On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 3:23 AM, paul <ppal...@gmail.com> wrote: > actually, AT&T never intended to make profit from > UNIX in the beginning. i think the early development > of UNIX was similar to linux. ken thompson wanted > to play games (as a hobby) so he created an OS. AT&T > did not tell ken to create UNIX so that they can sell it. > it was an individual effort out of self-motivation... hobby. > even during the early phase, nobody thought that > UNIX could be a multimillion dollar business. they gave it > away.... not because of whatever law prohibiting them > but they didn't think OS was a good business.... > whoever would have thought that UNIX would become > important in the development of internet?
Operating systems were not a big business, at the time; most were made at research or government facilities, usually for very specific systems and jobs. Besides, there was still no C at the time to catalyze the production of a highly portable operating system; all the world's programmers were specializing in their own gobbledygook. In fact, the entire episode of Unix popularity can be attributed to the parallel development of C: the Unix we know and love/hate today would not be so otherwise. > ever wonder why IBM ask bill for the DOS instead of creating one? > during that time, IBM could afford to hire developers for the OS but > nobody saw it as an important business case for personal computing. > during that time, OS was an added value to the hardware. > ken and company developed UNIX as a hobby and many > contributed to it (more like a project... extended it in > universities and research labs)... until AT&T saw > a business opportunity and owned it literally. Yes, see above. After all, IBM didn't really made custom operating systems their core business until later on; they can hire them for domain-specific work. Still, when IBM does make an OS, they are pretty long-lived and well supported: see OS/360, MVS, and VM. > the same thing happened to linux. it was a hobby.... > then shared to the world... until IBM and other big > companies join and made business out of it.... > these two are examples of innovation not really > driven by *PROFIT*. linus created LINUX because > he wants to install UNIX-os in his computer for free. > it was never intended for profit in similar way > that ken created UNIX. Linux (or Freax, as it was then supposed to be called) began from disaster, actually: Linus was trying to dial out from his home Minix to his university's network, when he realized he gave the wrong device to write to: zeroing out his hard disk. It was at that point where he decided not to reinstall Minix, but to finally make the jump and install what began as a simple video demonstration for his sister to look at ;) See his autobio, "Just For Fun". >From that book too came this nugget: there was the one fateful day where Linus met RMS when the latter was touring universities to spread the GNU gospel. I think this was at the time Linux was already out on the funet FTP, though still not licensed a la GPL/BSD/MIT. I wonder if that day never occurred: would Linux still be released on a homebrew license, and still make an impact? Or would we be using GNU/BSDs? > dennis ritchie even mentioned that UNIX is just one of hundreds > of mini projects/utilities they developed to get things done or > satisfy their hobbies. fortunately, some of these miniprojects > like UNIX were shared to the world... but he said that many got lost... > maybe, if these other projects found their way to the world, > their impacts would have been more significant than UNIX... > but AT&T were not interested of marketing those other > miniprojects because they were just tools or products which > were not in line with the business of AT&T. UNIX just got > lucky.... or the world just got lucky. There's one example of a project that could have taken off, if not for the mishaps: Inferno. Especially the older edition that had the Alef language (which subsequently been revised into Limbo,) this early re-engineering of Plan 9 for both native and virtual environments would have made a great competitor for Java, yet AT&T only half-heartedly pushed for it. > i would say that the early development of these technologies > were not driven by business agenda... so in this case, > innovation was not driven or directed by *a corporation*... > look what happened to *multics*. it was *a corporation* > project and somehow it failed... compare it with UNIX > and linux which started with a very simple target and > shared to the world. GE Multics failed for AT&T simply because the hardware involved to run it (GE 645s and Honeywell IIRC) was too costly for Bell to support. Contrast with Bell Unix working on an "acquired" PDP-7. > one main reason why many significant inventions came > from Bell labs was their policy of attracting the best graduates > of MIT and other top US universities... gave them huge > amount of money... and told them to create whatever they > want from that money within a period of time.... Bell Labs > gave total freedom to these researchers to create things... > things the interest them... like a hobby. this policy is different Unfortunately, Bell Labs' days are all but forgotten. Murray Hill has fewer and fewer people, with not many coming in, and Alcatel-Lucent (who acquired Bell Labs not too long ago) are only giving life support for the Unix Netlib and Plan 9. Heck, most moving development now on Plan 9 is due to the stimulus provided by Google's Summer of Code. > policy from a typical company where products are created > based on what the market dictates. AT&T just capitalized > the creativity of individuals to create new things in the > same way that STALLMAN advocates every person > to have the power to create things that interest them > by giving them full access to the environment they work... > in this case the source code. do you think this is a bad > philosophy? True enough. A key element in the early days of Unix was the fact that it was never a product for the market in the first place, but rather to be a platform for continuing research (taking off from Multics,) and of course, games ;) There was no market, to begin with: that market may have actually began when Unix got the word processing job for AT&T's patents department, which subsequently justified porting the system to a PDP-11 and building the ancestor of nroff. Contrast this with Plan 9, where AT&T tried to market and failed: where Plan 9 could have innovated uniform resource access significantly, the hazards of paying a hundred or so dollars just to get a copy and support for it simply put Unix in the "good enough is better" light. -- Zak B. Elep || zakame.net 1486 7957 454D E529 E4F1 F75E 5787 B1FD FA53 851D _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
