Talk:History of Unix

The text below is the dumbest talk page seen on Wikipedia. And that's saying a lot. And for an article on the history of Unix. Good grief.

Please keep the timeline clean

and do not add text from a different time period to a historical description. Schily (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

This is wrong on three levels:

1. There is no such requirement in Wikipedia. As long as something is encyclopedic, relevant, and cited, there is no rule prohibiting otherwise appropriate text from appearing in a historical article.

2. I was providing attribution for a quote, which Wikipedia requires.

3. If you object to the quote, you should revert back to the version before Qwertyus inserted it, as opposed to just my edit modifying it. Ylee (talk) 19:38, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I just undid some of your edits; that's not on purpose, will edit further. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 19:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that the addition creates the wrong impression that the person in question made a claim when the "problem" started to appear. This is not the case. There is of course no direct WP rule as you mention but WP forbids to add biased or unbalanced claims. Schily (talk) 19:47, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I looked at the edits and I don't really understand what the fuss is about, but I decided not the mention the source of the quote inline because it's in the footnote. If you think the quote is inappropriate, feel free to remove it. I do think the lack of standardization can legitimately be called a problem; not only Kamp, but Computerworld and Simson et al. clearly present it as one. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 19:50, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I have absolutely no problems with citations, but putting a text from today into a historic description for ~ 1984 looks a bit out of order. Schily (talk) 19:59, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Again, there is no such rule, implicit or explicit, in Wikipedia. I inserted "later" to clarify that Kamp stated his description after the period in question, but as long as the text is properly cited even that is not necessary unless a positively misleading impression would otherwise be given to the reader. Ylee (talk) 20:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

There is in fact an opposite rule that "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." The Computerworld and InfoWorld articles cited are primary, they are from the era. Kamp's recollection is an (admittedly opinionated) secondary source. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 20:30, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I am a bit skeptical, when the name of a person that cannot be really seen as well known, suddenly appears on two different articles at the same day. This looks like an advertizing campaign. Could you please explain your background? Schily (talk) 09:46, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Not well known? This is Poul-Henning Kamp, Unix old-timer, one of the main developers of FreeBSD since its inception and writer for ACM Queue. His mailing list posts are taken seriously enough that The Register cites them. I was just reading his column and decided that it would be an interesting source for multiple pages. I used Garfinkel et al.'s Practical Unix and Internet Security on four pages because it touched on them in a relevant way. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 11:45, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

If he was one of the main developers, I would expect to see more than just 200 files with his copyright in FreeBSD and if he was a UNIX old-timer, I would expect to know him and I would expect more google hits for his name + unix. Even someone like David Korn who likes to hide from the public gives far more search results. Also note that his criticism on the GNU build system is nonsense even though the GNU build system is completely wrong, the fine grained testing for portability is an idea from Larry Wall and helpful. Schily (talk) 13:01, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Looks like he's not such an old-timer as I thought, but he did reimplement malloc for FreeBSD and co-designed its jails mechanism; he certainly has or used to have commit rights. Have a look at his publication record on GScholar. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 14:56, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I know people with FreeBSD commit rights who have a similar amount of files tagges with their copyright but these people would never claim to be core contributor and if you look for my name + unix, you will find 100x as many results as for him... BTW: the number of publications is something overestimated. Important is the content and your quotation for the GNU build system is definitely not a good one in special as the quoted content verifies that the author does not know UNIX well enough- I know many UNIX systems that miss stdlib.h but offer plenty of virtual memory. If you like to place criticism on the GNU build system, you could e.g. mention the Schily build system known as "makefiles". Schily (talk) 15:25, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

As usual, a lot of unsourced commentary. Regarding "core", factual, publication record (the only Schillings with much publication appear to be unrelated to you), and for google hits... a first approximation shows 3 times - but if one excludes "Debian", "cddl" and "gnu", then Kamp is certainly more visible at this time. Perhaps you should publish something to demonstrate your expertise. TEDickey (talk) 17:22, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

As usual, non-constructive blabla and personal attacks. What do you like to achieve? BTW: I am giving talks on OSS events on a regular base and I published about the basics of Copy on Write Filesystems - something that has become the base for all modern filesystems. I am also one of three authors of a 2000-page book on Solaris. Schily (talk) 13:55, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Surely you are aware that as a rule, lengthy books aren't entirely original (is this yet another collection of manual pages?). However, rather than you making statements about something, a few pointers to the referenced information will go further than all of the commentary which you have made so far. TEDickey (talk) 23:32, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

In other words: you have nothing to say than false claims about a book you did never read. Schily (talk) 09:40, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you have any verifiable information to present? If not, one must assume that your comments are as usual, unverifiable, and self-promotional. TEDickey (talk) 09:08, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I am disappointed to see again that you are trying to play your usual games: give off-topic replies, send personal attacks and try to play for time, but avoid to send fact based replies. People who read your wikipedia texts beyond that know that it's you who tries to be self-promotional. Schily (talk) 09:53, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Stop with the linux/GPL propaganda.

^^^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:405:4200:D8A1:2089:A0AE:8B15:5DF3 (talk) 06:05, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Kernighan

Reading the article, it is fun to have Brian Kernighan as source of the Unix name, while the article never cites him as either original member or joining the team. 2A02:A458:C30A:1:603D:D8F0:FF7B:D92F (talk) 12:54, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Explain the file access permission in Unix and how change file access permission

Explain the file access permission in Unix and how change file access permission 106.66.29.70 (talk) 05:05, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

The 1973 release date of Version 5 Unix may be incorrect

The article states that Version 5 of Research Unix came out in 1973 but I have found the manual for Version 5 and it has a date of June, 1974. Since all Research Unix versions up to v7 were named based on the version and the Manual's release date is typically the release day of the Unix version it goes with too. Now the Byte article used as a source here says v5 Unix came out in 1973 and maybe it's possible an a per-release version of v5 Unix was shown off at the 1973 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in October where Thompson and Richie first talk about Unix to the outside world but the manual for v5 says June, 1974. I tracked down the paper Ken and Richie talked about in 1973 at the conference but it doesn't specify which Unix version their where talking about (Most likely either v4 or v5). We probably either need to find another reliable source for release date to v5 Unix unless it's determined that we can use the "Unix Programmer's Manual, Firth Edition" cover date of June, 1974 since a link to a scan of the manual is available. See here: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v5/v5man.pdf Notcharliechaplin (talk) 13:30, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Found a major error in the article regarding the 1990's section claiming UnixWare was developed by Novell alone.

The article suggests that UnixWare was a product of Novell alone when in fact it was a joint venture between AT&T's Unix System Laboratory (USL) and Novell under a jointly owned subsidiary called Univel. Univel released UnixWare 1.0. In 1993, USL sold itself to Novel who also aquired USL's share of Univel. After that Novell merged USL and Univel into Novell and sold UnixWare under the Novell brand for the few more years they owned Unix/UnixWare before selling it off to the The Santa Cruz Opration (SCO). I gone and fixed this major error. You can read the Wikipedia article on Univel abd UnixWare for more details on this if you have questions. Notcharliechaplin (talk) 11:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)