
Origins and History of Unix, 1969-1995 (2003) - rayascott
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html
======
enf
The much more comprehensive history is Peter Salus's A Quarter Century of
Unix, now online as page scans at
[http://wiki.tuhs.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=publications:qc...](http://wiki.tuhs.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=publications:qcu.pdf)

~~~
acqq
And many details about BSD history in the first chapter of "The Design and
Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System"

------
j1vms
> (...) the direct challenge to the discourse of “free software” that Torvalds
> himself had never been interested in mounting. (...) “Free software because
> it works better” easily trumped “Free software because all software should
> be free”.

I think Torvalds would decidedly have _not_ been interested in that thesis.
For example, while git has proven more popular and is probably now technically
superior to its chief predecessor BitKeeper, Linus would have been content to
continue using that proprietary tool had it not been for the reverse
engineering "incident" of 2005 that led to git's conception.

Linus appears driven instead by pragmatism, making use of what is practically
available - proprietary or open - while building that which is not, should the
path be clear in how to do so.

~~~
paulddraper
...and free software worked better.

That's precisely the author's point: Torvalds interest in free software is
practical, not ideological.

------
akerro
If anyone is interested, I made a catalogue of UNIX-repos that I found online,
I setup a gitlab account for all of it, with automated mirroring, here is the
link [https://gitlab.com/users/UNIX-
history/projects](https://gitlab.com/users/UNIX-history/projects)

If you know a repo I don't have here, let me know

~~~
macintux
Not a repo, may be one somewhere though:

[http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php](http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php)

(Considered buying Coherent way back in the day)

There is an empty repo by this name in your project so I'm a bit confused
whether this one is supposed to be included:

[https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-
repo](https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo)

~~~
emmelaich
Diomidis Spinnelis' work is amazing.

You can read about it here:
[https://www2.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/jrnl/2016-EMPSE-unix-
hist...](https://www2.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/jrnl/2016-EMPSE-unix-
history/html/unix-history.html)

(link is from the github README)

------
wscott
It isn't clear from this link, but this is a chapter from "The Art of Unix
Programming" by Eric Raymond

~~~
vram22
Right. The taoup in the link does give a clue to those in the know, though.

------
vram22
I had seen this a while ago, a brief diagram of Unix history, on Éric
Lévénez's site:

[https://www.levenez.com/unix/](https://www.levenez.com/unix/)

The page also has some Unix history and related links.

------
joe_the_user
The interesting thing about the second-system/third-system distinction is that
it gives a strong impression that no one really knew exactly what an operating
system should be until various examples were built. Arguably, that leaves open
the possibility that further forms of OSes exist but aren't easily found due
to the difficulty of putting together a system.

~~~
moxious
So many layers are now built on top of the OS that it seems the most obvious
way it will continue to grow is by gradually subsiding abstraction layers
above that are so common, you'd never not want them.

This has already happened with things like sound drivers, TCP/IP stacks,
firewalling, etc. but will continue upward

~~~
paulryanrogers
There must be an upper limit though. Most of those things are invisible
resources for users to do other work or play.

------
KasianFranks
*NIX, drives most of the world and is the reason why we exist the way we do today. It's also the reason why Google, Apple and other smaller outfits exist today.

~~~
macintux
Agreed mostly, although I imagine VMS would have filled roughly the same
ecological niche had UNIX not carried the day.

Or maybe that's just optimism that something would have survived Microsoft's
onslaught. The days when it looked like Windows was going to rule the world
were quite dark.

~~~
tyingq
That's an interesting path to think about. Minus UNIX, I'm curious where MVS,
OS/400, VMS, MPE, DOS/Windows, etc, would have all played out.

~~~
Taniwha
well VMS still exists .... both as itself and as the underpinnings of
WindowsNT (and modern windows)

~~~
ghaff
Many are still around to some degree. OS/400 is now IBM i. MVS is now z/OS
(for IBM mainframes). OpenVMS as you say. Most of the operating systems that
were originally written for minicomputers aren't radically different in
fundamental design from Unix and Windows NT.

My suspicion is that, absent Unix or something that followed a similar
historical trajectory, these OSs would have had a longer run as non-legacy
products, the landscape would have been even more fractured than it was with
the Unix wars, and Windows would have become more dominant in the server space
than it eventually became.

The question I really don't know the answer to is whether, given the rise of
the mainstream Internet, an open source operating system and infrastructure
software necessarily would have followed. Or would the world look very very
different.

