Bell Labs Plans Big 50th Anniversary Event For Unix (bell-labs.com) 44
Photographer Peter Adams launched a "Faces of Open Source" portrait project in 2014. This week he posted a special announcement on the web site of Bell Labs:
Later this month, Bell Labs will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unix with a special two day "Unix 50" event at their historic Murray Hill headquarters. This event should be one for the history books with many notable Unix and computer pioneers in attendance...!
As I was making those photographs (which will be on display at the event), I gained much insight into Bell Labs and the development of Unix. However, it was some of the more personal stories and anecdotes that brought Bell Labs to life and gave me a feel for the people behind the code. One such time was when Ken Thompson (who is an accomplished pilot) told me how he traveled to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in order to fly in a MiG-29 fighter jet... Brian Kernighan told me about how a certain portrait of Peter Weinberger found its way into some very interesting places. These included the concrete foundation of a building on Bell Labs campus, the cover images printed onto Unix CD-ROMs, and most notably, painted on the top of a nearby water tower.
Which brings us to another important piece of Unix mythology that I learned about: the fictitious Bell Labs employee G.R. Emlin (a.k.a. "the gremlin").... A lot of this folklore (including the gremlin) is going to be on display at the Unix 50 event. The archivists at Bell Labs have outdone themselves by pulling together a massive collection of artifacts taken from the labs where Unix was developed for over 30 years. I was able to photograph a few of these artifacts last year, but so much more will be exhibited at this event -- including several items from the personal archives of some attendees.
As if that wasn't enough, the event will also showcase a number of vintage computers and a look into Bell Labs future with a tour of their Future X Labs.
The article includes some more quick stories about the Unix pioneers at Bell Labs (including "the gremlin") and argues that "the decision to freely distribute Unix's source code (to anyone who asked for it) inadvertently set the stage for the free and open source software movements that dominate the technology industry today...
"In hindsight, maybe 1969 should be called the 'summer of code.'"
As I was making those photographs (which will be on display at the event), I gained much insight into Bell Labs and the development of Unix. However, it was some of the more personal stories and anecdotes that brought Bell Labs to life and gave me a feel for the people behind the code. One such time was when Ken Thompson (who is an accomplished pilot) told me how he traveled to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in order to fly in a MiG-29 fighter jet... Brian Kernighan told me about how a certain portrait of Peter Weinberger found its way into some very interesting places. These included the concrete foundation of a building on Bell Labs campus, the cover images printed onto Unix CD-ROMs, and most notably, painted on the top of a nearby water tower.
Which brings us to another important piece of Unix mythology that I learned about: the fictitious Bell Labs employee G.R. Emlin (a.k.a. "the gremlin").... A lot of this folklore (including the gremlin) is going to be on display at the Unix 50 event. The archivists at Bell Labs have outdone themselves by pulling together a massive collection of artifacts taken from the labs where Unix was developed for over 30 years. I was able to photograph a few of these artifacts last year, but so much more will be exhibited at this event -- including several items from the personal archives of some attendees.
As if that wasn't enough, the event will also showcase a number of vintage computers and a look into Bell Labs future with a tour of their Future X Labs.
The article includes some more quick stories about the Unix pioneers at Bell Labs (including "the gremlin") and argues that "the decision to freely distribute Unix's source code (to anyone who asked for it) inadvertently set the stage for the free and open source software movements that dominate the technology industry today...
"In hindsight, maybe 1969 should be called the 'summer of code.'"
Where is Stallman? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Where is Stallman? (Score:3)
I know right?
Beyond emacs he did binutils, gas, gcc, and so much more, along with creating open source single handed.
What is more bizarre is that ESR hasn't been purged.
I dislike how quickly everyone is emulating the CCCP/CCP.
I flagged you for being a false-flag troll. (Score:2)
Nice try though. It almost wasn't completely blatantly obvious.
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along with creating open source single handed.
I see what you did there.
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Faces of open source and Stallman's is missing?
The exhibition will be done in multiple installmants.
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Faces of open source and Stallman's is missing?
The exhibition will be done in multiple installmants.
