[TUHS] SOSP 1973 [was Multics<->Unix Re: Re: History of cal(1)?

Sat Sep 20 06:30:09 AEST 2025

[trying to broaden the discussion & transition to COFF]

On 9/19/2025 2:57 PM, Dan Cross via TUHS wrote:
> So I sort of wonder if the Multics folks also showed up to some of
> those conferences: SOSP, for example. I imagine people like Fano and
> Corby attended. And the Unix community coalesced quickly and became
> quite strong (as we all know), I wonder about interaction with other
> communities.

Looking at the SOSP 1973 list of presentations at 
https://dblp.org/db/conf/sosp/sosp73.html, where Dennis & Ken presented 
Unix at IBM Yorktown, there's only one presentation obviously Multics 
related, by Saltzer, and no other presentations obviously associated 
with currently well known operating systems.

In the (admittedly, insular) IBM environment, there seemed little 
interest in anything besides MVS for production and VM/370 for 
development. (From Popek/Goldberg SOSP 1973 Abstract: "Virtual machine 
systems have been implemented on a limited number of third generation 
computer systems, e.g. CP-67 on the IBM 360/67. From previous empirical 
studies, it is known that certain third generation computer systems, 
e.g. the DEC PDP-10, cannot support a virtual machine system.")

As late as 1979 at UT-Austin, Unix was not available in the C.S. Dept -- 
TOPS-10 was gaining traction over the homegrown "UT-2D" environment for 
CDC 6400/6600 and the subsequent CDC machines that supplanted those.

For various reasons, lack of commercial dominance, lack of source, ..., 
there didn't seem to be any specific OS that gained mind share in the 
O.S. community until Unix did. Well after 1985 in IBM, those of us 
advocating Unix were definitely in the minority. 
[https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/]

Charlie

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