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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!usenet.coe.montana.edu!ogicse!das-news.harvard.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!<UNAUTHENTICATED>+ From: Sean.Levy@cs.cmu.edu Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: AT&T vs. BSDI --> 4.3BSD-NET2 distribution requires AT&T license!!! Message-ID: <EeSI4LW00hMgJ7SGhT@cs.cmu.edu> Date: 31 Jul 92 05:33:11 GMT References: <l6nibgINNje6@neuro.usc.edu> <1992Jul21.152007.1126@news2.cis.umn.edu> <1992Jul30.174414.28488@kas.helios.mn.org> Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 45 In-Reply-To: <1992Jul30.174414.28488@kas.helios.mn.org> Excerpts from netnews.comp.unix.bsd: 30-Jul-92 Re: AT&T vs. BSDI --> 4.3BS.. Rob Healey@kas.helios.mn (1256) > Even micro kernels > like MACH and probably NT borrow QUITE a bit from the UNIX(tm) system > in system call names and symantics At least in the case of MACH, nope. The services and abstractions that the Mach microkernel is interested in supplying can be easily mapped into the concepts present in Unix(tm)*, but (and I'm not speaking as a Mach guru or anything, my site name not withstanding -- I'm just a happy user) they themselves are totally orthogonal. Mach talks about ports, access rights, tasks, threads and virtual memory; communication with the kernel is done through these ports by dint of these rights by threads in tasks sitting in regions of VM. I believe that talking to the kernel looks like any other IPC, which is not the case in Unix(tm). Now, the BSD emulation sitting on top of the Mach on the box I'm on now sure looks a whole hell of a lot like BSD (well, it *is* BSD), but what's underneath doesn't. I have no idea about NT, other than I've hated Microsoft from the first day I used their brain-damaged BASIC on a PC and have had no reason to change my mind since. ---- *Or DOS, or whatever. There was a talk given around here recently on a DOS emulation built on top of Mach, which I, regretably, missed... The point is, if you're talking about interfaces (system calls), that's one thing. If you're talking about concepts (semantics) like files as unstructured streams of bytes, file descriptors (I seem to recall the term "resource descriptors" being used in some of the 4.2BSD tech papers, which is a better term) being able to have all sorts of things on the "other side", UID, etc... then, I don't see how AT&T/USL can claim anything, as almost all of the key concepts were leveraged from earlier efforts, as has been pointed out. As I understand it, they're bellyaching about actual lines of code of theirs having made their way into someone else's product -- as I understand it, there isn't anything else they CAN legally bellyache about, no? ---- Cheers, -- Sean -- Sean Levy, n-dim Group, EDRC, CMU, 5000 Forbes Ave, PGH, PA 15213 Email: snl+@cmu.edu, Phone: +1 412 268 5221, Fax: +1 412 268 5229