*BSD News Article 3488


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From: mike@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu (Michael John Haertel)
Newsgroups: alt.suit.att-bsdi,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit
Message-ID: <1992Aug7.183051.1223@cs.uoregon.edu>
Date: 7 Aug 92 18:30:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.1992Aug7.183051.1223
References: <KANDALL.92Aug5175428@globalize.nsg.sgi.com> <15s8ulINNgrc@agate.berkeley.edu> <BZS.92Aug6191621@ussr.std.com>
Sender: news@cs.uoregon.edu (Netnews Owner)
Organization: University of Oregon Computer and Information Sciences Dept.
Lines: 29

In article <BZS.92Aug6191621@ussr.std.com> bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>Not to mention that SysV (pre-SVR4) was basically a rip-off of 4.1BSD,
>right down to the 1K file system.
>
>That's the sick thing. The descendancy between V6/V7 and SysV is not
>at all direct. SysVR1 basically incorporated most of 4.1BSD, added
>some things from their SysIII like shared mem/semaphores/msg_queues
>(abominations if I ever saw one) and shipped it as their own.

Completely bogus.  About the only thing of Berkeley descent in early
system V, as far as I can tell, was "vi" and the termcap database.
No job control, no csh.  No networking, no VM system.

The "Berkeley" 1K file system was really the Bell Labs FS with the
block size changed from 512 bytes to 1K.  The System V folks were
perfectly capable of doing this for themselves.

And, for heaven's sakes, they didn't even *have* a VM system as
late as System V.2 (at least the Vax version was still a swapping
system), so how could they have taken Berkeley's?  When they finally
did get a VM system they rolled their own.  (Note that in SysV.4
they replaced it with Sun's, which also didn't come from Berkeley.)

One of USL's problems has always been that they have a very big
"not invented here" attitude.  I can just imagine some of their people
kicking and screaming at the decision to "merge" with SunOS.

On the other hand, with SysV.4, the criticism that they should be
thanking Berkeley, not suing them, is certainly valid.