12 Jun
2024
12 Jun
'24
12:01 p.m.
Hi Nelson,
[John] reported that S was licensed to AT&T Unix
customers only in
binary form, and that the original source code may no longer exist.
Given your point about ‘S’ being an awkward search term, does John
Chambers recall a colloquial longer name, perhaps for when context was
needed? Also, any fragments of filenames he can recall, whether source
or binary distribution.
Given Bell Labs long history of inventions, it presumably had an archive
of material and an archivist or librarian back in the '70s. Back then,
contemporary data on disc and tape was impractical to archive — too much
of it, to expensive to duplicate, and difficult to predict what would be
worth keeping — but paper was their trade. An archival print of source
to match a licensed release would have been possible. Perhaps even
preferred by the lawyers. I'm surprised they weren't considering how to
archive ‘today’.
--
Cheers, Ralph.