[rescue] FDDI questions.

[James Lockwood]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Dave McGuire wrote:

>   What I will mention, though, is that Sun had NO part in the
> development of SVR4.  It was new around 1988/1989...before it was even
> an itch in Sun's pants.

Warning, long boring history lesson ahead:

SunOS 4 is not SVR4 derived, though SVR4 was certainly derived in part
from SunOS:

SVR3 + SunOS 4.0 + XENIX -> SVR4
(remember, XENIX had the largest Unix installed base at the time!)

Several elements of SVR4 which were derived from SunOS 4 were the unified
VM system (one of the SunOS crown jewels) and terminal handling.
Remember that Sun was a party to the AT&T Unix grand unification effort at
the time (which was only partially successful due to the efforts of IBM,
HP and DEC forming the OSF).

SunOS 4 is not "BSD" by any sense of the word.  The userland is
predominantly BSD-oriented, but the overall OS is a mix of SVR3, 4.2BSD
and no small amount of Sun development.  The kernel is definitely not a
conventional "BSD" though it incorporates some BSD code (especially
networking).  I'd recommend a read through "The Magic Garden Explained" by
Maurice Bach if you don't have the source available, it shows the
inheritances clearly.  SunOS ceased to be "BSD" somewhere around 3.2 or
so, as more and more AT&T code crept in.  Even SunOS 3.0 had a SV-based
Bourne shell and a SV-based "make".

SunOS 4 was really a victim of its own success.  Sun intended 4.x to be
the transitional stage between 3.x and 5.x, that's why it had so much SysV
stuff rolled in.  OTOH, customers saw it as: "Hey, we've got this great
BSD-flavor OS that lets us compile most System V stuff, too!"  Hence, Sun
ended up being victims of their own success in producing 4.1.  People
liked 4.1 and wanted the shift to stop there instead of going all the way
to SVR4.

At the same time, Sun's marketing emphasis shifted from primarily
technical and educational to emphasize the corporate desktop and server
market, a vastly bigger market with an altogether different set of
priorities (i.e., "We don't want some hippie hacker OS from a university,
we want a name brand like AT&T or IBM.")

The simple fact is, Sun screwed up the 4.x-5.x transition.  Early 5.x
releases were unbearable, I don't know of anyone who would contest that.
At the same time, the transition wasn't about burning the BSD bridges, but
getting legitimate use out of the SVR4 code that they had by virtue of
their partnership with AT&T.  The SunOS 4 kernel could not scale to the
point that Sun wanted without a rewrite.

-James

--
James Lockwood
Guy on Summer Vacation (dot-com bombed)
http://www.foonly.com/resume/