Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!calgary!xenlink!deraadt From: deraadt@xenlink.UUCP (Theo A. DeRaadt) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: what does "UNIX" really stand for? (also Plan 9) Message-ID: <110@xenlink.UUCP> Date: 29 Oct 88 00:48:07 GMT References: <3521@phri.UUCP> <2156@cloud9.UUCP> <18479@ism780c.isc.com> Organization: Xenlink, Calgary, Canada Lines: 19 In article <18479@ism780c.isc.com>, kirkl@ism780c.isc.com (Kirk Lillis) writes: ! In article <2156@cloud9.UUCP> bob@cloud9.UUCP (Bob Toxen) writes: ! >> The way I heard it was as follows. ... "You: nix!", ... ! >Sorry, no. UNIX is a play on names of Multics. The latter was supposed ! >to be all things to all people with every feature including the ! >kitchen sink. The modern counterpart is Ada. ! The way I recall it (from Tannenbaum's book on operating systems) is that ! MULTICS stood for MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service. An associate ! of Dennis and Ken's at Bell Labs called their scaled down version UNICS, for ! UNiplexed Information and Computing Service. This nameplay evolved into UNIX. And what of the other Multics related tale - that Unix like a Multics with a number of things "cut out", hence, Unix is, a castrated multics, or a enuch, ie. Unix.