the extent discussed in my cited post, that seems overstated 
to me, untrue through AIX 3 on 6K and RT hardware, unlikely to be true 
post AIX 3.

On 5/1/2022 2:49 PM, Dan Stromberg wrote:
> 
> I don't know where the fellow got his information, but I was told that 
> AIX started out as AT&T code, but went through not one but two rewrites.
> 
> On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 11:55 AM Charles H Sauer (he/him) 
> <sauer at technologists.com <mailto:sauer at technologists.com>> wrote:
> 
>     I don't recall that particular case, but AIX was definitely derived
>     from
>     AT&T code. See
>     https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/
>     <https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/>
> 
>     HOWEVER, when the 1983 transition happened and AIX became a primary
>     site
>     effort (as discussed in the cited reference), there were those new to
>     the effort and new to Unix that thought they could redefine behaviors
>     inappropriately.
> 
>     For example, I recall one person trying to enforce only one root login
>     at a time. Larry made it quite clear to that person that we were not
>     going to violate Unix tradition in that manner.
> 
>     Charlie
> 
>     On 5/1/2022 1:08 PM, ron minnich wrote:
>      > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I
>      > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the
>      > code."
>      >
>      > Unlike Coherent, it had lots of cases of things not done quite right.
>      > One standout in my mind was mkdir -p, which would return an error if
>      > the full path existed. oops.
>      >
>      > But it was pointed out to me that Condor had all kinds of code to
>      > handle AIX being different from just about everything else.
>      >
>      >
>      > On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 7:12 AM Kenneth Goodwin
>      > <kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com <mailto:kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com>>
>     wrote:
>      >>
>      >> I actually purchased several copies of Coherent when it was
>     first released and used it as printer servers for a bunch of
>     inexpensive Centronics based printers. lpd based server to server
>     transfers. Took the printing burden off the main systems. Someone
>     came out with a network based print spooler box (Milan ??) later on
>     which I switched over to after MW passed into obscurity.
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> On Sun, May 1, 2022, 7:46 AM Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com
>     <mailto:ron at ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
>      >>>
>      >>> Mark Williams Coherent was one I worked with on the PC many
>     years ago.
>      >>>
>      >>>> On May 1, 2022, at 11:34, Andrew Warkentin
>     <andreww591 at gmail.com <mailto:andreww591 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>      >>>>
>      >>>> What was the first "clone" functional Unix (i.e. an OS not
>     derived
>      >>>> from genetic Unix code but highly compatible with genetic
>     Unix)? Idris
>      >>>> is the earliest such OS of which I am aware (at least AFAIK
>     it's not a
>      >>>> genetic Unix), but was it actually the first? Similarly, which
>     was the
>      >>>> first "outer Unix-like" system (i.e. one with strong Unix
>     influence
>      >>>> but significantly incompatible with functional Unix)? Off the
>     top of
>      >>>> my head the earliest such system I can think of is Thoth (which
>      >>>> predates Idris by almost 2 years), but again I'm not sure if
>     it was
>      >>>> actually the first.
>      >>>
> 
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