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unix xenix history comments

From: bv@wjv.comREMOVE (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: SCO boot disk images
References: <20020210021344.B29908@mammoth.ca.sco.com>
<3C666355.4070708@aplawrence.com>
<GrBtK4.1LB0@wjv.com>
<20020210105757.J10348@mammoth.ca.sco.com> 
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 00:00:22 GMT

In article <20020210105757.J10348@mammoth.ca.sco.com>,
Bela Lubkin  <belal@sco.com> wrote:
>Bill Vermillion wrote:

>> In article <3C666355.4070708@aplawrence.com>,
>> Tony Lawrence  <tony@aplawrence.com> wrote:
>> >Bela Lubkin wrote:

>> >> Amazing that after all these years and however many SCO Xenix,
>> >> Unix and OpenServer systems in the field (well over a million
>> >> licenses sold), they still can't bring themselves to name it.
>> >> Also amazing the GNU HURD chose the same ID as SysV Unix --
>> >> something like 10 years after SysV Unix had already claimed
>> >> it...

>> >Yeah, doesn't it just frost you? Far and away SCO had more Unix out
>> >there than anybody else, but it always got ignored- didn't exist as
>> >far as anyone else was concerned.

>> I was running SysV systems on iNTEL devices before SCO ever brought
>> forth their first Unix implementation. The SysV2 was realy raw as it
>> was one where you had to add all the lines in the /etc/password file
>> by hand, and make sure you got all the :'s correct, etc. That was
>> from MicroPort - which I think was the first iNTEL based SysV2. When
>> I used Esix - which was V.3 - it was about a year before SCO came
>> out with their V.3 based implementation. So you can't blame someone
>> for not mentioning something that hadn't yet existed.  Of course
>> Linux came along after that so your point is valid there :-)

>The first releases of SCO Xenix were based on AT&T 7th Edition and then
>System III, back in 1984.  But even then they used the 0x63 partition
>ID.  MicroPort's '286 SysV was released in early '86, I believe.  SCO's
>SysV port (Xenix System V 2.1.0 or so) was around the same timeframe,
>with the '386 version a year or two later.

Tony's comment was on SCO SysV Unix.  I'm well aware of the early
Xenix uses as I maintained several machines with it.  The MicroPort
time frame is correct as it was being promoted at the 1986 summer
Usenix conference where I first saw.  They were promoting it along
the line of 'buy this hard drive and get Unix free'.  This was
also about the same time I'd see your posts on the Dr. Dobbs forum.
[some of us still remember!]

>> Until SCO brought out the Unix implementation the Xenix would only
>> support 16 users - so that one reason it was looked down upon from
>> people in that group.  It was thought of more along the lines of a
>> small car than a large truck.

>Was there really a 16-user limitation?  I can only think of license
>reasons for that, not software...

That sticks in my memory - but I could be wrong on that one.

>> One of the constant grumblings was that which was forced upon SCO
>> by licensing issues and that was that only the base system was
>> there, and you had to purchase the development system and text
>> processing system separately.  I heard that a lot from others
>> who were using SysV iNTEL based systems, who were independant of
>> the above group.

>SCO was forced to unbundle the devsys and text processing
>portions due to unfavorable license agreements with MS and AT&T,
>respectively. The royalties due on each of those portions would
>have made the overall price of the OS unacceptable. You could
>argue (and I would agree) that SCO should have made better royalty
>agreements with MS & AT&T, initially _or_ by renegotiating. But it
>didn't happen.

You notice I did say 'forced upon SCO'.  It was the others Unix
users who complained - thinking it was something that SCO did on
purpose.  And who of us who was on this list in the early 1990s
will ever forget all of Larry's rants against SCO.  SCO's problem
as I see it was that they were about the only pure SW vendor while
others had HW ties.

Intel even had their own brand of Unix for awhile.  And maybe you
recall but was that the one that went to Kodak, which then became
Interactive, which then went to Sun.  Others came and went.
SCO has always 'been there'.  That's more than you can say for
other vendors who championed Unix for awhile and then quit.

Dell comes immdiately to mind - the one Larry championed so
loudly.  They pushed it for awhle and then they dropped.  Dell
later pushed Linux and then dropped it.  Now if they would only
push MS products there might be hope ;-).

The next time I stumble across the SCO price list from 1984/5
that has the pricing for Xenix on the Apple Lisa and the Lyrix word
processing for other platforms [I think the VAX was included] I'll
scan it in.  Far too many think of SCO as only working Xenix and
Unix on iNTEL but they were far more than that.  Their list of
cross-assemblers for different CPUs/platforms was amazing too.
I had forgotten how broad that field was - had to well over a dozen
at that time.

>By the OSR5 timeframe, when we finally got rid of the MS-based
>development system, the idea of selling the DS separately was well
>entrenched, and persists to date (though you can get really deep
>discounts by joining a developer's program, which is either free or
>cheap -- I've lost track).  And the text processing package had become
>almost completely irrelevant.

The EU suit against Micrsoft making them stop forcing the inclusion
of the Xenix code was a good thing.  ISTR that it was only about
six months after that when SCO was able to drop that part.  People
seem to forget the MS's licensing hurt more than just MS user.
Given the environments where SCO was used I don't know whether
a cheaper or bundled DS would have been beneficial to the business
side or not.

About the only thing the text-processing was being used for by that
time in many was to write/format man pages it seemed. Of course all
of SCO man pages were already formatted, probably because of this.
And writing in troff style was certainly nothing I ever felt I
would like to learn.

The best parts of AT&T text processing never seemed to make it past
AT&T. I was really impressed by the Writers Work Bench. But by
that time serious document production was being done by companies
who speicilized in it - and it really didn't belong in the OS.
FrameMaker comes immeditely to mind.  That did some truly amazing
things but it's target customers were HUGE companies.  Main users
were places such as drug manufacturers who would generate a
semi-truck full of paper for submission for drug approval, and
automobile manufactures.  Unix really shined in those environments.

Bill


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
 

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