On: Unix and Multics (2019)

[KerrAvon]

I think that’s a reasonable argument, but in practice if Unix and C weren’t free it would have meant universities using tools that were closer to free — things like the UCSD p-system would have been more widespread. Different world; possibly a better one, if I’m right, which is unknowable.

[rjsw → KerrAvon]

There were other free operating systems that universities could and did use like EMAS [1], UNIX beat them as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Multiple_Access_Syst...

[pinewurst → rjsw]

EMAS only ran on expensive hardware, ditto MTS.