unix.history.txt (c) 2001, Joe Traister, Rebel One A Brief outline of the history of unix spoken by Joe Traister and typed in by Rebel One Version 7 UNIX at AT&T, BellCore/Bell Labs/ Bell Labs is the research arm of AT&T Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson work there Thompson invented, progenitor, wrote it originally for DEC PDP7 in assembler when they wanted to move it to PDP 11 Dennis Ritchie specializes in language, invented C programming language to port from assembler to PDP11. Both men are alumni of University of California Berkely (UCB). Ritchie is associated with them and used to go on sabatical there, once taking a tape of version from AT&T to Berkely with him. Quite a few guys get involved there. Version 7 source code in C. AT&T is not allowed to be in operating system business, legally, for some reason, somthing to do with utility monopoly. At the time they were the only phone company. They could not be a corporate entity selling a product and being a utility monopoly? At Berkely they add things to UNIX simultaneously AT&T is working on it and invents System III. UCB is producing 3BSD , which is NOT an operating system, but actually a set of patches for AT&T UNIX (adding job control and other features). People are running System III with 3BSD on top of that. You have to have an AT&T software license. Eventually AT&T develops System V, and UCB develops 4.0BSD. At this time systems begin to diverge, a number of years since the original tapes came from AT&T to UCB. Part of the code is copyrighted by AT&T, so they make you get a software license from them, but now you buy modified stuff from BSD that is now a full fledged operating system and not just patches on top of AT&T source code. SVR2 and SVR3 = System V release 2, System V release 3 The UCB are working on their software, develop 4.1BSD. While it is 4.1BSD the DOD contracts BBN (Bolt,Beranek,Neuman [sic] = a software company) to implement their new standardized TCP/IP suite. By the time BBN delivers the code to UCB, UCB adds Berkely socket layer, plug the TCP/IP into that socket layer, and release 4.2BSD. This is the first unix with TCP/IP. nothing before it has it. For SVR3 you can buy third party extensions, but it does not come with it. Comes with no networking protocols, but you can buy many different kinds, TCP/IPamong them, but it comes with none. The Berkely people work their system up to 4.3BSD and adding a ton huge amount of stuff. A lot of differences between 4.2 and 4.3 At this point, the UCB people lose their minds and release the source code to the internet. Was it planned? Was it an accident? At this point AT&T decides to sue the University of California at Berkely. At this point we have two major variants in the unix world. System V and BSD. There is no standard unix. MicroSoft introduces Xenix. A variety of unix clones out there. The Berkely tape is available and many people are designing clones. AT&T, Sun and other companies form an alliance to develop a unix standard. What they come up with eventually becomes SVR4. Shortly after this AT&T sells the source code to Novell. Novell has no interest in suing the University of California. They say, if you remove this pieces of code from your OS, and replace it with your own code, by this date (some time in 1993). All the free ware BSD were all based on the 4.3BSD code release, which was based the original AT&T Version 7 and contained copyrighted material. UCB and Novell settle the lawsuit, by taking 4.4BSD minus copyrighted material and telling all people who are currently using 4.3BSD to stop using that and switch to the new release. Which everyone does. So today, we have SVR4 and 4.4BSD. In response to AT&T and Sun getting together to form UNIX, the other vendors got nervous. Sun is distributing SunOS4 = 4.3BSD. Guys left UCB and formed Sun. DEC and IBM get together and form Open Software Foundation and create their own OSF standard. SVR4 OSF/1 and 4.4BSD now three different unix standards. Prior to SVR4 and 4.4BSD, IEEE forms committee to create posix. Posix is a definition of portable unix. System calls, functions, library, all defined. SVR4, 4.4BSD and Linux all try to be posix compliant. That is where it stands today. Linux source code history is: a guy in Finland wrote it a few years ago, released it to the internet, and people have been working on it ever since. Many people. The only reason Linux came about was Richard Stallman formed Free Software Foundation, which in turn ran the GNU project. The GNU project is to completely replace unix with free tools. Totally compatible, totally free, including a kernel, nothing copyrighted. Linus Torvalds beat them to the punch. They had everything except the kernel when Linus wrote Linux. GNU=GNU Not Unix GNU runs on every version of unix under the sun. ls cp vi et al Their version of standard system tools are frequently better than vendor provided tools. More features, faster, reliable. Hewlett-Packard HP/UX IBM AIX Sun SunOS/Solaris AT&T SVR4 UNIX UCB 4.4BSD Linus Torvalds Linux MicroSoft Xenix SGI Irix DEC DEC-unix FreeWare FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD Apple A/UX MacOSX Linux is really the name of the kernel. There are many people who package an operating system based around that kernel: RedHat Mandrake YellowDog Suse Debian OpenLinux SlackWare probably about 50 all together. All versions of Linux are free, copyrighted under the GPL GNU Protection License The Computer Science Research Group (CSRG) at UCB closed around 1998 and stopped developing unix after 4.4BSD At some point Novell sold the original source code, and the name, UNIX, to a company called SCO-UNIX. Which now owns the name. So everything else can be talked about as unix, but never written that way, or you get sued. The word "unix" is copyrighted by a company called SCO-UNIX.