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From: mikc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Mike Coughlin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 4.4-lite?
Date: 8 Jul 1994 13:03:38 GMT
Organization: Free Software Foundation / Cambridge, MA USA
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <2vjiraINNa7e@life.ai.mit.edu>
References: <VIXIE.94Jun20091941@office.home.vix.com> <1994Jul6.050857.8410@comserv.itri.org.tw> <jwshin.773477829@nitride.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <VIXIE.94Jul6163242@office.home.vix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu
In article <VIXIE.94Jul6163242@office.home.vix.com>,
Paul A Vixie <vixie@vix.com> wrote:
> [somebody else wrote:]
>> As I understood it, no non-commercial group is doing anymore Unix research.
>> Bell lab stopped, and CSRG (I think) said 4.4 was the last version. The
>> further Unix research will be done in places like USL, Sun, IBM [...]
>...and BSDI...
Things change with time. Many years ago, researchers at Berkeley were
paid to write new improved code for AT&T's Unix operating system. Unix
was then an academic exercise. AT&T couldn't be a computer company since
it was a Telephone monopoly. Now Unix is a commercial product guarded by
lawyers that want to sue as much as possible. Researchers at Berkeley
are interested in newer things than the ideas in Unix.
There has been a problem for the past few years in that the academic
program code from Berkeley was mixed in with the commercial code from
AT&T. After a monumental struggle, this code has finally been disentangled.
We now have a completely different situation from years ago. There is
no need for a company or a research institution to continue the
development of Unix. Now anyone with the necessary skills can work on
the project over the net in his spare time. The need for copyrights
and license payments is gone. People can work on netBSD or freeBSD to
further their education and establish their reputation as first class
programming consultants.
So I'd say that the largest possible non-commercial group is now
doing research on Unix.
--
Michael Coughlin mikc@gnu.ai.mit.edu Cambridge, MA USA