[TUHS] UNIX In Bell Labs after SVR2

[Arnold Robbins via TUHS]

The Bell System continued to use System V for quite a while.
There was a small division within DEC that was responsible for continuing
to keep SVR3.x running on Vaxen, just to be able to sell to the Bell
companies. (Even though their official product, Ultrix, was BSD-based.)

Even as UNIX became commercial, many of the big companies (HP, IBM)
aligned on the System V side, with selling to the Bells undoubtedly
part of the reason, as well as the fact that the "official source"
(``they're the guys who own UNIX'') was AT&T.  BSD was well known,
and many vendors pulled in bits and pieces of BSD (csh, vi, sometimes
kernel bits) and glommed them onto their SV systems.

segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> These manuals I am scanning currently demonstrate steady USG UNIX usage within Bell Laboratories for many, many years.  As time went on and commercial UNIX crawled further and further away from Bell Labs-proper, research continued their own journey with V8 and on.  Within the larger Bell Labs ecosystem, was there a particular leaning towards continued SysV use?  Did these later research versions instead retake the hearts and minds of BTL facilities?  Was it more of a free for all, with research, USG, BSD, etc. sprinkled throughout the various parts of Bell Labs?  Most stuff I read from the mid 70s to mid 80s paints a very USG-centric picture, but I find myself curious on folks' recollections of the situation through the mid 80s and beyond, if any census or rough estimate of UNIX stream uptake in BTL exists.
>
> - Matt G.