Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
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mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu!knight
From: kni...@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Knight of the Living Dead)
Subject: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Message-ID: <1992Jul28.153750.8395@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Summary: SYSV r4 is quite similar to BSD
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
Sender: n...@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu
Organization: It doesn't look like much, but its a system.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 15:37:50 GMT
Lines: 28
As I recall when System 5 Revision 4.0 was released, it was described
(to me, anyway) as an attempt to gain "BSD Compatibility". I'm wondering
if the reason why AT&T held out sueing BSDI this long is so they could
claim copyright of BSD's code/style/look/feel/etc while it was still
popular, and then smash all the competition.
If so, Steve Jobs at NeXT may find MACH being charged with having
unlicenced BSD-like code that is property of AT&T.
I guess it would be impossible to find a copy of AT&T's System 5
source code.. BSD sure got suckered and coldcocked. I'd suggest
bringing in the EFF to help out -- its unfair for small business
to pay thier own court fees against such huge businesses.
I agree with some people that a victory for AT&T could spell the demise
for computer science as we know it currently. U**X really is a great
operating system, the best I ever used.
-- Eric Knight
------------------------------------------------------------------------
These opinions are my own, and my employeer doesn't want me ruining his
life anymore than I absolutely have to.
EBKni...@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!bcc.ac.uk!link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk!ucacmsu
From: ucac...@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Stephen R Usher)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
Message-ID: <1992Jul29.144859.8222@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Jul 92 14:48:59 GMT
References: <1992Jul28.153750.8395@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: n...@ucl.ac.uk (Usenet News System)
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium, London
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In article <1992Jul28.153750.8...@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> kni...@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu
(Knight of the Living Dead) writes:
>
>As I recall when System 5 Revision 4.0 was released, it was described
>(to me, anyway) as an attempt to gain "BSD Compatibility". I'm wondering
>if the reason why AT&T held out sueing BSDI this long is so they could
>claim copyright of BSD's code/style/look/feel/etc while it was still
>popular, and then smash all the competition.
The only problem with this idea is that SYSVr4 (NOT System 5, that was
another Unix way back) doesn't look like BSD, it still looks like SYSV to
the normal user, ie you have horrid syntax for the ps utility where you need
to use a hyphen in front of the arguments and the devices... yuck!
The only real thing I've seen which is BSD is the socket library (not
complete) and the BSD compatibility library which is not complete either.
>
[Stuff deleted]
>-- Eric Knight
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>These opinions are my own, and my employeer doesn't want me ruining his
>life anymore than I absolutely have to.
> EBKni...@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve
--
Addresses:-
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gateway.novell.com!thisbe!terry
From: te...@thisbe.npd.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
Message-ID: <1992Jul29.174437.18606@gateway.novell.com>
Date: 29 Jul 92 17:44:37 GMT
References: <1992Jul28.153750.8395@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
<1992Jul29.144859.8222@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk>
Sender: terry@thisbe (Terry Lambert)
Organization: Novell NPD -- Sandy, UT
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In article <1992Jul29.144859.8...@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk>, ucac...@ucl.ac.uk
(Mr Stephen R Usher) writes:
|> In article <1992Jul28.153750.8...@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> kni...@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu
|>(Knight of the Living Dead) writes:
|> >
|> >As I recall when System 5 Revision 4.0 was released, it was described
|> >(to me, anyway) as an attempt to gain "BSD Compatibility". I'm wondering
|> >if the reason why AT&T held out sueing BSDI this long is so they could
|> >claim copyright of BSD's code/style/look/feel/etc while it was still
|> >popular, and then smash all the competition.
|>
|> The only problem with this idea is that SYSVr4 (NOT System 5, that was
|> another Unix way back) doesn't look like BSD, it still looks like SYSV to
|> the normal user, ie you have horrid syntax for the ps utility where you need
|> to use a hyphen in front of the arguments and the devices... yuck!
|>
|> The only real thing I've seen which is BSD is the socket library (not
|> complete) and the BSD compatibility library which is not complete either.
