
How Unix made it to the top - jsnell
http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2016-December/007519.html
======
flomo
Wow. I have to say that it is funny how you hear the legendary tales of
computing history over and over again and then some little crucial minor
details like "we sold the CEO's office on it" eventually slip out.

Ok, that was important at AT&T, but not really why Unix currently rules the
universe. Due to anti-trust settlements and cheap licensing, and copyright
foibles, Unix was the cheap midrange choice for students and non-enterprise
users. After a lot of pain, Unix eventually evolved into an "open standard".
And that eventually evolved into an "open source" standard with Linux (and
BSD, MacOS, etc.) To quote DEC's Ken Olsen[1]:

> _[UNIX is] great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it’s
> great for interchanging programs between different machines. ... It is our
> belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they
> can do with UNIX. They’ll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when
> they get to be serious about programming._

And that is why your cell phone runs Unix and not VMS.

[1] [http://sinix.org/blog/?p=16](http://sinix.org/blog/?p=16)

~~~
ue_
What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing
about computer history.

~~~
snarfy
In VMS, revision control was built into the file system. It was easy to
retrieve older versions of files. Unix didn't have anything like that until
rcs was invented, and even then it was a tool, not something built in like
what VMS had.

~~~
jbuzbee
Brings back memories. If I recall correctly, when you had this turned on,
files would get a hidden extension of .1 .2 .3 etc. And you could specify how
many revisions to keep around? I also recall on our system, most of the time
this was turned off because disk space was so precious. But I do recall this
feature saving my bacon a time or two...

~~~
atsaloli
Yep! It goes up to 32k by default, but you can limit it:

"The /VERSION_LIMIT qualifier for the CREATE/DIRECTORY, SET DIRECTORY, and SET
FILE commands lets you control the number of versions of a file. If you exceed
the version limit, the system automatically purges the lowest version file in
excess of the limit. For example, if the version limit is 5 and you create the
sixth version of a file (ACCOUNTS.DAT;6), the system deletes the first version
of the file (ACCOUNTS.DAT;1). To view the version limit on a file, enter the
DIRECTORY/FULL command. The version limit is listed in the File attributes:
field."

OpenVMS Manual
[http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/doc/731final/6489/6489pro_006.htm...](http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/doc/731final/6489/6489pro_006.html)

I thoroughly enjoyed using DCL (Digital Command Line -- the VMS shell) and VMS
(with the wall of documentation, like
[http://www.pkl.net/~matt/photos/machines/tn/pict0157.jpg.htm...](http://www.pkl.net/~matt/photos/machines/tn/pict0157.jpg.html)).
It always felt structured and orderly, unlike UNIX systems, which are more
"organic". :) (I love UNIX too!)

~~~
DonaldFisk
This wasn't unique to VMS. Symbolics Genera had this capability. ITS, VME-B,
and I think TOPS-10, also had numbered file versions.

~~~
atsaloli
Fair enough. My computing career started in the nineties on VMS at the Help
Desk of Brandeis University, my work-study job.

------
old-gregg

       > It didn't seem like a very good idea for us to be keeping records from
       > the inner sanctum of the corporation on a computer where most everybody
       > had super-user privileges. A call to the PR guy convinced him of the
       > wisdom of keeping such things on their own premises. And so the CEO's
       > office bought a Unix system.
    

... and this is exactly how it works today with SaaS subscriptions, except
root-privileged people don't even work at the same company and (frequently)
aren't as capable as the folks at Bell Labs.

~~~
sudhirj
Isn't that why most smart companies have a self hosted enterprise version as
well?

~~~
paulddraper
AWS, Dropbox, Google, and Salesforce being "not smart companies".

~~~
hyperpape
Google, at least, has added a lot of internal controls.

------
dispose13432
I expected this to be about how Unix became so popular (_top_ of popularity
charts), not to the top (_CEO_).

~~~
hyperhopper
Well that was the intended wordplay.

