*BSD News Article 3517


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!gatech!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!njitgw.njit.edu!eies2.njit.edu!ken
From: ken@eies2.njit.edu (Kenneth  Ng)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,alt.suit.att-bsdi
Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit
Message-ID: <1992Aug8.175645.20087@njitgw.njit.edu>
Date: 8 Aug 92 17:56:45 GMT
References: <7065@skye.ed.ac.uk: <o772klk@twilight.wpd.sgi.com> <1992Aug06.010408.2470@kithrup.COM>
Sender: news@njit.edu
Organization: NJIT - EIES2
Lines: 15
Nntp-Posting-Host: eies2.njit.edu

In article <1992Aug06.010408.2470@kithrup.COM: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
:In article <o772klk@twilight.wpd.sgi.com> coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge) writes:
:Not really.  The Original UNIX was a "real world" replacement for Multics:
:it lacked a lot of the features, but did pick up some of the basic ideas
:(such as a shell-as-a-normal-program).
:>It is blatantly derived from Multics.
:It most certainly is *NOT*.  At no point did anyone ever claim that there
:was Multics code in UNIX.  The fact that one was written in PL/I, and the
:other in assembly, first, and then C, may have had something to do with
:this... :)

I'm not sure if that was meant to be humorous, but I'll assume not.  The
most nebulous part of the USL suit is that they claim BSDI is a DERIVED (sp?)
work.  In other words, they claim that the *IDEAS* of UNIX(R) are theirs.
Implimentation language is therefore not significant.