From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 9 21: 3:39 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from echunga.lemis.com (gregl1.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.138]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 05F1637B407 for ; Tue, 9 Oct 2001 21:03:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by echunga.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DBBEF87C6C; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:33:31 +0930 (CST) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id A0FD96A90F; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:33:30 +0930 (CST) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:33:30 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Ted Mittelstaedt Cc: Gunnar H Reichert-Weygold , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <20011010133330.I82541@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <01100820163507.00577@gunnar.weygold.edu> <000501c15083$5f1787c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <000501c15083$5f1787c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 10:29:30PM -0700 Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] Long/short syndrome. On Monday, 8 October 2001 at 22:29:30 -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: On Monday, October 08, 2001 8:17 PM, Gunnar H. Reichert-Weygold wrote: >> >> According to "The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing: (www.dict.org) >> >> (BSD) A family of Unix versions for the >> DEC VAX and PDP-11, developed by Bill Joy and others >> at the University of California at Berkeley. BSD Unix >> incorporates paged virtual memory, TCP/IP networking >> enhancements, and many other features. >> >> BSD UNIX 4.0 was released on 19 October 1980. The BSD >> versions (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and the commercial versions >> derived from them ({SunOS, ULTRIX, Mt. Xinu, Dynix) >> held the technical lead in the Unix world until AT&T's >> successful standardisation efforts after about 1986, and are >> still widely popular. >> >> See also Berzerkeley, USG Unix. >> >> >> >> It looks like there's going to have to be a LOT of correcting going on... >> >> Seriously, though, the above paragraphs would imply prior art, wouldn't they? Nobody's denying that there was a BSD UNIX. The question is, is FreeBSD BSD UNIX? The answer is "no". With the removal of the last of the AT&T code from BSD, it lost the right to be called UNIX. I believe this was also part of the out-of-court settlement with AT&T. > In one of the books or interviews that Dennis Ritchie gave regarding > the origination of the name UNIX he made the point that the > engineers told the lawyers at AT&T that the name was UNICS (a pun on > MULTICS) and it was mis-heard by them as UNIX. They apparently were > so hot to get the name trademarked that they rushed the application > through without ever going back to the engineers. When Dennis and > company heard about the mistake they thought it so amusing that they > adopted the revised name. This one's new to me. Do you have a source? My understanding is that AT&T didn't trade mark UNIX for quite some time afterwards. > Certainly The Lawsuit filed btween AT&T and UCB displayed an attempt > by AT&T to defend use of UNIX because as I understand it, BSDI was > drawn into the battle due to a marketing campaign where they used > 1-800-ITS-UNIX on a phone number. Note also that BSDI immediately backed down on this issue. Greg -- When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the original text. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message