wanted: UNIX or clone

[Rick Kelly]

In article <1991Apr11.141408.27169 at eci386.uucp> jmm at eci386.UUCP (John Macdonald) writes:
>In article <9104031454.03 at rmkhome.UUCP> rmk at rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
>|
>|Coherent is a UNIX clone based upon V7 with some V5 extensions.  At one point,
>|Mark Williams Company had to prove in court that they did not use AT&T code.
>|I have heard that they had to pay AT&T some money, and were told that they
>|could not sell their product as UNIX.
>
>Are you sure of this?  The last I heard (which was from one of
>the developers at Coherent, but this was about ten years ago)
>was that Mark Williams had a visit from a group of AT&T lawyers
>and some AT&T technical people (including Ken Thompson, if I
>recall correctly).  The technical people tried a number of
>commands and quickly determined that Coherent did not trip any
>of the particular bugs or endcases that they tried.  The lawyers
>found it hard to belive that they could be convinced so quickly
>that it wasn't copied code, so the technical people had to go
>back and do some checking - they, naturally enough, tested some
>of the programs in the /usr/games directory.
>
>It is possible that there was a later court case - all of the
>people that I knew working at MWC have long since gone to other
>companies.


You may be right.  My information came from someone who read about it nine
or ten years ago.  But it sure is a helluva lot like UNIX.  After using it
on my home system for about six months, I have become quite attached to it.
I believe that I would rather run Coherent than other 286 UNIX ports.


Rick Kelly	rmk at rmkhome.UUCP	frog!rmkhome!rmk	rmk at frog.UCP