17 May
2025
17 May
'25
7:35 p.m.
Just for historical accuracy - I believe Bill Shannon first had the New
Hampshire UNIX plate and Armando got it after Bill moved to Sun.
Evidence: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FYR17LRpJNpSBCGv8
On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 7:59 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 6:26 PM Ron Natalie
<ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Sort of like when DEC finally recognized that
people were buying their
hardware to run UNIX. Still remember Armando getting up and saying
something to the effect that DEC hardware and UNIX had been synonymous for
years and that DEC finally noticed and the held up the first DEC UNIX
license (plate).
Clem Cole had--and still has--the Massachusetts UNIX license plate on his
car. I
don't know when he first got that plate. Armando had the New
Hampshire UNIX license plate. It was on a snazzy red Datsun 280 ZX. At
the time (early 1980s) I was driving a frumpy rust-bucket Datsun B210. I
had the New Hampshire VAXVMS license plate. Armando jokingly threatened to
park his sports car next to my car and take a picture of the two OS license
plates side-by-side.
AT&T's "consider it a standard" campaign was pretty successful in
getting
corporate executive types thinking about UNIX. Sort of along the lines of
the "Intel Inside" campaign, which actually got ordinary folks to care
about whose chip was in their PC.
But AT&T never was able to take advantage of the opening the "consider it
a standard" campaign provided. In addition to the reasons Clem cited, I
think AT&T simply never learned how to compete in an open market. They had
been a regulated utility monopoly for so very long.
-Paul W.