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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 224
Netizens-Digest Tuesday, December 8 1998 Volume 01 : Number 224
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
[netz] Re: Electronic constituency
Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
Re: [netz] Re: Electronic constituency
[netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
[netz] Benton: Corporate Court Order
[netz] OIG Review of NSFNET, 23 March 1993
[netz] In tribute to a computer science pioneer who spread UNIX around the world
[netz] John Lions: Spreading Unix around the world
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 20:55:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
>From owner-netizens@columbia.edu Mon Dec 7 15:28:21 1998
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Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 11:24:41 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
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To: netizens@columbia.edu
Subject: Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
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Greg Skinner <gds@best.com> wrote:
Mark Lindeman <mtl4@columbia.edu> wrote:
>Anyway, seems to me that the mass media/political system does a
>pretty lousy job of getting a comprehensive, yet accessible
>presentation of _any_ issue out and then obtaining people's opinions.
>I'm not trying to be fatalistic, just realistic.
This is true. However, my point is that it is at present, a better
way of reaching large numbers of people.
But one of the ways of getting the mass media to cover something
is to have it discussed online.
In chapter 13 of Netizens "The Effect of the Net on the Professional
News Media" Michael describes how online discussion on issues like
the bad intel chip forced the offline media to cover it,
when they would't up to then.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 01:36:25 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: Electronic constituency
Greg Skinner wrote:
> But the offline audience might have opinions about how Internet policy
> should be made. Failure to use other established media to reach them is
> just as wrong (imho) as failure to acknowledge that societal issues must
> be recognized in determining Internet policy.
This was the original motivation for *this list, as I recall. Shall we all
check in and report on what we have done individually to reach the offline
public and interest them in Net issues?
>
> >If I were convinced that there were a clear and present danger to the
> >survival and integrity of these lists, and if I could convince a few
> >moderators of the same thing, then thousands of people would get the word
> >within 24 hours or so. If _they_ were convinced, then via "six degrees
> >of separation," a whole lot of people would get the message pretty soon.
>
> There's a lot of "ifs" in there. :)
Mark nevertheless has a point: the present(!) political climate is such that
people only respond to *present dangers. Of course, this is *reactive, rather
than proactive behavior, and thus is almost useless for organizing. It is
probably the saddest thing about the whole scene: the general public sits
around and waits for someone to shout Fire -- and hardly notice whether the
fire was set on purpose (e.g. Lewinsky) or what other things are going down
just outside the circle of snap, crackle and pop (I dare say it will emerge in
a few years that the MAI was to use her for cover).
If we want to try to work to a further horizon, I think the WWW could serve
very well. Put the (proposed) 'mechanism' in place, and *use it, and getting
the word around that various issues are up for 'voting' will take care of
itself. Btw, I understand that Firefly (www.ffly.com) may be a possible model
- - has anyone used it?
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 10:35:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Electronic constituency
Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
>To Greg - I have had a bad experience in NYC with service providers.
>So a list of service providers may not be the best place to try
>to send info, and especially not the best place to judge other places
>by the reactions of service providers on a list.
>In NYC at least, the service providers are *not* a set of folks with
>any sense of a social or public spirit.
>But I don't know what the situation is elsewhere.
I think it is necessary to include service providers for a number of
reasons, most importantly that for a majority of users, the ISP
provides their access to the Internet.
Some people on ifwp, such as Dave Crocker, are involved with freenets
in the SF bay area. Also, Brian Reid, who I told you about before, is
involved with Internet and K-12 education. So there are people on the
I* lists who are civic-minded, whose perspectives I think should be
considered.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 10:59:12 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Electronic constituency
Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> wrote:
>Greg Skinner wrote:
>>You have to convince the people with the technical backgrounds (who
>>are in positions of influence over international telecommunications
>>policy) to recognize the need for societal responsibility. I'd say,
>>offhand, those individuals include Vint Cerf, Dave Farber, Einar
>Well it seems that Vint Cerf and Dave Farber at least are supporting
>this privatization.
>They were on the advisory IANA committee that Gordon Cook described
>as acting behind the scenes to promote this privatization.
