Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:33:30 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: Gunnar H Reichert-Weygold <patron1@paganlibrary.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <20011010133330.I82541@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <000501c15083$5f1787c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 10:29:30PM -0700 References: <01100820163507.00577@gunnar.weygold.edu> <000501c15083$5f1787c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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[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
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