11 Aug
2007
11 Aug
'07
10:06 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
This from today's New York Times story at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/technology/11novell.html about SCO
losing its claims to ownership of Unix:
"The Unix operating system, which has become popular with some
independent-minded PC users as well as in the corporate world, was
developed by AT&T researchers at Bell Labs beginning in 1969. During
the 1970s, the operating system became highly influential in academic
computing and in computer science departments.
In the ?80s, it had a significant impact in the computer workstation
and minicomputer markets, although it never gained a significant
foothold in the personal computer business until Steven P. Jobs
brought a version of Unix with him when he returned to Apple Computer
in 1997. Some PC makers have begun to offer versions of Linux instead
of Microsoft?s Windows operating systems."
What does Apple and Steve Jobs have to do with Unix?
Presumably they're referring to Job's bringing NextOS with him when he
returned to Apple (mid 90s). NextOS (late 80s) was based on the Mach kernel
with a Unixy interface layer (Carnegie-Mellon U., mid 80s). At Apple it became
Mac-OSX (late 90s), which is currently running on millions of Macs. (On
Mac-OSX you can actually run Unix shells in line-at-a-time terminal windows,
as well as boot the machine into single user mode and get a simple
line-at-a-time unix shell, no graphical user-interface involved.)
mid 80s late 80s mid 90s late 90s
------- -------- ------ --------
Mach kernel with --> NextOS --> Jobs returns --> MacOS-X
with Unixy interface to Apple
It's a rather narrow rendition of Unix history.