>Also they are on the Internet Society Board of DirectorsBoard of
>Directors I think and they are particularly the folks omoting
>ICANN and the privatization of the DNS system, etc.
Is it possible that there can be privatization and social
responsibility? Why can't we try to work within the process rather
than assuming the worst of them? I don't think that Cerf and the
others are acting "behind the scenes." They are speaking to USG
officials at USG request. As senior Internet scientists, they are the
ones who will be trusted to give insight into what the problems are.
This is because they were the original developers and understand the
Internet the best.
If you had been a part of Internet development from the very
beginning, and you were one of the senior researchers who'd been
contacted by the USG to testify at the House subcommittee hearings,
you'd have a very different perspective on the situation, because you
would have a long history of involvement with the Internet, and full
knowledge of why you were being asked to testify. I don't see the
discussions Cerf, Farber, etc. have been having with USG reps being
any different in this regard.
>>Stefferud, and a few of the other notables who participate in these
>>forums. They have worked in the field for a very long time, and have
>>the trust and respect of the international policy makers (and the
>>people who develop the technology).
>But aren't thre others who are trusted?
If by this you mean is there anyone who would go to USG people and ask
them not to go ahead with the privatization, I don't know. Larry
Lessig seems to be anti-privatization. You could ask him, perhaps.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:42:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
Ronda Hauben wrote:
>Jonathan Zittrain <zittrain@cyber.law.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>At this point, both structurally and politically [ICANN] seems to me
>>to have a pretty narrow area in which it is to make policies, and as
>>Jim points out any attempt to radically, particularly damagingly,
>>restructure those things that *are* within its purview would be well
>>buffered. (Someone creating the bills for a widely-relied-upon
>>private scrip would be similarly bound by circumstance.)
>That is good to conjecture about. However, look at the damage done
>to the Net by NSF allowing NSI to charge its fees. [...]
The way this is stated, it is as if NSI (and possibly NSF) is at fault
for allowing this to happen. It's my opinion that the blame is
properly placed on the people who are putting out the junk mail,
posts, etc. Also, NSF allowed NSI to charge for domain names because
the money that came from the contract was not sufficient to cover
their costs.
>The Office of Inspector General of the NSF alerted me to the
>power and riches that the IP numbers hold for some private
>entity.
>There is a copy of the OIG NSF report online. I'll try to get
>the URL if anyone is interested.
It's at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/oig16/oig16.pdf.
>The present and the future of the Internet is intimately connected
>with who owns, controls and benefits from these cooperative
>public resources. To even propose to give them away to some so
>called "private sector" demonstrates either a lack of understanding
>of their importance to the Internet, or a lack of concern for
>the Internet.
It could also be an admission that the NSF no longer feels capable of
doing the job. They basically said so in the report. They feel that
they are better suited for pressing forward with research on the Next
Generation Internet.
Why should the NSF be forced to do something they don't feel capable
of doing? If they are forced to continue to oversee the NSI/IANA
functions indefinitely, what guarantees do we have that they will do a
"better" job (whatever that means)? Arguably, they did not have
sufficient resources to pay NSI enough not to have to charge for
domain names, nor did they have the resources to police the many
violations that you described above. But this is the reality that
they would have to deal with. Why not let them get on with the
business of research?
Now, I'm not necessarily saying that ICANN in its present incarnation
is the "right" thing either, but why can't we declare a truce and try
to find some way to work cooperatively, rather than being suspicious
and distrustful of ICANN's (or any other senior Internet researcher's)
motives?
>>On your larger point, I agree that it misses something to simply
>>respond to you that most of the internet is a cobbled together set
>>of privately-held subnets and backbones. That's true, but the
>>reason so many people are
You and Ronda are both right -- the Internet consists of many things,
from physical infrastructure (including both public and private links)
all the way up to the contributions we all make.
