Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!elbereth!rutgers!husc6!yale!leichter
From: leichter@yale.UUCP (Jerry Leichter)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.arch
Subject: Re: 68000 Memory Managment (Bechtolsheim patent) (SUID Patent)
Message-ID: <3608@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Oct-86 13:41:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: yale-cel.3608
Posted: Fri Oct  3 13:41:38 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 12:11:42 EDT
References: <1611@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: leichter@yale-celray.UUCP (Jerry Leichter)
Organization: Yale University, New Haven, CT
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.micro.68k:1933 net.arch:4036


Bsrry Shein writes about TOPS-10 as "a descendent of TENEX" and perhaps not
as old as Unix.  This has the history quite confused.

I used TOPS-10 in 1969 or so; at the time it was already at Version 5 or
thereabouts.  JACCT was already there; I don't know exactly when it was
introduced.  TOPS-10 itself descended from earlier OS's for the PDP-15 (?),
which, for all I know, already had JACCT or some analogue.

TENEX was considerably later, and while not a direct descendent of TOPS-10
had some similarities.  It was TOPS-20 that descended from TENEX.

None of this has anything to do with the patentability of SUID.  Clearly, the
original idea in SUID is NOT that some programs can be privileged - in one
form or another, that's been present in every OS with any idea of protection -
but that "privilege" is not a unique things belonging only to the OS, but
something any user has, in some sense, and can share.  Years ago, an article
appeared - in Software Practice and Experience, I believe - which described
a game of some sort, with a master list of high scores.  A challenge was
given:  Maintain such a master list, given the constraints that (a) anyone
who runs the game program can have their score recorded; (b) no one can spoof
the records by accessing the master list directly; (c) any user, without
special privileges, can create a new master list for his version of the game.
These constraints are easy to satisfy on Unix with a SUID program.  To this
day, they are quite difficult to satisfy on most other systems.  (Often, they
simply CANNOT be satisfied.)
							-- Jerry