Firstly, welcome to some new members of the old unix mailing list. If you don't
get this email, please let me know ;-)
I received an email back from Dennis Ritchie about getting a v6/v7 license
(for those who don't have one). Here is his full reply:
From: Dennis Ritchie
To: Warren Toomey
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 00:40:55 EST
Subject: canonical answer about Sixth and Seventh Edition
So far as I can determine, AT&T doesn't think it has the
right to issue new licenses for any Unix editions, and won't
do so. Several years ago, the Unix IP was transferred to
Unix Systems Laboratories, at first as a mostly-owned subsidiary;
USL was then sold to Novell, and recently Novell agreed to
sell its Unix business to SCO (and HP is partially involved).
As of the end of October 1995 this last sale had not been
consummated.
In other words, AT&T is out of the Unix business, and has been
for some time; any licenses will have to come from the current
owner. But the "current owner" is itself in flux, and I doubt that
even before the latest sale, Novell was quite geared up to issue
Seventh Edition licenses; I have no useful suggestions about
how to obtain one officially (it might be interesting to try).
Official sources in AT&T have said that they have no objection
to reissuance of Lions's commentaries and source publication
of the Sixth Edition.
Dennis
So it doesn't look like good news at the moment; I guess we could approach
SCO and HP, and ask about trying to get licenses from them. I'll see what I
can do.
A few other people mentioned that they would like to get stuff from the
archive of early Unixes that I'm maintaining, and how to prove that they have
a license. I have no idea how to do this, any suggestions?
P.S There isn't a Sixth Edition in the archive as yet, can anyone send me a
distribution or bootable disk image?
Cheers all,
Warren Toomey
Hi,
I've been merrily adding email addresses to the mail list on old Unixes
and PDPs, so I thought I'd mail a message out to it in order to check that all
the email addresses are correct.
To send email to the mailing list, send to oldunix(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au.
There is a Web page which describes the efforts to save all this old stuff, and
it is at http://minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au/PUPS/
I'm building up a list of short biographies/relevant skills for both
mailing-list-only use, and to put on the public Web page. If you haven't sent
me a resume yet, check out the PUPS Web pages and see what you can come up with.
Several people have asked about obtaining a legal copy of early Unixes.
I don't have an answer as yet, but I have mailed Dennis Ritchie, who seems to
be the person with the best answers at the moment.
A few other people have asked ``What Unix runs on what hardware?''. I'll
try to build up a list for Sixth and Seventh Editions and 2.9BSD, and perhaps
Steven Schultz can send in a list for 2.11BSD.
Anyway, welcome to this old Unix maillist. If you have anything that can go
into the PUPS archive, please send it in. We have licenses here, so there is no
problem with sending in licensed stuff. And feel free to send in questions and
answers about this historic technology!
Cheers,
Warren Toomey wkt(a)cs.adfa.oz.au
90 20:47:42 CST
Received: from sage.cc.purdue.edu by arthur.cs.purdue.edu =
(5.61/PURDUE_CS-1.2)
id <AA02152(a)arthur.cs.purdue.edu>; Wed, 28 Mar 90 21:39:57 -0500
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From: mjs(a)sage.cc.purdue.edu (Michael J Spitzer)
Message-Id: <9003290239.AA23901(a)sage.cc.purdue.edu>
To: bob(a)cs.purdue.edu
Subject: Heheh...
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 90 21:39:57 -0500
Status: R
To: dmr(a)research.att.com
Subject: "Oregano" and Unix wizards
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 90 18:14:57 -0500
From: mjs
=20
Dennis,
As you may know, Unitech Software Inc. has been distributing "Unix
Magic" posters at recent Usenix conferences. The poster shows a
wizard that looks kinda like you mixing various Unix tools together to
make a potion of some sort. The only thing that isn't obviously some
sort of pun on an aspect of Unix is a canister labeled Oregano in the
foreground of the picture.
Is there some significance behind this, other than the obvious
"oregano" double meaning? Did you guys really use "oregano" to help
drum up your creativity for the original Unix development?
Just curious.
-mjs
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