Submitted by “The computer world is notorious for its obsession with what is new – largely thanks to the relentless engine of Moore’s Law that endlessly presents programmers with more powerful machines.
Given such permanent change, anything that survives for more than one generation of processors deserves a nod.
Think then what the Unix operating system deserves because in August 2009, it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And it has been in use every year of those four decades and today is getting more attention than ever before.”
Thanks, SCO!
Edited 2009-08-21 00:34 UTC
The original SCO was not such a bad company. They had what was probably the best commercial x86 Unix for years, and after taking a few “first they laugh at you” pot shots at Linux, the CEO actually had the decency to publically apologize.
They saw that Linux inevitably had them licked, and sold out their OS division to the then-Linux company Caldera, back when Ransom Love was Caldera’s CEO. Now granted, Ransom lost some popularity in the community when he dared to wonder if maybe (gasp!) BSD licensing might not sometimes more advantageous than GPL, but he was an absolute OSS saint compared to what came later.
He and his team got the shaft, and Darl, Chris, and the gang took over, renaming the company, misleadingly, to The SCO Group. And it is The SCO Group which we often, lazily, refer to as “SCO” today.
But the original SCO was a good company, with a good product for its time, which laughed a little at Linux, but then apologized when they realized that their commercial Unix goose was cooked, and shrewdly left that business behind to go work on their virtualization product (Tarantella) which they eventually sold to Sun. It would be more accurate, and more respectful to what used to be a good name, if we were more careful to say “The SCO Group” when referring to the stinking cess-pool of a company which goes by that misleading name today.
Thanks for clarifying that. I remember the old SCO – Openserver. I remember trying to install it on PC. Also, I remember Caldera Linux – not such a bad distro – not to mention OpenDOS. That was a very nice DOS. I’ll remember to refer to the current thugs as the SCO group from now on. Thanks again.
I’m agree, I used SCO in the late of 80’s (with Xenix) and in early 90’s (with Unix and OpenServer) and it was really a very stable system. Then appeared Linux and it changed all completely.
I’m still have (scanned) the letters sent by SCO saying that Linux was the evil!.
I don’t recall them depicting Linux as evil. IIRC, they just didn’t think that businesses would want to trust their mission-critical systems to a bunch of long-haired hippies with B.O. 😉
Thanks, Bell Labs …
THANKS BSD!
It’s a shame this is on the second page given it’s significance and that this is OSnews
I’m agree with you.
You mean like this one?
http://www.osnews.com/story/21617/Unix_Turns_40_Past_Present_Future…
We already covered this on the front page.
As a matter fact, yes, just like that one. 🙂
The 40th anniversary of Unix inevitably brings to mind its “successor”, Plan 9. And the recent “discussion” of X’s design suggests a comparison to Plan 9’s windowing system, Rio.
Now, I am totally unqualified to write up a comparison. But perhaps some OSNews reader familiar with both would like to write about X and Rio and their relative strengths and weaknesses.
I’m more curious about the differences between Plan 9 and mainstream UNIX. Not a lot of people have grasps on this.
It was born as a rather minimalist time-sharing system, and while well-regarded implementations (e.g,. Solaris) have grown features it’s all rather duct tape-y. IMHO, superior alternatives like OpenVMS just couldn’t attain critical mass because Unix is, well, good enough.
I think that’s high praise.
Well it’s awkward to celebrate a birthday without one of the major pillars of UNIX: BSD.
“Call me grumpy (I’ve been ill and up since 2:30 this morning), but is this article for real? 40 years of Unix and the BSD word is non-existent?
Multics and Linux are mentioned. Thompson and the “academic community” are there (with no mention of Berkeley…) So is “becoming the chosen operating system for the internet” (still no BSD…). ”
<a>http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/rant-of-the-day-33581</a>…
I am really getting old!
How the hell can they have written an article like this that does not mention HPUX, Solaris or AIX but mentions Linux and Mac OS X. WTF!
That BBC article could emphasize a bit more on the server/workstation aspect of UNIX(-like).
When generic news outlets talk about computer operating systems, they tend to focus more on home computer usage than server/workstation usage. It’s most likely because typically ordinary people have this computer operating systems = consumer products mentality going on.
Edited 2009-08-21 10:16 UTC
I’m pretty sure MS stopped using the BSD networking stack with NT 4, but I may be wrong. I also have to agree with the lamentable absence of BSD in the article.
This is the BBC tech section of course, where hackers is a term for criminals and the only alternatives to Microsoft are Apple and Linux, with Linux being the only open source free OS in existence. Their tech columnist, Bill Thompson, has also written about UNIX and also neglects to mention BSD:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8211355.stm
Edited 2009-08-21 11:51 UTC