>>concerned about due process, fairness, etc., in policies about its
>>coordination--or even in custodial functions of names assignment
>>done by, say, NSI--is that, de facto, it's the only game of its sort
>>in town right now. That could change, but until it does, many
>>people are bound by the internet's underlying structure and can't
>>readily take their networking business elsewhere if they don't like
>>how it's working. Why can't that be acknowledged, though, without
>>having to claim that the Net's coordinating and assignment functions
>>belong to the United States government, which doesn't want them?
>However, what I don't agree with is that the U.S. Government
>can just claim it doesn't want to be responsible about what happens
>with these coordinating functions, or that it can just turn them
>over to whomever it chooses. If it doesn't want them, and I don't
>think that is exactly accurate,( because the U.S. government has
>had very strict criteria about what it wanted as a place to give
>these functions too), then it would have opened up the question
>of what is appropriate to happen to them.
It doesn't seem to me that the USG doesn't care about what happens. I
believe it is as I have said above, that NSF has realized that it is
not in a position to indefinitely manage the NSI/IANA functions any
more. The job has become much more complex than it was when NSI first
got the contract.
Also, it seems the IFWP process is (in principle) a place online to
discuss how these functions should be performed. Although ICANN has
gotten a conditional go-ahead, nothing yet has been cast in stone.
People are discussing issues here (including what the ICANN's powers
should be and how to deal with problems as they come up). There is
also a similar mailing list on ICANN's site (mailto:comments@icann.org,
viewable at http://www.icann.org/feedback.html).
>The U.S. government didn't undertake a study involving the
>International community to determine what would be an appropriate
>way to protect these vital functions. That was my proposal for
>a prototype to not only examine the question but also to do it
>in a way that involved the International Internet community,
>and so that the means of studying the question would also provide
>a prototype for how to solve the problem.
It seems to me that's what we're doing now; we're an international
community discussing (sometimes very heatedly) a way to protect these
vital functions. I agree that it should be opened up for more input;
we are discussing how to do this.
>So if the U.S. government genuinely didn't want to have to be
>the sole party to protect these vital functions any longer, they
>had to treat my proposal very seriously, and in fact implement
>it.
>But since they didn't even discuss it with me, it is clear they
>are not interested in passing these vital functions onto
>another more appropriate structure.
I don't know why they didn't consider your proposal in its entirety,
but it seems there are aspects of it that have been considered. I
agree with what Harold Feld wrote earlier, that we all have to
recognize that we may not get everything we want out of this
situation, but we should try to compromise.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:56:53 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Benton: Corporate Court Order
INTEL OBTAINS COURT ORDER THAT PROHIBITS SENDING MASS E-MAIL TO ITS
EMPLOYEES
Issue: E-Mail/First Amendment
Intel has obtained a temporary
court order against a former employee and his company to keep him from
sending electronic mail to 29,000 Intel employees. They intend to ask the
ban be made permanent. An Intel attorney said that Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi
sent at least six mass mailings to Intel employees after being fired by
Intel and ignored Intel's requests to stop. The Sacramento County Superior
Court judge said Hamidi's action amounted to illegal trespass into Intel's
computer system. Hamidi denies it and says it was not the "trespass" which
concerned Intel but the content of his messages. The ruling troubles free
speech advocates who worry that Intel targeted Hamidi because of his
opinions and that the decision could become a precedent for curbing
electronic forms of speech. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B14), AUTHOR:
Scott Thurm] <http://www.wsj.com/>
===
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:40:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] OIG Review of NSFNET, 23 March 1993
I've been reading this report, which documents OIG's assessment of
NSFNET at the time that commercial use of it was permitted. I think
it gives much insight into the reasons why this was done.
If you're interested, it's at
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/stis1993/oig9301/oig9301.txt.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 22:34:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] In tribute to a computer science pioneer who spread UNIX around the world
I just saw a post on Usenet that a very special
computer science pioneer John Lions recently died.
Following is a quote from the post and a brief
response:
Peter H. Salus (peter@eng.us.uu.net) wrote:
: John Lions, the importer of UNIX to Australia,
: and the author of the Commentary on V6 that
: has been called ``the best book on how an
: operating system works,'' by Ken Thompson,
: died on Saturday, 5 December.
