[TUHS] TUHS: Maintenance, Succession and Funding

[Wesley Parish via TUHS]

Amen to that! Without a community who weren't willing to let allegations 
mislead others, who were willing to dig through the Unix history and 
share their findings, things would've been different - and much worse.

Wesley Parish

On 18/04/2026 13:59, steve jenkin via TUHS wrote:
>
>
>> On 18 Apr 2026, at 10:17, Warren Toomey via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>> So that's where we are. I hope you've been happy with the TUHS work
>> over the past 30 years, and I'm keen to see it continue indefinitely :-)
>>
>> Cheers, Warren
> It’s worth remembering the future we could’ve had if SCO had won.
>
> We are very lucky to have had leaders and communities around them
> that prevented this, including this one.
>
> Not just no ‘Historical Unix’, no TUHS, but no Free Linux
> and a much reduced Open Source Software movement as a result.
>
> Which would’ve squeezed Apache, MySQL and the post-PERL languages.
>
> Including no ‘Git’ and ‘github’.
>
> The Web as we know it, could never have developed.
>
> No Linux, No Android?
> or could a BSD variant have been the base?
>
> XKCD’s “Dependency” is a visualisation of the complex web of interrelated,
> necessary, free-to-use software that supports our modern world.
>
> 	<https://xkcd.com/2347/>
>
> ———
>
> Diomidis Spinellis took the TUHS archives and gave us
> the Continuous Unix History Repository from 1970…
>
> A brilliant exposition of capability & source code history.
> 	<https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo>
>
> ———
>
> The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
> 	2021
> 	<https://lwn.net/Articles/924577/>
>
> 	Magazines like Forbes were warning the
> 		"Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement”
> 		that they "should wake up”.
>
> 	SCO was suggesting a license fee of $1,399 - per-CPU - to run Linux. [ in 2001 ]
>
> 	SCO managed to prove the cleanliness of the (linux) kernel's pedigree in a far more convincing way
> 		than anybody else could have.
> 	Nobody now questions the legitimacy of the kernel's source code.
>
> 	Many other projects have adopted similar procedures (to Linux’s 'certificate of origin’),
> 	most of which have the happy result of documenting the provenance of code
> 	without imposing heavy bureaucracy on the process. [ github publicly proves provenance ]
>
> 	 It was not just IBM's lawyers and money that won this fight;
> 		it was a widespread community that had built something special
> 		and had no intention of letting a failing company steal it.
>
> ———
> --
> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>
> mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>