Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

Posted Aug 2, 2023 5:14 UTC (Wed) by zaitseff (subscriber, #851)
Parent article: Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

For the most part, a fun, slow meander down memory lane. But if Jon states that:

For years Unix programmers measured their “age” in the Unix community by the generation of John [Lions]’s book which they owned.

… then I can state that I am the proud owner of an original set of these books. But not because I'm that old, but because the UNSW second-hand bookshop happened to have a set lying around that I picked up for a few dollars!

I'm sure I'm not the only one on LWN that can claim that! :-)

Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

Posted Aug 2, 2023 11:44 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

Lol. Have you ever read the article? If you own an actual book then you are hopelessly young by these standards.

Only Lions himself had “originals”. And then they were photocopied. And these copies were photocopied, too. And so on, till it they were almost illegible. Samizdat style.

I seriously doubt that your second-hand bookshop carried these samizdat style copies. More likely what you have is a modern copy published long after these days of when it was spread semi-illegally.

Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

Posted Aug 2, 2023 12:19 UTC (Wed) by zaitseff (subscriber, #851) [Link] (2 responses)

John Lions happened to be one of my lecturers back in 1994, just before he retired. And he did use his book to teach operating systems to students at UNSW (The University of New South Wales). So those students did indeed receive printed versions of the notes (two volumes). And that is why the UNSW second-hand bookshop had original copies, which when I saw them, I was happy to pay the $5 or so!

Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

Posted Aug 2, 2023 12:31 UTC (Wed) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]

*respectful bow*

Hall: IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view

Posted Aug 2, 2023 12:32 UTC (Wed) by zaitseff (subscriber, #851) [Link]

For the fun of it, I scanned in the title page and a random page (p. 19) full of student's notes. The title page states "This booklet has been produced for students at the University of New South Wales taking courses 6.602B and 6.657G". Presumably as part of the licensing terms and conditions, the book has a serial number stamped on it: 7254. The companion Commentary has serial number 7253.