It is very sad to hear. John Lions was an important
UNIX pioneer. I am also sending to the Netizens list
an interview that appeared of him in the Amateur
Computerist on the occasion of the 25th anniversary
of UNIX. John came to the 1994 Useneix conference
and it was a treat to meet him there and to give
him a paper copy of the Interview with him which
was featured in the Amateur Computerist for that
occasion. (The interview had been done via email)
Also I did a review of the reprint of John's book for
the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing a while ago,
and it should soon appear.
This is a great loss for the UNIX and computer science
community.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
P.S. Also some of John's important contributions are documented
in chapter 9 of Netizens "On the Early History and Impact of UNIX:
Tools to Build the Tools for a New Millenium" A draft of
the chapter is at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
(I'll post the interview with John as a separate post.)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 22:36:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] John Lions: Spreading Unix around the world
In comp.org.usenix, Peter Salus posted that John Lions died on
December 5, 1998. That is a great loss to the computer science
and UNIX community. I am posting this Interview that I did with
John in 1994 as a tribute to his important contribution to
computer science.
This interview appeared in the special issue of The Amateur
Computerist in celebration of the 25th anniversay
of UNIX. It appeared in the summer 1994 issue.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Spreading UNIX Around the World:
An Interview with John Lions
[Editor's Note: Looking through some magazines in a local
university library, I came upon back issues of UNIX Review from
the mid 1980's. In these issues were articles by or interviews
with several of the pioneers who developed UNIX. As part of my
research for a paper about the history and development of the
early days of UNIX, I felt it would be helpful to be able to ask
some of these pioneers additional questions based on the events
and developments described in the UNIX Review Interviews.
Following is an interview conducted via E-mail with John
Lions, who wrote A Commentary on the UNIX Operating System
describing Version 6 UNIX to accompany the "UNIX Operating System
Source Code Level 6" for the students in his operating systems
class at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Lions'
important book provided some of the earliest printed commentary
and documentation of the UNIX kernel. John Lions is a Professor
of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science and
Engineering, at the University of New South Wales.]
Q: John, I have been reading with joy the interview with you that
was published in UNIX Review in October, 1985. I found it
inspiring because it showed the hard fight you and your
colleagues and students took up to be able to adopt UNIX at your
University and to help to spread it in Australia and around the
world. In the UNIX Review article you describe the arrival of
UNIX saying "UNIX was a revolutionary force on our campus." You
tell how the University of New South Wales decided to purchase a
Cyber 72 computer in 1974. But, since the Cyber could only
recognize User200 terminals which were by that time obsolete, the
University bought some PDP-11/40's to emulate User200s. You
describe how you wrote for information about UNIX after reading
an article by Ritchie and Thompson published in the "Communica-
tions of the ACM," and explained how a copy of Edition 5 tape and
manuals arrived in late December, 1974. A little later in the
Interview you relate how Ian Johnstone with assistance from
others wrote a new User200 emulator "that ran under UNIX. That,"
you point out, "became the first application of UNIX to be
written in Australia .... This exercise proved to be extremely
important. With a PDP-11," you explain, " completely to our-
selves, we most likely would have run vanilla UNIX on it and been
happy. But because we had to provide the User200 emulator, we had
to learn a lot about the system and pay a lot of attention to
performance issues. We needed help, but we couldn't get any from
outside sources. So we ended up generating our own expertise."
Lions: Undoubtedly true ....
Q: What was it about UNIX that led you to do the hard work that
you did? Were you aware of the power that it promised? Was that
some of the consideration or was it more practical -- that you had
certain things you wanted to be able to do and could hack to get
the UNIX system to do it?
Lions: UNIX was wonderfully plastic. We changed things to adapt
them to our situation ... because it was a challenge, and we were
having fun!
Q: You then say that through your work on UNIX you started to
make a few friends elsewhere on campus. Were they from any other
particular department? How did you begin to build a user group?
Did you start having formal meetings?
Lions: Other people at the other batch stations were interested
in solving the same problems as we were, so we found a common
cause. This included the Library which in those days had
passwords for the ordinary user accounts, but not for the super-
user ... very convenient!
