1. I remember the litigation. I wasn't involved, but it was widely discussed.
I'm quite literal for a reason that I might have mentioned or that might be clear. [The rhymes that I post come from a different side of me.]
So, I was puzzled by the SCO case. There was talk about stolen code but somehow it was never pointed to. I wasn't clear on why nobody ever said "Show us the code or the case is over". I understand that that is a simplistic view.
I see that a judge did eventually issue an order that was similar. But the case continued for years after that.
The punchline was that Novell as opposed to SCO turned out to own the copyrights to UNIX System V. So, I gather that SCO didn't have the standing needed to litigate to begin with.
2. It's nice to meet an unexpected former Slackware person.
Slackware was great because it delivered on the promise of a free UNIX [more or less] for PCs. One much like the SunOS and Solaris that we were accustomed to.
I kept my company on Slackware until I'd developed so many patches that it proved to be less effort to maintain a new distro instead of merging my work repeatedly.
3. To explain my UNIX experience:
I used UNIX for about 5 years at Berkeley ending in 1981. This was on DEC hardware. For about 10 years after that, UNIX was just one of the families of OSes that my firm worked in.
There was no such thing as Windows initially. PCs and MS-DOS existed but they weren't seen as significant. Instead, they were like the little mammals waiting for the dinosaurs to pass away so that they could take over the world.
In the end, most non-UNIX OSes [such as Data General AOS] did die. UNIX continued to be a robust market into the 1990s, though. SunOS and Solaris became the standard for UNIX developers. If you needed to sell a product to AIX or HP-UX users, you took your code to a porting center.
Our CEO didn't like to spend money, so it was difficult to get new Sun boxes approved. In the 1990s, a junior dev who was irritated by this asked me, "Bob, couldn't we use this Linux thing instead of Suns?"
I tried it, we could, we did, and I personally never looked back.
I've done Windows work in Windows houses and cloud work in Azure roles, but Linux [starting with Slackware] has been the only real OS for me for over 30 years.
I mean the type of Linux that is similar to the UNIX which you remember. I use GUIs but, really, CLI is the one true development environment. In my distro, the Terminal button is right next to the Start button where it belongs.
4. About BSD:
During the SunOS and Solaris era, we all knew that a free #UNIX for PCs was coming. It was supposed to be one of the three BSDs. There was a race to the finish line, three horses, and we expected the winner to take all.
In the early 1990s, I phoned CSRG at Berkeley to see if my company could work out some sort of BSD deal with them. They said that everything was on hold because they were concerned about litigation by AT&T.
During this period, Linus Torvalds entered a dark horse in the race and won decisively. It could have been Minix or #BSD instead. But Linux was in the right place at the right time.
I'm quite literal for a reason that I might have mentioned or that might be clear. [The rhymes that I post come from a different side of me.]
So, I was puzzled by the SCO case. There was talk about stolen code but somehow it was never pointed to. I wasn't clear on why nobody ever said "Show us the code or the case is over". I understand that that is a simplistic view.
I see that a judge did eventually issue an order that was similar. But the case continued for years after that.
The punchline was that Novell as opposed to SCO turned out to own the copyrights to UNIX System V. So, I gather that SCO didn't have the standing needed to litigate to begin with.
2. It's nice to meet an unexpected former Slackware person.
Slackware was great because it delivered on the promise of a free UNIX [more or less] for PCs. One much like the SunOS and Solaris that we were accustomed to.
I kept my company on Slackware until I'd developed so many patches that it proved to be less effort to maintain a new distro instead of merging my work repeatedly.
3. To explain my UNIX experience:
I used UNIX for about 5 years at Berkeley ending in 1981. This was on DEC hardware. For about 10 years after that, UNIX was just one of the families of OSes that my firm worked in.
There was no such thing as Windows initially. PCs and MS-DOS existed but they weren't seen as significant. Instead, they were like the little mammals waiting for the dinosaurs to pass away so that they could take over the world.
In the end, most non-UNIX OSes [such as Data General AOS] did die. UNIX continued to be a robust market into the 1990s, though. SunOS and Solaris became the standard for UNIX developers. If you needed to sell a product to AIX or HP-UX users, you took your code to a porting center.
Our CEO didn't like to spend money, so it was difficult to get new Sun boxes approved. In the 1990s, a junior dev who was irritated by this asked me, "Bob, couldn't we use this Linux thing instead of Suns?"
I tried it, we could, we did, and I personally never looked back.
I've done Windows work in Windows houses and cloud work in Azure roles, but Linux [starting with Slackware] has been the only real OS for me for over 30 years.
I mean the type of Linux that is similar to the UNIX which you remember. I use GUIs but, really, CLI is the one true development environment. In my distro, the Terminal button is right next to the Start button where it belongs.
4. About BSD:
During the SunOS and Solaris era, we all knew that a free #UNIX for PCs was coming. It was supposed to be one of the three BSDs. There was a race to the finish line, three horses, and we expected the winner to take all.
In the early 1990s, I phoned CSRG at Berkeley to see if my company could work out some sort of BSD deal with them. They said that everything was on hold because they were concerned about litigation by AT&T.
During this period, Linus Torvalds entered a dark horse in the race and won decisively. It could have been Minix or #BSD instead. But Linux was in the right place at the right time.
