[TUHS] Any UNIX With No C In Userland?

[Rob Gingell]

On 3/1/25 3:38 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Rob Gingell would likely know.

Time has fogged the memories but I'll try.

> On Sat, Mar 01, 2025 at 06:28:58PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>> IIRC: Sun continued to bundled a simple C compiler so you build the kernel,
>> but it was trying to make $s on the compiler suite.
>>
>>   SW economics can be difficult.

As has been noted, SunOS 4.x continued to ship a cc sufficient to build 
the kernel but which didn't otherwise track the language evolution going 
on. The unbundled tools were introduced to deliver those and, in a 
theory about the value of software, to earn the necessary investments by 
generating a return. It wasn't just marketing being revenue vampires 
though it presented an opportunity for feeding.

There was a good bit of investment / change in the tools in this period. 
The SVR4 work brought the ANSI C front end from AT&T, FORTRAN technology 
purchases/licenses occurred, there was something going on with Pascal 
that I don't recall at the moment. Some of the investment was 
necessitated by the shift to SPARC and the demands that RISC posed on 
the code generation software. The appeal that these things must be done 
because they're necessary to have good and credible products was 
countered with a business sentiment that the value should manifest as a 
return visible in $.

So I recall it as more textured than just "let's squeeze some $'s" but 
especially if you have the view that "C is part of the system" it's an 
affront.

On 3/1/25 5:17 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> The funny thing was that somewhere around then Sun Labs was paying Micheal
> Tiemann to make g++ work.  With a deal that let him retain the rights to
> the code.  I never understood that, one hand wants to charge for cc and
> the other hand is paying for free g++?  The ways of Sun could be strange.

One of Sun's charms was a "let many flowers bloom, even if they 
contradict themselves" kind of culture. Sometimes this yielded successes 
and opportunities. Sometimes it resulted in frictions and periodic 
culls. (The "all the wood behind one arrow" SPARC focus was one such 
consequence, when the array of 68K, 386, and SPARC products got too 
logistically cacophonous and Sun blew a revenue projection in [I think] 
the last FY1989 quarter. The cacophony wasn't in engineering so much as 
the rest of the business: sales forecasting, manufacturing, support, ISV 
relationships. etc.)

"Many flowers bloom" thinking wasn't restricted to just technology and 
extended to business models. The thinking that "investments should 
follow the revenue" visible in the tools unbundling along with 
additional influences led to the "planets" reorganization of Sun (e.g., 
SunSoft, SunPro, etc.) where inter-unit pricing and therefore revenues 
would demonstrate where value was derived. Sun's R&D levels were always 
higher than conventional business wisdom said they should be so 
rationalizing them drove such thinking.

Whatever the merits of the planets model in theory were, they were 
completely lost in the execution. The implementation looked more like 
the State Planning Committee of the Soviet Union than Wall Street. The 
company focused inward rather than outward to the market for a while 
before the whole thing was relaxed back to something more "normal". 
Definitely one of the worst self-inflicted wounds in the company's history.

IMO, such failures emerged from the same environment that permitted the 
exploration of unusual ideas and the taking of big swings. Sun was 
probably better off and certainly more impactful, fun, and interesting 
for being that way even at the cost of some dramatic face plants.