Q: Can you say what kinds of similar problems people in other
universities were encountering at the time that led you to be
able to work together?
Lions: In a word ... isolation.
Q: Do you have any idea why UNIX was so widely adopted at other
Australian Universities?
Lions: We spread the news evangelically ... We were very anxious
to share our accumulated knowledge and to experiment ... and we
wanted to share it with others. We were having fun!
Q: You say that UNIX has possibly made a deeper penetration in
Australia than in any other country.
Lions: That comment has to be understood in its proper context. I
would not make it today. UNIX penetration is now 100% by
university, though not by department within universities. The
Internet is heavily UNIX-dependent, so I believe.
Q: In the UNIX Review interview, you describe how in 1975, Ian
Johnstone who was acting as a tutor for the operating systems
course you taught, asked, "Why don't we run off a few of the
source code files for the kernel and ask the students to take a
look at them? Then we can ask them some questions; maybe it will
be interesting." What kind of questions did you folks intend to
ask?
Lions: The same kind that the Commentary answers ....
Q: After you took his suggestion and you both selected what
seemed like a reasonable subset of the kernel and handed it out
to students, you report that you asked them questions, but that
they didn't have enough information to answer them so "they came
back to us with questions of their own many of which we couldn't
answer." Can you say any more about how the students suggested
that you offer the complete kernel for study?
Lions: They suggested that it should be all or nothing. The
selection of code I finally printed (on a DECwriter) is only
complete in a limited sense. Section Five that deals with device
drivers could have been much longer.
Q: Was there any special reason that you took their suggestions?
What led to the preparation in 1976 of the booklet containing the
source files for a version of Edition 6 UNIX that could run on a
PDP-11/40 system?
Lions: Seemed reasonable at the time ... what other options
reasonably existed?
Q: You say "Writing these was a real learning exercise for me. By
slowly and methodically surveying the whole kernel, I came to
understand things that others had overlooked." Can you give any
examples of what you came to understand that others had over-
looked?
Lions: No. I guess what I meant to say was that I obtained an
integrated view that allowed me to see more connections in the
code than others did. I used to test the students' knowledge and
understanding by weekly tests. Most years there would be two
tests on each of the first four sections of the code.
Students could sit for both tests in each section, but they
were discouraged from submitting more than one answer for
marking. If they chose to submit two answers, their mark was the
better of the two, less 10%. This allowed students to recover
from a bad first result, while discouraging them from trying
again if their first attempt was reasonable. Marking was always a
problem as overnight turnaround was needed.
The sophistication of the questions increased over the years
and towards the end, some new questions were quite devious.
(Don't ask me for examples!)
Q: In the Commentary you say: "A decision had to be made quite
early regarding the order of presentation of the source code. The
intention was to provide a reasonably logical sequence for the
student who wanted to learn the whole system. With the benefit of
hindsight, a great many improvements in detail are still
possible, and it is intended that these changes will be made in
some future edition." Did you ever write the future edition
making the changes?
Lions: No. There had been a three year gap between [UNIX -ed]
Editions Six and Seven. This created a window of opportunity for
us that never really occurred again.
Q: In your Commentary you say "You will find that most of the
code in UNIX is of a very high standard. Many sections which
initially seem complex and obscure, appear in the light of
further investigation and reflection, to be perfectly obvious and
'the only way to fly.' For this reason, the occasional comments
in the notes on programming style, almost invariably refer to
apparent lapses from the usual standard of near perfection ....
But on the whole you will find that the authors of UNIX, Ken
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, have created a program of great
strength, integrity and effectiveness, which you should admire
and seek to emulate."
Lions: That is what I believed then ... and still do.
Q: Can you say any more about the conclusion you drew of the high
standard of code in the UNIX kernel? Do you feel that students
and others who studied your book and the code did emulate it? Did
that help improve the level of code of those who had access to
your book and the source code?
Lions: In a general sense, I believe the answer is 'yes':
students did learn better coding practices.
