← Back to context

Comment by sgjohnson

20 hours ago

The next sentence is also interesting actually.

> It’s a closed-source proprietary operating system

Most UNIX systems were proprietary & closed source though?

All of the commercial Unix operating systems were closed source.

The first open Unix-like is 386BSD which predates Linux. It was said that if 386BSD didn't get mired in a lawsuit, Torvalds would have used it and Linux would not exist.

  • Same applies to Windows NT POSIX subsystem, had Microsoft been serious about UNIX support on Windows, similar to how IBM and Unisys do on their mainframes and micros, there would be no reason to bother with Linux.

    My case was exactly that, I got Slackware in 1995's Summer because that subsystem wasn't enough to do the DG/UX assignments at home.

  • And the reason BSD survived is the maligned ‘advertising clause’ that most later BSD-type licenses dropped. Berkeley countersued that AT&T had promoted that System V included vi, without the required attribution.