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From: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: "Running UNIX on the Plus and SE": MacIdris from Whitesmiths
Keywords: MacIdris Whitesmiths UNIX Macintosh Plus SE
Message-ID: <1989Oct6.150559.20234@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 6 Oct 89 15:05:59 GMT
References: <2076@nbc1.UUCP>
Reply-To: fulk@cs.rochester.edu.UUCP (Mark Fulk)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 20

Idris has a rather interesting history.  B. J. Plauger used to work at Bell
Labs in the same group as Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Unix fame.
Plauger is (was?) also a science fiction writer; I remember seeing stories
by him in Analog or other similar mags.  After Plauger left Bell, he went
to work for Yourdon in NYC.  Ed Yourdon wrote a number of influential books
on software engineering for the business data processing world; his company
published the books and ran seminars and courses.  At Yourdon, Plauger
managed a distribution of Unix binaries for a while.  My company bought one
for about $12k, a price we regretted paying rather soon.  Plauger left
Yourdon (leaving some very angry people behind) and founded Whitesmith's,
where he wrote Idris.  On a consulting contract, I investigated Idris and
some other Unix-a-likes, deciding on another one on the grounds that Idris
(and the original Unix v6) wouldn't adapt well to a bus-based multiprocessor.
Idris looked like a fairly clean but rather ho-hum ripoff of the basic
Unix ideas.  At this point I went to graduate school and completely lost
contact with all of the people and companies listed above.

Now Whitesmith's is in Australia!!  I feel old.....

Mark