Be that as I may, I cannot fathom why Stallman's photo isn't in the very first installment.
Because GNU ? (Score:2)
Because GNU is explicitely Not Unix ? :-D
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Because GNU is explicitely Not Unix ? :-D
Underrated comment.
Re:Where is Stallman? (Score:5, Informative)
Faces of open source
Unix was not open source. (It was licensed to parties outside of AT&T, but it was not open source.)
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Faces of open source
Unix was not open source. (It was licensed to parties outside of AT&T, but it was not open source.)
The title of the page is "Faces of Open Source", not faces of Unix. But even if it was "faces of Unix" the absence of Stallman's photo is conspicuous. Gcc and emacs are both pretty iconic unix software.
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He doesn't have real internet access. Last I checked he had some email script that ran a google search and send the results back to him. That is your prophet.
Re:Where is Stallman? (Score:4, Informative)
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ThanksThanks (Score:2)
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Damn, how come Slashdot allowed a bot in here, it isn't even a coherent bot.
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To paraphrase that Chris Rock joke, if everyone is calling you a crackhead then you probably are a crackhead.
I guess SCO isn't invited? (Score:2)
Or is it?
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Or is it?
SCO doesn't need to be invited. They will just barge in where they are not welcome, and demand a "party fee" from all attendants of the event.
Although the IBM vs. SCO, et al. litigation proved that SCO does not own the copyrights to Unix, SCO still claims they own the party-rights to Unix.
So, if you and your pals hold a Unix party, you owe SCO money.
In their mindset.
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Or is it?
SCO doesn't need to be invited. They will just barge in where they are not welcome, and demand a "party fee" from all attendants of the event.
Although the IBM vs. SCO, et al. litigation proved that SCO does not own the copyrights to Unix, SCO still claims they own the party-rights to Unix.
So, if you and your pals hold a Unix party, you owe SCO money.
In their mindset.
The plaintiff is typically listed first so it should be SCOG vs IBM or since that wasn't the case about who owned the copyrights it is even more accurate to say SCOG vs Novell. The SCOG name change might have changed it as well but I have to admit I can't recall what they changed it to.
Last I heard the SCOG vs IBM lawsuit wasn't even over yet. Anyone hear anything about a final resolution?
Hello Linux (Score:2)
Re:Hello Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Hello Linux (Score:2)
Free if you had a VAX to load tapes on and a friend in the machine room at a local university, but 386/PC BSD were, what, $125 in 1992?
Infomagic box set was more like $14.
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The Infomagic box set has 386/BSD and also a 0.99.something Linux on it (SLS?). Hell of a deal.
Later Infomagic boxes always had Slack.
I'm shocked... (Score:1)
... that a masterpiece of PC like this has Brendan Eich listed. Maybe he slipped in because the thought police was sleeping at the moment.
Re: I'm shocked... (Score:2)
Perhaps they plan to burn him at the stake?
Unix, C, and Linux (Score:1)
The commemoration of the creation of Unix should include both C and Linux. Except for the initial versions, Unix has been written in C. Linux, a clone of Unix, popularized the Unix environment.
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Unix was popularized before Linus was even out of Junior High School. It wasn't running on Pee Cees, but that wasn't necessary at the time.
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Unix was running on PCs, once the 68000s with MMUs were available. It was also ported to the 8080, 80286, z8000 and LSI-11, as they became available, though not all supported multi-user. The problem was that AT&T was prohibited from selling computers by an anti-trust suit. So they gave away licences to academics, and sold some to companies. Microsoft bought a licence and created Xenix, a PC Unix for corporate systems. Once the 386, a cheap powerful processor was available in 1985, the race was on. The 3
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Bell Labs? (Score:2)
They still exist?
Re: Bell Labs? (Score:2)
It had a good run under Lucent, then Alcatel, and now Nokia.
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Perhaps (Score:2)
"In hindsight, maybe 1969 should be called the 'summer of code.'"
I prefer the 'summer of George'.
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I prefer the 'summer of George'.
Lieutenant Hammond?
Bell Labs, do this event! (Score:2)