14 Feb
2025
14 Feb
'25
10:47 p.m.
The lawyers insisted that Unix be upper case and only used as an adjective.
Also, to attempt to make others go along, they applied the rule to other
companies' trademarks too. At one point we were putting together a
commemorative issue of the Bell Labs Technical Journal to include some old
papers that would do well collected together, and the lawyers tried to edit
the old papers to honor the new rules. Dennis objected furiously: their
coinage of "PDP-11 computer system UNIX System file system" was multiple
bridges too far. It was hard to rile Dennis, and eventually they realized
this and pulled back. But sheesh, that was inane.
"The UNIX Programming Environment" was the title of bwk's and my book, and
that took some doing too.
I spent literal years of my time at Bell Labs dealing with lawyers. Years.
Only to have others tell me that I should have asked the lawyers to do
something different, assuming I hadn't tried. It could make one cry in
frustration.
-rob
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 7:37 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
So in most technical circles and indeed in the
research communities
surrounding
UNIX, the name of the system was just that, UNIX, prefixed often with some
descriptor of which stream, be it Research, USG, BSD/Berkeley, but in any
case
the name UNIX itself was descriptive of the operating system for many of
its
acolytes and disciples.
However, in AT&T literature and media, addition of "System" to the end of
the
formal name seemed to become de facto if not de jure. This can be seen for
instance in manual edits in the early 80s with references to just "UNIX"
being
replaced with variations on "The UNIX System", sometimes haphazardly as if
done
via a search and replace with little review. This too is evident in some
informative films published by AT&T, available on YouTube today as
"The UNIX Operating System" and "UNIX: Making Computers Easier to
Use"[1][2].
Discrepancies in the titles of the videos notwithstanding, throughout it
seems
there are several instances where audio of an interviewee saying
"The UNIX System" were edited over what I presume were instances of them
simply
saying UNIX.
I'm curious if anyone has the scoop on whether this was an attempt to echo
the
"One Bell System" and related terminology, marketing tag lines like
"The System is the Solution", and/or the naming of the revisions
themselves as
"System <xyz>". On the other hand, could it have simply been for
clarity,
with
the uninitiated not being able to glean from the product name anything
about it,
making the case for adding "System" in formal descriptions to give them a
little
bit of a hint.
Bell Labs folks especially, was there ever some grand thou shalt call it
"The UNIX System" in all PR directive or was it just something that
organically
happened over time as bureaucratic powers at be got their hands on a part
of the
steering wheel?
- Matt G.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw