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[Lynx-dev] Does SCO have the right to threaten Linux?


From: Victor Schneider
Subject: [Lynx-dev] Does SCO have the right to threaten Linux?
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 00:15:31 -0500

>From tx.religion:

On the convergence of topics:  I wonder if anyone has ever researched Bell
Laboratories' original claims to the Unix operating system and to the C
language that was used to write Unix.  The reason I say this is that Maurice
Halstead was the developer of a language called Pilot that had the practical
feature of allowing assembly language statements mixed with Pilot-language
statements.  It was a revolutionary idea at the time, but you could write a
Pilot compiler for a new machine in Pilot by a process called
"bootstrapping" that included the germ of the idea for the C language
cross-compiler.  In fact, Halstead wrote a toy operating system for the then
popular Univac 1108 computer and demonstrated feasibility by running this
operating system on the Univac.

I think it wasn't just a coincidence that the Unix developers at Bell
Laboratories wrote Unix in C.  I think they borrowed the concept from
Maurice Halstead, then did what they could to downgrade the importance of
Halstead's work.  I think you can find paraphrases of the Pilot operating
system in the original Unix kernel.  These are as yet unsubstantiated
claims, but I think the Linux developers have among them some veterans of
Halstead's classes at Purdue, and I think they would do well to
re-investigate the Pilot operating system and its connection with the
original Unix kernel.  Are you listening, my old graduate students from
Purdue?






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