Things AT&T owes to Berkeley:
1) UFS
2) VFS
3) Memory management strategies
4) Job control
5) csh
6) TCP/IP
7) telnet/ftp/finger/et al.
8) mail/sendmail/smtp
9) termcap
10) pty's
The top 10 list, to name a few.
Terry Lambert
terry_lamb...@gateway.novell.com
te...@icarus.weber.edu
---
Disclaimer: Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of
my present or previous employers.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sparky!uunet!kithrup!sef
From: s...@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Subject: Re: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 20:19:19 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Jul29.201919.15968@kithrup.COM>
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
References: <1992Jul28.153750.8395@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
<1992Jul29.144859.8222@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> <1992Jul29.174437.18606@gateway.novell.com>
Lines: 30
In article <1992Jul29.174437.18...@gateway.novell.com> te...@thisbe.npd.Novell.COM
(Terry Lambert) writes:
>Things AT&T owes to Berkeley:
>2) VFS
>3) Memory management strategies
That's funny, I could have sworn that these actually came from SunOS.
Considering that 4.4ish is the first BSD system to have vnodes, and a decent
memory-management scheme, I don't see how SysVr4 (which has been out for a
couple of years now) could have gotten it from 4.4...
>4) Job control
Other systems had job control long before BSD did.
>5) csh
I use bash or ksh. csh has too many problems.
>8) mail/sendmail/smtp
Other systems had smtp before, no? sendmail isn't that great, and there are
other systems that deliver mail without the horrible configuration problem
that sendmail is. And UNIX had mail *long* before UCB ever started playing
with unix!
--
Sean Eric Fagan | "My psychiatrist says I have a messiah
s...@kithrup.COM | complex. But I forgive him."
-----------------+ -- Jim Carrey
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
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From: e...@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Date: 29 Jul 1992 22:32:03 GMT
Organization: UC Berkeley Mammoth Project
Lines: 77
Sender: e...@mastodon.cs.berkeley.edu (Eric Allman)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <157693INNrkk@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <1992Jul28.153750.8395@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
<1992Jul29.144859.8222@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> <1992Jul29.174437.18606@gateway.novell.com>
<1992Jul29.201919.15968@kithrup.COM>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mastodon.cs.berkeley.edu
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
In article <1992Jul29.201919.15...@kithrup.COM>, s...@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
writes:
|> In article <1992Jul29.174437.18...@gateway.novell.com> te...@thisbe.npd.Novell.COM
|>(Terry Lambert) writes:
|> >Things AT&T owes to Berkeley:
|> >2) VFS
|> >3) Memory management strategies
|>
|> That's funny, I could have sworn that these actually came from SunOS.
|> Considering that 4.4ish is the first BSD system to have vnodes, and a decent
|> memory-management scheme, I don't see how SysVr4 (which has been out for a
|> couple of years now) could have gotten it from 4.4...
Vnodes did indeed come from SunOS, although I understand that Kirk McKusick
and Mike Karels contributed to the design. However, memory management was
developed jointly between Sun and Berkeley -- Kirk McKusick spent
considerable time on the design.
|> >4) Job control
|>
|> Other systems had job control long before BSD did.
Jim Kulp first put job control into a PDP-11 system at IIASA in the distant
past. It was derived from (I believe) ITS, although my memory is a bit fuzzy
on this. He donated it to Berkeley, where Bill Joy merged it into BSD. It
may have come out first on a non-UNIX system, but AT&T/USL clearly got it
implementation-and-all from Berkeley.
|> >5) csh
|>
|> I use bash or ksh. csh has too many problems.
