Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 SMI; site sun.uucp
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!pyramid!decwrl!sun!guy
From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.usg
Subject: Re: What does "usg" stand for?
Message-ID: <3175@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 18-Jan-86 20:05:28 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3175
Posted: Sat Jan 18 20:05:28 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 20-Jan-86 06:06:55 EST
References: <298@gargoyle.UUCP> <704@laidbak.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 30

> >OK, I give up!  I know from the content of net.bugs.usg
> >that it has to do with System V Unix, but what does the
> >"usg" mean???
> 
> The USG does stand for UNIX Support Group, and calling the ATT unix this
> came from a comment in sysent.c reserving a system call for usg.

No, calling System III UNIX and System V UNIX that ("ATT UNIX" is redundant;
all UNIX systems, as opposed to UNIX "lookalikes", come ultimately from
AT&T, even 4.xBSD, Xenix, etc.) comes from the fact that some organization
possibly called the USG put those versions of UNIX out.  (Those versions are
descendants of UNIX/TS 1.0, which was basically a slightly pre-V7 UNIX with
a lot of PWB/UNIX stuff added in.)

> When ATT made UNIX a commercial product they formed a new support group
> in IL. These are the people who support UNIX System V on VAX, PDP, and
> the 3B line.

System V is currently in the hands of AT&T Information Systems, in a group
which, I think, used to be the UNIX System Development Laboratory in Bell
Labs, which may have been called the UNIX Support Group before that (the
UNIX/TS people).  That group is in Summit, NJ; I think the group in IL is
reponsible for getting that to work on machines other than the 3B2, which is
now the official "porting base" of UNIX.  (I think they should hack up a
PDP-1 instead, so that the porting base is a 18-bit one's complement
machine.  They should also change it to support 19-bit character pointers and
not to have a location 0 in its address space.  *That* should beat the
portability bugs out of UNIX but good....)

	Guy Harris