Q: In the UNIX Review article, you relate that in 1977 at the
University of New South Wales you were developing your own PDP
version of UNIX to handle heavy student loads and that Ian
Johnstone, Peter Ivanov and Greg Rose developed a "sanitized
extended version of UNIX." And you made some changes to the
kernel. Can you say what the most important ones were?
Lions: We fixed bugs that we found ... or had introduced
ourselves. I cannot recall what they were ... and of course the
Seventh Edition changed everything anyway. We only did it once:
that was enough.
Q: Was your examination of the kernel for the Commentary helpful
in determining what changes to the kernel were needed. For
example, in the Commentary on pg. 82 under "Some Comments" you
say " 'namei' is a key procedure which would seem to have been
written very early, to have been thoroughly debugged and then to
have been left essentially unchanged. The interface between
'namei' and the rest of the system is rather complex, and for
that reason alone, it would not win the prize for 'Procedure of
the Year.' Earlier in the Commentary in chapter 19 (pg. 82) you
say "Copy the eight words of the directory entry into the array
'u.u_dent'." Then you comment, "The reason for copying before
comparing is obscure! Can this actually be more efficient? (The
reason for copying the whole directory at all is rather
perplexing to the author of these notes.);" Were these problems
clarified upon further examination or if not, did you make any
effort to solve them when you folks made changes to the kernel?
Lions: No comment now. My understanding changed over the years,
and some questions that may been obscure once were no longer so.
Q: In the UNIX Review Interview you explain that you were the
first person from the UNIX community in Australia to spend a
sabbatical at Bell Labs. Who invited you to the Labs? When? Why?
What did you do once there?
Lions: After I started distributing copies of my notes on UNIX
(Source Code and Commentary), I sent more than two hundred copies
to BTL [Bell Telephone Laboratories -ed]. One night (sometime in
1978?), I had a phone call from Doug McIlroy saying BTL would
like to assume responsibility for distributing those documents,
and would I agree? I did. It saved me much work.
At the beginning of 1978, when I was starting to wonder what
to do for my first sabbatical leave, I had another late night
call, this time from Berkley Tague enquiring whether I might be
willing to visit BTL, another easy decision.
In the middle of 1978, my family (us and two daughters) set
off for the USA, Madison, NJ in particular, where Berkley had
arranged for us to rent the house of an academic from Drew
University. (They were going to the south of France for his
sabbatical!)
I can still remember arriving at 26 Morris Place, tired but
pleased to be there (I think we must have rented a car from
Newark airport). Shortly afterwards Berk arrived and introduced
himself. We have been firm friends since then, with both him and
his wife, Anne-Marie. He is undoubtedly one of nature's
gentlemen.
Madison, N.J. is only a few miles (less than 10 -- I forget!)
from BTL. Incidentally, Berkley used to collect me each morning
and drive me from Madison to the Labs, so my wife could have our
car!
Q: You say in the UNIX Review interview that you worked in the
UNIX Support Group while at Bell Labs during that first
sabbatical and were able to introduce a number of utilities,
including pack, etc. Can you say more about what your work was
during that first sabbatical?
Lions: There were no expectations and I was given a free hand to
follow my own interests. Fortunately for BTL I had lots of ideas,
so there was never a problem.
Q: Do you know how your book was used as part of the work that
USG [UNIX Support Group -ed] was doing? Do you know how it was
used both elsewhere in Bell Labs and outside?
Lions: I had sent them the original copies of my notes. They
reproduced them and provided one copy to each new licensee (so I
believe). Each new licensee was allowed to make additional copies
under specified conditions.
Q: At the end of the UNIX Review Interview you say that it was
not so much that the UNIX system is friendly but that the people
who use it are. Do you have any sense of what about UNIX makes
this true?
Lions: Not really. That was just my experience. I think you ought
to remember that BTL is a very special place, and its Research
Department is also very special.
Q: What would you see as an appropriate way to commemorate the
25th anniversary of the creation of UNIX in 1994?
Lions: I gather Usenix is attempting to organize a meeting.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Reprinted from the Amateur Computerist vol 6 no. 1
The issue is online at http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #224
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