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

Phil Budne phil at ultimate.com
Mon May 2 12:42:03 AEST 2022


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."

My memory, from having a "finger" program that tried to display the
foreground/active process for each tty/login/utmp entry, is that there
it was possible there were multiple code bases (tho it's possible
there was just one, and it mutated wildly across major versions), all
called "AIX" (and as my old boss, Barry Shein (BZS) at Boston
University said, they all "will remind you of Unix"), there were (at
least) versions for:

RT PC
RS/6000 (POWER, PowerPC)
PS/2

I never had access to AIX/370, but BZS got a chance to try it out in a
VM on the academic computing S/390, and ISTR he said it finished
compiles before you hit return.

There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called
"ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites.

My memory is also that IBM had a very broad license for SVR2 and when
the Open Software Foundation came together (with people who weren't
AT&T or Sun), IBM was able to offer that up as a code base.




















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