Perhaps -- but it is still a common shell, and it is certainly another
example of a program developed at Berkeley picked up by AT&T/USL. And
csh certainly introduced ideas that still exist (in possibly different
forms) today.
|> >8) mail/sendmail/smtp
|>
|> Other systems had smtp before, no? sendmail isn't that great, and there are
|> other systems that deliver mail without the horrible configuration problem
|> that sendmail is. And UNIX had mail *long* before UCB ever started playing
|> with unix!
There are a lot of opinions about sendmail, and I agree with many of them.
Yes, there were other programs that delivered mail without "that horrible
configuration". /bin/mail delivered UUCP mail. Another local mail program
done at Berkeley delivered "BerkNet" mail (an RS-232 network, now gone,
written by Eric Schmidt). And the NCP FTP code had yet another mail program
that knew about NCP mail. I wrote delivermail so that users didn't have
to decide which mail program to use depending on what network their mail
was going to. It had a very small compiled in configuration file. It was
renamed "sendmail" during a major rewrite that pulled the configuration file
out; the changes in sendmail were adaptations needed to handle the real world
that was changing fast (much faster than now).
SMTP didn't even exist before sendmail. The conversion from delivermail to
sendmail occurred during the network conversion from NCP to TCP. SMTP was
in draft state (I probably still have many of the drafts in my basement).
When a new draft came out I would FTP it and usually have the changes
implemented and installed by the following morning. RFC822 was similarly
evolving.
Yes, "UNIX had mail *long* before UCB ever started playing with unix!" It
was essentially the "cat" program. It didn't know about networks (later
versions did know about UUCP, but that appeared well after UCB started
playing with UNIX). It didn't even understand about separate messages;
reading your mail was literally equivalent to catting the mail file.
Kurt Shoens wrote a mail UA while at Berkeley (a derivative of which is
usually known as mailx) that understood about separate messages, replying
to messages, headers, and all sorts of "new" ideas.
|> --
|> Sean Eric Fagan | "My psychiatrist says I have a messiah
|> s...@kithrup.COM | complex. But I forgive him."
|> -----------------+ -- Jim Carrey
|> Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
eric allman
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sparky!uunet!darwin.sura.net!mips!newsun!gateway.novell.com!terry
From: te...@npd.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert)
Subject: Re: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Message-ID: <1992Jul29.224953.28161@gateway.novell.com>
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
Sender: n...@gateway.novell.com (NetNews)
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References: <1992Jul29.144859.8222@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk>
<1992Jul29.174437.18606@gateway.novell.com> <1992Jul29.201919.15968@kithrup.COM>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 22:49:53 GMT
Lines: 67
In article <1992Jul29.201919.15...@kithrup.COM> s...@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
writes:
>In article <1992Jul29.174437.18...@gateway.novell.com> te...@thisbe.npd.Novell.COM
>(Terry Lambert) writes:
>>Things AT&T owes to Berkeley:
>>2) VFS
>>3) Memory management strategies
>
>That's funny, I could have sworn that these actually came from SunOS.
>Considering that 4.4ish is the first BSD system to have vnodes, and a decent
>memory-management scheme, I don't see how SysVr4 (which has been out for a
>couple of years now) could have gotten it from 4.4...
One can also argue that VFS is an independant developement of AT&T on the
basis of the file system switch constituting "prior art" in the neighborhood,
and that Sun thus got it from AT&T. This would be wrong, but one could
certainly argue it.
Didn't virtual memory for UNIX systems come from System 3 work at UCB on
the old PDP boxes? I seem to remember swapping as a requirement because
of memory limitations AT&T never had to consider, given their ability to
purchase and use sufficient memory without *needing* swapping. Things
are invented when they are needed. If you are talking about modern paged
memormory management alone, then you can probably make a case for Sun; but
the point is that it certainly didn't originate with AT&T.
>>4) Job control
>
>Other systems had job control long before BSD did.
But not SVR4, which got it's code from Berkeley.
>>5) csh
>
>I use bash or ksh. csh has too many problems.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it didn't come from Berkeley.
