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Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld)
ComputerWorld looks forward to the 40th anniversary of the invention of Unix (which is in August). "A lot of others got hooked as well. University researchers adopted Unix in droves because it was relatively simple and easily modified, it was undemanding in its resource requirements, and the source code was essentially free. Startups like Sun Microsystems and a host of now-defunct companies that specialized in scientific computing, such as Multiflow Computer, made it their operating system of choice for the same reasons."
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Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 5, 2009 14:23 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
Happy Birthday to Unix,
Happy Birthday to Unix, Happy Birth day to Euuuuunuchs Happy Birthday to U.... <ouch>
It was either that or realize that I was only slightly younger than the OS.
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 5, 2009 14:46 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Darn. I'm slightly older than UNIX.
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 5, 2009 16:37 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]
Not a big problem if you are POSIX compliant :-)
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 5, 2009 18:44 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Not only am I POSIX compliant, I'm also Pentium-division- and Douglas-Adams-compliant. I'm 6 * 9 years old, making me 42.
Douglas Adams base 13 Posted Jun 5, 2009 23:14 UTC (Fri) by stephen_pollei (guest, #23348) [Link] I may be a pretty sad case, but I don't write jokes in base 13!
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 6, 2009 15:54 UTC (Sat) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] Not only am I POSIX compliant, I'm also Pentium-division- and Douglas-Adams-compliant.Moons of madness! I'm [adjective deleted] older than UNIX.
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 11, 2009 9:36 UTC (Thu) by stevan (subscriber, #4342) [Link]
You /do/ realise that "Happy Birthday" is copyrighted, don't you? ;-)
S
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 6, 2009 3:50 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] I was trying to find famous people and celebrities who share an August 1969 birthday with Unix. Celebrities I came up with are: Maybe some others (check out Born in 1969 at IMDb (scroll to August). Interesting that Linus is 4 months younger than Unix (he was born in December 1969)...
Unix turns 40 (ComputerWorld) Posted Jun 8, 2009 7:19 UTC (Mon) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]
Whereas... I'm 6 years younger than UNIX and share an August birthday with it. Does anyone know which day in August is considered the actual birthday?
I personally share mine with (among others) Michael Jackson, John McCain, Charles Kettering and Ingrid Bergman (who also died on August 29th). Search on a date in Wikipedia and you can find all sorts of stuff for that day.
The Lessons Of Unix Posted Jun 6, 2009 5:40 UTC (Sat) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Unix became popular because it was a) quite decently designed, b) portable and c) sort-of open source. A whole generation of computer science students (and their teachers) was able to hack into it, find out how a real operating system worked, and make it do stuff its original creators never had in mind. Those computer science students went on to found companies like Sun, Apollo and so on, and to work at other companies like HP and DEC. Unfortunately, in trying to make money out of Unix, they made it proprietary. They tried to leverage vendor lock-in on top of something that was originally designed to be open. In the process, they broke the unifying concepts of Unix into a thousand pieces. Thankfully, not everybody who was exposed to Unix made this mistake. The BSD folks were conscientious about ensuring that their contributions would remain free for others to use, copy, modify and redistribute. And, of course, we all know about Richard Stallmans amazingly successful effort to recreate a completely free Unix from scratch. All the proprietary Unixes are now either dead, dying, or stuck in dead-end niches. The Unix idea still lives and thrives, in the form of Free Software versions that preserve the original concepts and carry them forward into the challenges of a new era. Long may it prosper.
The Lessons Of Unix Posted Jun 6, 2009 11:41 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
I agree. Those who say that UNIX is "dying" at the hands of Linux and *BSD are missing the point...
The Lessons Of Unix Posted Jun 8, 2009 6:43 UTC (Mon) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] Those computer science students went on to found companies like Sun, Apollo and so on, and to work at other companies like HP and DEC. Unfortunately, in trying to make money out of Unix, they made it proprietary.If I thought that someone should be blamed for making Unix proprietary, I'd assign that blame to AT&T, which was in control of the licensing. The cost of a source license went from being basically free to over $100K in a short span of years, and the cost of a binary license went up quite a bit also. In retrospect, we can speculate that they could have made it open source and made money on support, as Red Hat has done, but I don't think that was at all obvious at the time, and it's also possible that it wouldn't have been successful at that earlier time.
The Lessons Of Unix Posted Jun 8, 2009 16:33 UTC (Mon) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] All the proprietary Unixes are now either dead, dying, or stuck in dead-end niches.I disagree. OS X is Unix. It is also only "sort of open" and unfortunately for the free Unix-alikes such as BSD and Linux, it's increasingly popular with developers who are not only fine using proprietary platforms, but are now largely adjusting to having Apple dictate to them what kind of applications they can and cannot develop. As far as I know, this is the kind of power companies like IBM, HP and Sun never had with their platforms. IMHO the battle between free and proprietary Unix is not over, and proprietary is making a huge comeback thanks to Apple.
Apple Posted Jun 9, 2009 13:04 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I agree with your sentiments about Apple. I find it perplexing and troubling that at most free software conferences, I see lots of Apple laptops. Apple is the most proprietary and least open major computer producer, and I find it sad that so many FOSS users and developers are seduced by flashy design into giving up their freedom.
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