Talk:Ultrix

Closed Source vs. Proprietary
The GNU Project encourages the use of the term "Proprietary", as opposed to the term "Closed Source":

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Closed

Perhaps this should be used on this page's sidebar for "Source Model".

--Charlesreid1 (talk) 23:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Source model is closed source, License is Proprietary - both terms are used. Pi314m (talk) 05:10, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Untitled
IMHO, V7M info should be moved to Version 7 Unix, and the part about "4.5BSD" to Berkeley Software Distribution. Qwertyus 09:29, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

V7m and 4.5BSD
Interesting idea. But, V7m was a UEG release. Maybe someone could add a reference or something. As for 4.5 BSD, UEG was really the only group to run it for any length of time (outside of Berkeley). And, it was the university's lawyer who was concerned about the Regent's licensing process (and existing licensees) who pushed for the 4.1 - not the AT&T (WECo at the time) lawyers.


 * True, but this article is about Ultrix, not UEG. Version 7 Unix already has some rudimentary V7M info. Also, V7M predates Ultrix. Maybe 4.5BSD is more at place here, but there should be some info in Berkeley Software Distribution. I might add it later today, unless you do so first. Qwertyus 08:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

5BSD and what to expect from DEC
Sorry about the edit concerning "5BSD", I was wrong. This is what Marshall Kirk McKusick has to say about it:


 * The original intent had been to call it the 5BSD release; however, there were objections from AT&T that there would be customer confusion between their commercial Unix release, System V, and a Berkeley release named 5BSD. So, to resolve the issue, Berkeley agreed to change the naming scheme for future releases to stay at 4BSD and just increment the minor number.

(Maybe we should quote this in the article.)

However, "with the reliability and maintainability that people came to expect from DEC operating systems" still sounds like a DEC ad; I know the company doesn't exist anymore, but it seems rather subjective. Qwertyus 15:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Especially since Ultrix was rather bletcherous, both under the hood and from a user perspective. It wasn't as bad as, say, HPsUX, but it wasn't exactly "reliable and maintainable" either. 12.103.251.203 02:51, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

OSF/1 "epilogue"
The end of the article implies (a) that OSF/1 supplanted Ultrix, and (b) that OSF/1 was a stable/mature product on DECstations. Neither of these things are even remotely true. OSF/1 shipped in '91 and was pretty much abandoned by '92; there was only one real release, 1.0, for MIPS hardware and it was NOT a mature product though it was relatively stable. There are rumors of a 2.0 version for DECstations but I have never seen it and I don't think it was ever officially released.

I don't have time to rewrite that section now, so if someone else wants to please go ahead; otherwise I'll get around to it at some point. 208.66.208.200 22:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There really is a 2.0 version of osf/1 for DECstations, I have tape images of it. (But might not have been released outside of DEC?) 81.227.124.129 18:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

OSF/1 was far from abandoned; it became Digital UNIX and later Tru64, and still exists to this date now under HP's stead. It WAS abandoned on DEC's MIPS platforms while still OSF/1, but MIPS was never intended to hang around DEC, it was a quick stopgap between VAX and Alpha, where OSF/1 (and OpenVMS, which never saw release or even development on MIPS) continued on. 68.10.18.240 (talk) 14:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I concur with the above; while it may not have been called OSF/1 to the public, the bulk of the BSD Ultrix code base was indeed completely replaced by the OSF code base. Alas, I can't provide a cite for this -- but I was there. And it got much less "bletcherous" in the process. Floatjon (talk) 05:13, 13 July 2013 (UTC)