[TUHS] UNIX In Bell Labs after SVR2

[Mary Ann Horton via TUHS]

I was in Bell Labs at Columbus, outside CSRG but with good relations. In 
the mid-late 1980s there was considerable pressure to not only use 
System V but the various 3B hardware. Many tech folks lusted after Sun 
and other BSD-based, TCP/IP centric systems. In 1987 we were expected to 
use 3B5, 3B2, and Datakit. Management told us to "Eat your own dog food."

Thanks,

/Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am)
       Award Winning Author
maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com>



On 3/23/26 05:00, Arnold Robbins via TUHS wrote:
> 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.