>>8) mail/sendmail/smtp
>
>Other systems had smtp before, no? sendmail isn't that great, and there are
>other systems that deliver mail without the horrible configuration problem
>that sendmail is. And UNIX had mail *long* before UCB ever started playing
>with unix!
The mail code was based on the intermail code for the old Berknet, which
in turn was derived from work done by Greg Haerr as a student at UCSD.
This system had a seperate reader and poster mechanism, due to project
requirements placed by the cognitive psychologist in charge.
Let's see. Out of 10 "trade secrets" in use by USL, we have found one
which we can argue started at USL, one which is of questionable, but
undeniably non-AT&T origin, one which came from Berkeley by way of UCSD,
and seven which are undeniably Berkeley in origin (two of which you
personally don't like or had a hard time figuring out). I would like
to claim a 90% Berkeley, 100% non-AT&T, but will settle for 70% Berkeley,
20% non-AT&T, and 10% contested.
AT&T is still in the red, and this is only what I thought were the top 10,
not a comprehensive list by any means!
Terry Lambert
terry_lamb...@gateway.novell.com
te...@icarus.weber.edu
---
Disclaimer: Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of
my present or previous employers.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
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hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu!knight
From: kni...@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Knight of the Living Dead)
Subject: Re: I wonder, did AT&T backstab BSDI?
Message-ID: <1992Jul29.212918.8984@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Summary: Some clarifications on previous post
Keywords: AT&T speculation lawsuit BSDI
Sender: Eric Knight <kni...@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
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References: <1992Jul28.153750.8395@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
<1992Jul29.144859.8222@bas-a.bcc.ac.uk> <1992Jul29.174437.18606@gateway.novell.com>
Distribution: World
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 21:29:18 GMT
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> The only problem with this idea is that SYSVr4 (NOT System 5, that was
> another Unix way back) doesn't look like BSD, it still looks like SYSV to
> the normal user, ie you have horrid syntax for the ps utility where you need
> to use a hyphen in front of the arguments and the devices... yuck!
[Stuff Deleted]
> Steve
> --
> Addresses:-
> JANET:- ucac...@uk.ac.ucl or st...@uk.ac.ox.earth (preferable)
> Internet:- ucac...@ucl.ac.uk or st...@earth.ox.ac.uk (preferable)
Being a frequent System 5 (SYSV) user, I can't help but notice that
V = roman numeral 5. Therefore, I always figured Sys5 and SysV were
interchangable. If you are thinking of "Revision 7" I believe it is,
which is also Minix level U**X compatibility, I believe thats the outdated
program your referring to.
There was another message about my "MACH" comment which I'm not in
a position to load in and edit at this time, but it comments that NeXT
paid thier dues to AT&T and thereby were immune.
If I were attempting to be rude about source code and licenses (which
AT&T is doing) and I were about to grab all the software from the BSD
tape and claim it were my own (which AT&T is doing), if I won I'd point
out to everyone who used the BSD code (I believe that means most, if not
all u**x and several offshoots such as Primos) that the software which
is being licensed by AT&T >DIDN'T< include the "rogue" BSDI software,
which they now own all the rights to, and then they warm up the deathstar
for another round of licensing fees or worse, demanding the BSDI software
be removed from other U**X like software.
If anyone thinks AT&T will be buddy buddy with Sun, IBM, or NeXT,
let it be known they backstabbed BSDI -- so they should consider themselves
warned.
Basically, this could be a war against all **IX software, commercial
or otherwise. They are literally attacking the weakest link in the
chain of people who develope un*x code, and also possibly the most
influential on other developements.
On the bright side, BSDI should demand all the "trade secrets"
be explained in court, that way they become public knowledge so that
other people like GNU can produce code which can keep the Freedom
alive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
These opinions are mine, don't call my boss or employer or anyone else,
they will just be annoyed and can't give you answers -- Eric Knight
------------------------------------------------------------------------