[SunRescue] Re: Multics

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, 22 May 2001, Brian Dunbar wrote:

> >Is anyone releasing the Mutlics code to public domain?  Maybe we could
> >port it to sparc.
> 
> Now, I'm just a dumb grunt who uses Outlook, but hasn't this been done over
> and over again with Unix?  That is, it was written to run on a specfic
> system way back around the time I was wearing diapers, and was ported to
> newer generations of software.
> 
> So . . aside from a lack of interest, is anything *really* keeping an
> interested Linus Torvalds/R. Stallman wannabe from porting Multics to the
> x86 and/or Sparc platforms?
> 

Well, unix sprung up because Multics was too hard and complex to
implement.  The Multics project was years late, and on the ropes, when a
pair of programmers hacked out unix over a weekend to play video games on
an old PDP.

That is one reason why Multics doesn't get ported and reported.

Another reason is because Multics source code was never really released.
Except for linux, every unix that I know of was originally based on BSD or
the AT&T code (and BSD was based on the AT&T code).  At this point, most
companies have purged every trace of the original AT&T code from their
code bases, but numerous ones still have traces of BSD.

--
Joshua Boyd