Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 23:50:54 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: cfuhrman@tfcci.com (Chris Fuhrman) Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Microsoft Source (fwd) Message-ID: <200011062350.QAA25774@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0011060742520.6678-100000@icestorm.tfcc.com> from "Chris Fuhrman" at Nov 06, 2000 08:05:12 AM
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> > They did once already. It was called XENIX. > > If they still have it, they could dust it off, slap in a linux kernel and > > call it MS linux. > > > > This got me doing some research on the subject of XENIX. Microsoft > purchased a stake in SCO sometime in the early 80's which lead to the > development and release of XENIX. In '87, Microsoft was concerned that > AT&T's UNIX wouldn't be able to run XENIX app's so they entered into a > licensing agreement with AT&T to include some XENIX code in the AT&T > base. AT&T sold it's UNIX technology to Novell in '93 who then sold it to > SCO in '95. Recently, Microsoft sold it's shares in SCO after which SCO's > shares collapsed. > > Some interesting tidbits: SCO asked M$ to drop the agreement since the > XENIX code wasn't relavant. M$ refused and as a consequence, SCO paid M$ > about $1.138 million in royalties (ouch) in FY 1998. > > Confusing, no? ;) I've been in the bowels of that code. Microsoft announced Xenix on 25 Aug 1980, the same year they signed a contract with IBM to provide compilers for the, at the time, unannounced IBM PC. Most of the original developement was done on Sun equipment, and Microsoft was actually running a large chunk of their language engineering on Xenix on Sun machines, as late as 1988 (I got a call from a Microsoft employee wanting to buy a copy of our communications software for Xenix running on Sun hardware; when I said "What?!?", he said "Oh, that's right, it's an internal product only". Originally, Xenix only ran on 68000 hardware. SCO started in 1979 as a UNIX porting and consulting company; father and son Larry and Doug Michels were the initial only employees. SCO didn't release its first XENIX until 1983, and it ran on 8086 and 8088 processors only. It wasn't until 1985 that they released 286 Xenix (and 386 Xenix was in 1987). The Microsoft licensed code includes some of the FS, part of the x.out image activator, and some other bits. Most of the code is pretty redundant these days. I'm surprised that they continue to include it. > UnixWare 2.1.3 > volcano > Copyright 1996 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. > Copyright 1984-1995 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved. > Copyright 1987, 1988 Microsoft Corp. All Rights Reserved. > U.S. Pat. No. 5,349,642 The Microsoft stuff is as described above. The Novell stuff is the ODI drivers and the NetWare client and server code, as well as the Novell Directory Services. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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