Although it is a shame that for end users Unix is still nowhere near the top
of any popularity metric.

~~~
nine_k
Unix kernel is hugely popular: think of the millions of Android devices.

Unix userland, not so much, outside the software engineering community.

~~~
lisivka
Linux is not UNIX. GNU/Linux is POSIX (common standard for UNIX'es)
compatible, so it is UNIX compatible. Android/Linux is not POSIX compatible,
however compatible library can be installed to Android/Linux to make it POSIX
compatible, see [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27604455/is-android-
posix...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27604455/is-android-posix-
compatible) .

*BSD, MacOS X, iOS are UNIX'es, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_\(operating_system\)) .

~~~
zokula
No current open source *BSD is anymore UNIX than Linux is.

~~~
pjmlp
I doubt the BSD developers that are part of BSD since the days before the
lawsuit will agree with you.

~~~
AsyncAwait
They may not, but there's so little original UNIX code in *BSD these days that
it does not matter, in fact that's one of the main reasons they won the
lawsuit in the first place.

~~~
lisivka
I just opened my Red Book and reread «Short history of UNIX». Berkley
University bought license for AT&T UNIX[1] in 1977. They started to develop
their own software for UNIX and distribute it, so this variant of UNIX is
called BSD. Then they decide to remove and rewrite original AT&T code, due to
license and associated costs, and released 4.3BSD[2], which then used by BSD
flavors.

So BSD _is_ UNIX, but it contains no AT&T code today.

[1]
[http://www.nordier.com/v7x86/index.html](http://www.nordier.com/v7x86/index.html)
[2]
[https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/category/4-3-bs...](https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/category/4-3-bsd/)

~~~
AsyncAwait
Yes, my point is that since *BSD does not contain the original UNIX code
anymore, it is no more UNIX than Linux is, since it was basically rewritten
from scratch.

~~~
lisivka
I understands your point but it's wrong because UNIX is system, not a single
component. UNIX was generic name until it trademarked. See books, see complete
code: [http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl](http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-
bin/utree.pl) . As you can see, BSD UNIX still contains lot of code from BSD
UNIX.

------
dhosek
I learned TeX back in 1984 because I wanted a word processor which would put
footnotes at the bottom of the page.

~~~
greglindahl
TeX was and is available on a large number of OSes. I was very happy being to
run a 'large' TeX instance on my Atari ST with 1 MB of ram, it could easily
typeset my undergraduate thesis.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Indeed. TeX later moved to Pascal, but was originally written in SAIL for use
on WAITS. GLS ported it to ITS (the first ever port of TeX), and also was
responsible for lobbying Knuth to make it Turing-Complete.

Man, is there any part of modern computing that doesn't have GLS's
fingerprints on it?

~~~
more_original
For anyone else wondering: GLS = Guy L. Steele (this took me quite a while)

------
idm
> Just as one hears of cars chosen for their cupholders, so were these users
> converted to Unix for trivial reasons: line numbers and vanity.

This is why Jobs was the visionary. "[L]ine numbers and vanity" are real-world
problems with technical solutions. When you bridge technology into the real
world, to create solutions in real lives, then you create value.

It's painful to consider that something like UNIX could be worthless, but it
was worthless ... until it improved somebody's life. This is something I have
not fully learned yet.

~~~
oliv__
The real world is the ultimate judge. It's not an easy thing to do, but when
you fully realize and accept this, you can then learn to harness it and in
turn acquire infinite power to change things.

------
plq
> Other documents began to accumulate in their directory. By the time we
> became aware of it, the hoard came to include minutes of AT&T board
> meetings. It didn't seem like a very good idea for us to be keeping records
> from the inner sanctum of the corporation on a computer where most everybody
> had super-user privileges.

I wonder how many meeting minutes, price lists, product specs, supplier
agreements, etc. etc. are currently sitting on Google's, Amazon's, Dropbox's
servers now...

------
qwertyuiop924
"line numbers and vanity" would be a great name for a rock band.

Just sayin'.

