Berkeley Flame

[Dave Ihnat, Chicago, IL]

Ah, ahem.  I'm afraid I have an opinion on this...please note that
it's my opinion, and not that of AT&T Bell Laboratories or Analysts
International Corporation.

No, I strongly suspect that Berkeley didn't expect to go into the
software business.  I doubt strongly whether that was in their mind
when they first started hacking the heck out of Unix(Tm); nor, when
they graciously agreed to sell the first copy of BSD...oh, legally, of
course, and only to legally licensed sourceholders.  (I can well
imagine the academic pride in showing how nifty this mod was, or that
enhancement...we all feel it from time to time.)  And I certainly
don't believe that they consciously set about to split the Unix world.

But they did.  In case you haven't noticed it, there are two large,
armed camps out there in the real world.  There are the USG Unix
people, clinging to the hope that some sort of standard will be
imposed on the world.  And there are the BSD people, with a flavor of
Unix based on a USG release that is ancient history, which does some
interesting things, some nice things, and some not-so-nice things.
(There is a third camp--the Unix look-alike vendors--but, in general,
they attempt to emulate one of these two major products.)

Now, no one is a villain.  AT&T didn't really market Unix,
actually; it's been more described as "Here are some source tapes,
some manuals, and our best wishes.  Have fun!"  However, as much as
was possible, the AT&T version was the standard.  If something was fed
back to AT&T, it would eventually, probably, make it into the next
release of Unix in some form or another; but the informality of the
process, the time delays, and the ease of hacking Unix make the
evolution of the Berkeley system understandable.  But we now have
systems with fairly different sets of utilities, kernels that
behave--and look--decidedly different in several ways, and the problem
of portable code being not-really totally portable, but hey, it's
better than assembler, right?

And it now appears that the institution that fostered one of these
major branches of the family is leaving.  Where does that leave the
BSD system people?  Darn if I know.  Fortunately, AT&T (Actually, now
it's Western) Unix is picking up many of the features that people
found attractive in BSD, so perhaps there will be a "standard" Unix
in the future; but the legacy of the split will be with us for a long
time.

What's the point of this article?  Simply that I can't defend
Berkeley's action.  Not intending to do something doesn't relieve you
of responsibility for it; and while there was no *legal*
responsibility to support BSD, continued distribution out-of-house
certainly seems to impart some sort of ethical responsibility.  More
importantly, I guess I'm just trying to put out a cautionary tale to
other universities, companies, groups of demented hackers in
dimly-lighted basements, or what have you:  If you want to meddle in
the code, then think about what you're loosing on the world.  If you
really want package XYZ to change, but don't intend/want to support
it, then fer cripes' sake, do the change in-house; tell the world
about it, if you wish, and make the vendor track your change.  But
remember--it's a small world, really; and that code you modify today
on an insignificant mini operating system may be floating around in
the bowels of a Cray-I next year!

			Tired of changing BSD ioctl calls,

			Dave Ihnat
			ihuxx!ignatz