Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 00:31:22 -0700 (MST) From: John Galt <galt@inconnu.isu.edu> To: Jeremy Falcon <jeremy@intersurf.com> Cc: "James G. Jones" <microtech@adelphia.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Unix Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0011052349510.25159-100000@inconnu.isu.edu> In-Reply-To: <00b801c047b8$19dd1e10$0101a8c0@win2k>
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On Mon, 6 Nov 2000, Jeremy Falcon wrote: > Technically speaking, FreeBSD is referred to as a UNIX-like OS. That is > because of The Open Group trademark (which is stupid in the first place). > That's like trademarking the word "bed". To be more precise, it's like trademarking Kleenex or Xerox, both of which have been genericized to a certain extent much like Unix. But they also both have seen their share of court cases because somebody that shouldn't have called a product Kleenex or Xerox did anyway and got sued. Something tells me that there won't be any new lawsuits filed over the Unix tm, but it's still a good idea to head this kind of stuff off at the pass before someone gets their nose out of joint. > If I wrap a weiner in wheat bread instead of a white bread hotdog bun, do > you not consider that a hotdog as well? What about McDonalds?. They use > soy as a filler in their products. Do you not consider those hamburgers > either? I bet you still call them hamburgers. For my trademark comment, if somebody asked me for a Big Mac and I handed them a hamburger off my grill in the backyard, they'd be righteously angry if they were anticipating a Big Mac. If they were just looking for a hamburger, I'd like to think that my burgers are better than McD's, so they might be inadvertently pleased. The guy asked for Unix, I gave him Unix. As far as the hot dog/weiner/frank/whatever, if I ask for a hot dog and somebody hands me one wrapped in bread as opposed to a bun, I'm not too surprised: if someone hands me a Chorizo, I'm surprised (but not too annoyed, as I usually prefer Chorizos :) > Sure Bell Labs (div. of AT&T) created the first UNIX, but AT&T licensed the > source because of a DOJ injunction prohibiting them to sell software. The > code got out and was studied and used in other implementations. Berkley > created alot of utils that became standard for UNIX. No beef here, just a warning that MIT did a lot of work at this time as well, which turned into GNU stuff...There are some irrelevant quality issues in there that aren't for this thread... > 4.4BSD-Lite had very little AT&T source, but that doesn't mean it's not > UNIX. For that matter, UNIX was orignally written in Assembly but for > portability reasons it was rewritten in C. So basically, UNIX is not UNIX > according to your beliefs. The C source was based on the Assembly source, > but it's not really the "same" source, it was rewritten. Now you're putting words in my mouth. Do you have a better idea of what I believe than I do? The thing that I did was differentiate between names. > Let's take the upcoming Perl 6. It will be a complete rewrite and not based > on the Perl 5 source code. According to your beliefs, Perl 6 would not > really be Perl because Perl 6 is not based on the source of Perl 5. I'll > still call it Perl, however. So will I, because Larry Wall gave permission to call Perl 6 Perl, and even if he didn't, it's under a license that allows it. AT&T did not give anybody permission to call BSD "Unix"--I'd hoped that it would change when Caldera got the tm, but they sold it almost as quickly... > The source is not important. What's important is the OS, and FreeBSD has > UNIX written all over it! FreeBSD also has Lawsuit written on it because of the use of Unix--Linux wouldn't exist at all if there wasn't the tiff over the trademark: Torvalds reputedly stayed away from BSD variants because of the lawsuit and instead rewrote Minix. > BTW, if James is just getting started he may want to download an ISO > instead... What do you learn from a precooked ISO? Almost everything I've ever learned in programming, I've learned from reading someone else's source and figuring out what and how they did. He did say he wanted it "for study", kind of implying he wanted to study it, not use it as an OS for schoolwork. > ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/.0/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/ > ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/.0/FreeBSD/releases/alpha/ISO-IMAGES/ > > Jeremy Falcon > "Waiting to be bashed." /me prefers tcsh :) (now THAT's a good thing to argue over :) > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Galt" <galt@inconnu.isu.edu> > To: "James G. Jones" <microtech@adelphia.net> > Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> > Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2000 9:32 PM > Subject: Re: Unix > > > > > > http://www.sco.com/offers/ancient.html > > > > <rant>BSD is NOT Unix, nor has it been since the AT&T suit. Unix is a > > trademark, and a BSD variant is not very likely to get rights to use > > it...</rant> > > > > The FreeBSD source is at: > > > > ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-stable/src > > > > > > > > On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, James G. Jones wrote: > > > > > Hello. > > > > > > I am looking for a copy of unix for study. Can you provide me with a > link so I can download it. > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > Armageddon means never having to say you're sorry. > > > > Who is John Galt? galt@inconnu.isu.edu, that's who! > > > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > -- There is an old saying that if a million monkeys typed on a million keyboards for a million years, eventually all the works of Shakespeare would be produced. Now, thanks to Usenet, we know this is not true. Who is John Galt? galt@inconnu.isu.edu, that's who! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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