17 Jun
2022
17 Jun
'22
1:17 a.m.
I’ve only cursorily heard of versions past v7.
I personally be interested in hearing the history and seeing what
changes/improvements/differences came in those versions.
I’ve learned that the Unix history I thought I knew had huge gaping holes in it from this
list and members. Joe Ossanna’s contributions, for example, were a complete revelation
to me.
Earl
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 16, 2022, at 7:06 PM, Rob Pike
<robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Excited as I was to see this history of Unix code in a single repository:
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
it continues the long-standing tradition of ignoring all the work done at Bell Labs after
v7. I consider v8 v9 v10 to be worth of attention, even influential, but to hear this list
talk about it - or discussions just about anywhere else - you'd think they never
existed. There are exceptions, but this site does reinforce the broadly known version of
the story.
It's doubly ironic for me because people often mistakenly credit me for working on
Unix, but I landed at the Labs after v7 was long dispatched. At the Labs, I first worked
on what became v8.
I suppose it's because the history flowed as this site shows, with BSD being the
driving force for a number of reasons, but it feels to me that a large piece of Unix
history has been sidelined.
I know it's a whiny lament, but those neglected systems had interesting advances.
-rob