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From: ian@utcs.UUCP (Ian F. Darwin)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re:  Unix and the future
Message-ID: <601@utcs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 12:21:04 EST
Article-I.D.: utcs.601
Posted: Thu Apr 18 12:21:04 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 13:31:06 EST
References: <9838@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: ian@utcs.UUCP (Ian F. Darwin)
Organization: University of Toronto - General Purpose UNIX
Lines: 32
Summary: Ritchie on Research & UNIX

In article <9838@brl-tgr.ARPA> lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA writes:
>... significant
>departures from the commercially successful Unix framework would
>best be made by non-commercial (volunteer if you wish) groups,
>who AREN'T necessarily interested in the economic aspects of the
>existing framework.  Ideally, such groups would be working to
>do exactly what the commercial interests don't necessarily want
>to do: take a risk on a new sort of operating system and new
>tools that are NOT based on the existing Unix framework.

Dennis Ritchie has written extensively on this topic. See the 
article in CACM, August 1984, Vol 27, Nr 8, page 758. 
``Reflections on Software Research'' discusses how UNIX came to
be, and whether it could have evolved in a development
environment. There is an important note on the nature of the
Computing Science Research Center at Bell Labs. 

I would rather urge you to read it (last year's CACM should be available in 
many libraries) than try to summarise it. Consider yourself urged.

His conclusion would seem to agree with Lauren:

	``If we [the Labs after deregulation] can keep alive enough
	openness to new ideas, enough freedom of communication,
	enough patience to allow the novel to prosper, it will
	remain possible for a future Ken Thompson to find a
	little-used CRAY/1 computer and fashion a system as
	creative, and as influential, as UNIX.''

-- 
Ian Darwin, Toronto	uucp: {ihnp4|decvax}!utcs!ian
Envoy-100: I.Darwin	Bitnet: ian@utoronto


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