Ancient UNIX Systems

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"Ancient UNIX" is a term coined by Santa Cruz Operation (now SCO) to describe early releases of the Unix code base released 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). After the publication of the Lions' book, work was undertaken to release the earlier versions of the codebase. SCO first released the code under a limited educational license, then in January 2002 under the four-clause BSD license. So far no wide use has been made of the code, but it can be used on emulator systems, and Unix Fifth Edition has been ported to the Nintendo Game Boy Advance using a PDP-11 emulation layer.

An example of how open-sourcing the old Unix code bases has affected the modern computing community: the BSD vi text editor was 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 this code is no longer encumbered, the "traditional" vi has been adapted for modern Unix-like operating systems.[1]

[edit] See also

• open source
• Version 6 Unix
• Version 7 Unix
• UNIX/32V
• OpenSolaris -- the source code to the Solaris Operating System, a UNIX System V implementation made open source in 2005

[edit] External links

• The Unix Heritage Society -- Includes disk images and browsable source trees of a number of early versions of Unix
• Caldera Ancient Unix License (PDF)
• Unix on the Game Boy Advance