Brian Kernighan on the origins of Unix

Posted Jan 17, 2022 16:23 UTC (Mon) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051)
Parent article: Brian Kernighan on the origins of Unix

"In your editor's opinion, Kernighan missed an opportunity to evaluate the free-software community in these terms. Companies may not have long time horizons, but many free-software projects do. It is, still, a place where people with good ideas can come together and see where those ideas lead. It would have been good to hear his thoughts on whether the free-software community has become that place where interesting things can happen and, if not, what we should seek to change to get there."

I agree. Hmm.... could our coach-class-loving Editor perhaps reach out to Mr. Kernighan for a guest article? :) Or even a video interview of Mr. Kernighan?

Thank you for a very nice summary.

Brian Kernighan on the origins of Unix

Posted Jan 18, 2022 16:20 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

UNIX/POSIX was instrumental to the free software movement. POSIX provided interface definition that allowed independent developers to write operating system code and userspace code that worked together without requiring too much coordination.
The ability to work in parallel was crucial to the growth the free software.

Creating a new operating system paradigm from scratch that is not a UNIX copycat require a different mindset.