--- On Thu, 4/2/09, Orlando Andico <orly.and...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My original contention was that although Unix was > originally free (pre-1984) its freedom arose due to > regulatory constraints on AT&T, and not because AT&T > was being altruistic or was embracing open source. I'm sorry, but Unix (even in its earliest versions) was never free, and it was not "given away", as a result of regulatory constraints (anti-trust suit) by the government. A review of Unix history will show the facts: http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/ 1972 - Thompson, Kernighan, etc. rewrites Unix in C (from assembler) while Ritchie, Kernighan finalize syntax of C language 1975 - Unix distributed under cheap academic licenses to universities 1976 - Thompson teaches Unix at UCBerkeley. Berkeley continues to enhance a variant Unix (BSD) 1981 - AT&T sells System III under commercial licenses 1982 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of local telephone companies at result of anti-trust suit started in 1974 (http://www.corp.att.com/history/history3.html) 1984 - AT&T divests itself of local Bell telephone companies; Starts subsidiary AT&T Computer System to sell commercial licenses to System V 1990 - AT&T merges USO with Unix System Labs, sells many binary licenses to academia, and commercial and government users. Sun, SGI, HP, NCR, and IBM also sells computers with Unix. 1992-1993 - Novell buys Unix from USL 1995 - SCO buys Unix from Novell The important dates are: 1975 - Nerkeley gets source code of Unix under cheap academic license (probably for the cost of the tape). 1981 - AT&T sells commercial licenses to Unix System III 1984 - AT&T divests itself of local Bell telephone companies as a result of a 1982 anti-trust ruling, but continues to sell commercial licenses to Unix System V Unix, after 1981, could not be given out for free because it is a profitable commercial product at that time, just as Oracle is an extremely profitable product today. Pablo Manalastas *** _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
