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From: chet@mandrill.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: No More BSD?
Message-ID: <4164@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Fri, 23-Oct-87 17:15:53 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.4164
Posted: Fri Oct 23 17:15:53 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Oct-87 02:09:45 EST
Sender: darrell@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Organization: CWRU Dept. of Computer Engineering, Cleveland, OH
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I had heard rumors that 4.4 would be the last BSD Unix, but Darrell's
message was the first concrete evidence I got.  Does anyone have
opinions (or concrete knowledge, that would be even better) about
why this is so?  I can think of a few myself:

[ A little background on my information: I got it from local gurus with   ]
[ close ties to Berkeley, and from the Berkeley UNIX Symposium LAST year. ]
[ I did not go this year, so if something has changed then one of those   ]
[ who attended should fill us in.  To the best of my knowledge, DoD has   ]
[ chosen to fund MACH research at CMU.  --DL                              ]

1.  The principal UNIX researchers in the C.S.R.G. want to move on to
    some other topic of interest.

2.  DARPA has discontinued the funding that resulted in 4.2 BSD, so the
    sources of money are drying up.

3.  Another thing that Darrell mentioned:  DEC isn't really cooperating
    with Universities and researchers like they used to in that they
    aren't releasing specs to the new BI bus machines (8200/8300...), so
    BSD won't run on any of them.  I saw that Chris Torek ported (or
    is/was in the process of porting) 4.3 to the 8250, perhaps this could
    result in versions of BSD running on the 8200 and 8300 series, which
    offer "UNIBUS support for hardware investment protection"?

Some other questions:

1.  Will SUN and DEC pick up the slack, and continue to offer a
    BSD-flavored UNIX, or will everything converge to System V?

[ Not likely.  If you look, both are providing System V compatibility in ]
[ the more recent releases of their BSD variants.                        ]

2.  Why isn't AT&T marketing any research UNIXs?
    (My opinion is that they  want to offer a unified product line
    around Sys V, and incorporate any innovations that result from
    research UNIX into System V.  Is that the consensus?)

[ If I can be skeptical, marketing and research are opposing concepts.  ]
[ Marketing wants a stable, uniform interface for the MAJORITY of the   ]
[ customer base; Research, by definition wants to look at new things.   ]

Chet Ramey

Internet:  chet@mandrill.cwru.edu
UUCP:     {...}!cbosgd!mandrill!chet
BITNET:   ramey@cwru20

"The difference between art and science is that science is what we
 understand well enough to explain to a computer.  Art is everything
 else."
     D. E. Knuth


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