6 Aug
2024
6 Aug
'24
3:29 p.m.
and the folks from PARC wanted a more RPC-based open OS, according to
my not-yet-fully-retrieved memories.
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 2:40 AM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Another way to put it would be as a chicken and
egg, which came first, ...
..., or the ongoing need for UNIX standardization finding sponsorship
by the working groups, IEEE, etc.?
This.
Try to understand what things were like at the time. There were
a ton of competing Unix systems, all different:
- IBM: AIX on the mainframe and PS/2, which were different from
AIX on the RT/PC and later RS/6000 (workstations).
- DEC: Ultrix on minicomputers and microvaxen, and later on MIPS
based workstations
- Data General: DG/UX on their minicomputers.
- Pyramid: A BSD/System V hybrid RISC minicomputer
- Sun: Workstations, 680x0 based and later SPARC based, and servers.
Initially BSD based, later SVR4 based.
- Workstations from HP, Tektronix, NBI, others I've probably forgotten,
3B2 and 3B1/Unix PC from AT&T... The list goes on and on and on.
Things split roughly along BSD/System V lines, but code wasn't portable.
Did you use bcopy() or memcpy()? index() or strchr()? There was lots
of mixing and matching happening, too.
There was a crying need for a standard. The mess is what begot GNU
Autoconf, which made a difference at the time. Having the ANSI C standard
also helped.
HTH,
Arnold