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Research Unix

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Research Unix refers to the early versions of the Unix operating system for DEC PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX and Interdata 7/32 and 8/32 computers, developed in the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC). The term Research Unix first appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal (Vol. 57, No. 6, Part 2 July/August 1978) to distinguish it from other versions internal to Bell Labs (such as PWB/UNIX and MERT) whose code-base had diverged from the primary CSRC version. However, that term was little-used until Version 8 Unix (1985), but has been retroactively applied to earlier versions as well. Prior to V8, the operating system was most commonly called simply UNIX (in caps) or the UNIX Time-Sharing System.

Ancient UNIX is any early release of the Unix code base prior to Unix System III, particularly the Research Unix releases prior to and including Version 7 (the base for UNIX/32V as well as later developments of AT&T Unix).

Contents

• History

• Versions

• Licensing

• The Unix Heritage Society

• Legacy

• See also

• References

• External links

History

AT&T licensed Version 5 to educational institutions, and Version 6 also to commercial sites. Schools paid $200 and others $20,000, discouraging most commercial use, but Version 6 was the most widely used version into the 1980s. Research Unix versions are often referred to by the edition of the manual that describes them,cite-ref-fiedler198310-1-0[1] because early versions and the last few were never officially released outside of Bell Labs, and grew organically. So, the first Research Unix would be the First Edition, and the last the Tenth Edition. Another common way of referring to them is as "Version x Unix" or "Vx Unix", where x is the manual edition. All modern editions of Unix—excepting Unix-like implementations such as Coherent, Minix, and Linux—derive from the 7th Edition.

Starting with the 8th Edition, versions of Research Unix had a close relationship to BSD. This began by using 4.1cBSD as the basis for the 8th Edition. In a Usenet post from 2000, Dennis Ritchie described these later versions of Research Unix as being closer to BSD than they were to UNIX System V,cite-ref-2[2] which also included some BSD code:cite-ref-fiedler198310-1-1[1]

Research Unix 8th Edition started from (I think) BSD 4.1c, but with enormous amounts scooped out and replaced by our own stuff. This continued with 9th and 10th. The ordinary user command-set was, I guess, a bit more BSD-flavored than SysVish, but it was pretty eclectic.

Versions

| Manual Edition | Release date | Description |

|---|---|---|

| 1st Edition | Nov 3, 1971 | First edition of the Unix manual, based… |

| 2nd Edition | Jun 12, 1972 | Total number of installations at the ti… |

| 3rd Edition | Feb 1973 | Introduced a C debugger , pipes , crypt… |

| 4th Edition | Nov 1973 | First version written in C. Also introd… |

| 5th Edition | Jun 1974 | Licensed to selected educational instit… |

| 6th Edition | May 1975 | Includes bc , chgrp , cron , newgrp, pt… |

| 7th Edition | Jan 1979 | Includes the Bourne shell , ioctl (2),… |

| 8th Edition | Feb 1985 | A modified 4.1cBSD for the VAX , with a… |

| 9th Edition | Sep 1986 | Incorporated code from 4.3BSD; used int… |

| 10th Edition | Oct 1989 | Last Research Unix. Although the manual… |

| Plan 9 1st Edition | 1992 | Plan 9 was a successor operating system… |

| Inferno Release 1.0 | 1997 | Inferno is a descendant of Plan 9, and… |

Licensing

After the publication of the Lions' book, work was undertaken to release earlier versions of the codebase. SCO first released the code under a limited educational license.

Later, in January 2002, Caldera International (later to become SCO Group and made defunct) relicensed (but has not made available) several versions under the four-clause BSD license, up to an including Version 7 Unix (UNIX/32V).cite-ref-12[12]cite-ref-caldera-license-pdf-13-0[13] As of 2022, there has been no widespread use of the code, but it can be used on emulator systems, and Version 5 Unix runs on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance using the SIMH PDP-11 emulator.cite-ref-gbaunix-14-0[14] Version 6 Unix provides the basis for the MIT xv6 teaching system, which is an update of that version to ANSI C and the x86 or RISC-V platform.

The BSD vi text editor is based on code from the ed line editor in those early Unixes. Therefore, "traditional" vi could not be distributed freely, and various work-alikes (such as nvi) were created. Now that the original code is no longer encumbered, the "traditional" vi has been adapted for modern Unix-like operating systems.cite-ref-15[15]

SCO Group, Inc. was previously called Caldera International. As a result of the SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc. case, Novell, Inc. was found to not have transferred the copyrights of UNIX to SCO Group, Inc.cite-ref-16[16] Concerns have been raised regarding the validity of the Caldera license.cite-ref-17[17]cite-ref-18[18]

The Unix Heritage Society

The Unix Heritage Society was founded by Warren Toomey.cite-ref-lwn-net-725297-19-0[19]cite-ref-bsdnow-tv-476-20-0[20] First edition Unix was restored to a usable state by a restoration team from the Unix Heritage Society in 2008. The restoration process started with paper listings of the source code which were in PDP-11 assembly language.cite-ref-21[21]cite-ref-22[22]

Legacy

In 2002, Caldera International releasedcite-ref-23[23] Unix V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6, V7 on PDP-11 and Unix 32V on VAX as FOSS under a permissive BSD-like software license.cite-ref-24[24]cite-ref-caldera-license-pdf-13-1[13]cite-ref-25[25]

In 2017, The Unix Heritage Society and Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc., on behalf of itself and Nokia Bell Laboratories, released V8, V9, and V10 under the condition that only non-commercial use was allowed, and that they would not assert copyright claims against such use.cite-ref-26[26]