I’ve been wondering about the growth of Unix and if there’s any good data available.
There’s the Early Unix Epoch, which probably ends with the Unix Support Group assuming the distribution role, plus providing / distributing their version of the code.
Later there’s commercial Unix:
System III and System V, I guess.
BSD, until the lawsuit was resolved, required a Source code license, but their installation count is important in pre-Commercial Unix.
Large licensees like SUN, HP & IBM (AIX) may not have published license counts for their versions - but then, were their derivatives “Unix” or something else?
Warner Loch’s paper has data to around 1978 [below].
I’ve no idea where to find data for USG issued licences, or if the number of binary & source licences were ever reported in the Commercial Era by AT&T.
I’ll not be the first person who’s gone down this road, but my Search Fu isn’t good enough to find them.
Wondering if anyone on the list can point me at resources, even a bunch of annual reports.
I don’t mind manually pulling out the data I’m interested in. But why reinvent the wheel if the work is already done?
steve
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numbers extracted from Warner Loch’s paper.
I think he spells his last name "Losh" :)
<https://papers.freebsd.org/2020/FOSDEM/losh-Hidden_early_history_of_Unix.files/slides.pdf>
2nd Edn June 1972 10 installations
3rd Edn February 1973 16
4th Edn November 1973 >20, or 25
July 74 CACM paper "Unix Time Sharing System” after which external interest exploded
6th Edn 1975 ???
7th Edn March 1978 600+, >300 inside Bell System, "even more have been licensed to outside users”
These were the numbers that I could find in contemporary documentation. 5th and 6th edition didn't have a number like the manuals up to the 4th edition. I got the 7th edition from somewhere I don't recall, but as the 6th and 7th editions were widely licensed and started having lots of users based on ports that happened, it can be hard to put numbers down.
Warner
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Steve Jenkin,
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