system: You are Dennis Mccunney, a caller on a 1990s BBS posting in the Unix message echo. Write like a real BBS user of the era — plain, direct, in your own voice, no modern polish.

user: You are replying to Lawrence Garvin about "UNIX Machines".

They wrote:
LG> William Hurn said in a message to Lawrence Garvin:
LG> As for history, to put this all in perspective, Microsoft developed
LG> the first PC-based *nix, called Xenix. It was designed to run on an
LG> 80286 in protected mode, and was licensed to, and sold by, SCO (Santa
LG> Cruz Operation) for many many years before SCO finally negotiated
LG> their own Unix license with AT&T.
LG> Now SCO -owns- Unix. :)
WH> I heard Bell Labs (that must have been mainframes only)
LG> Bell Labs == AT&T
WH> Microsoft and  AT&T all had different versions and there was a
WH> move to consolidate/ standardize about 3-wears ago. I don't know
WH> what ever happened.
LG> A consortium of Unix vendors/developers, led by AT&T, attempted to
LG> create a 'standardized' Unix, known as System V Release 4.
LG> SCO did not sign onto this project, and continued to build their
LG> empire on System V Release 3 -- a decision which they caught much
LG> marketing criticism for, particularly the Release 3.2 Version 4 product
LG> they released, after conveniently skipping Release 3.2 Version 3 -- not
LG> to mention their apparent unwillingness to advance the product into its
LG> next generation.
LG> The great failing of System V Release 4 though was that the design
LG> specification all but died, most likely a result of AT&T's  ping-pong
LG> game with USL, NCR, the UNIX trademark, and the source code.
LG> Only Solaris (Sun's version of SVR4) ever became as successful
LG> product, and generally that happened only because Sun already had a
LG> major installed base of the SunOS in their workstation market.
LG> Solaris x86 still runs a far backseat in market share to SCO
LG> OpenServer, although I predict that if SCO chooses to lean towards the
LG> UnixWare name for future products rather than their established
LG> OpenServer name, or even just pure Unix as a name, they may see some of
LG> that market share drop.
LG> "UnixWare" has a bad connotation amongst those in the commercial
LG> utilization world, and with NT knocking on the back door, I don't think
LG> that SCO can afford an image crisis at this point in time -- not to
LG> mention that there's arguably no hardware to run their 64-bit Gemini
LG> product on anyway. <g>
WH> Was there always just one PC version?
LG> In the early days, SCO was the only vendor that was distributing a
LG> product commercially for the x86 environment. The real problem is that
LG> the 286 just wasn't powerful enough to support a multiuser environment.
LG> It's great for a single user multitasking environment, such as an
LG> Internet server, as many have attested to in this echo with the new
LG> release of Minix.
LG> It wasn't until the 32-bit 386 became available that any PC-based Unix
LG> had any success -- and SCO Xenix was the market leader in that arena
LG> from 1986 through 1990, followed by SCO Unix when SCO negotiated the
LG> license from AT&T.
LG> Simultaneous with that, a number of PC-based Unices sprung up, most
LG> notably Coherent, BSD, and AT&T's own OEM releases, but the one thing
LG> all of the startups lacked was the base of experienced engineers and
LG> customer tech reps that could work an organization through the
LG> conversion (installation) of their first x86 Unix system.
LG> Of course, with the exception of the $99 Coherent product, most of
LG> these were priced way out of the market for individual users. I bought
LG> my SCO Xenix in 1989, the Operating System was $1295, and the
LG> Development System was $1295. Total cost for software, $2590. It ran on
LG> a 386DX/20 w/387, 4MB RAM, and Seagate ST4096 (80MB MFM Hard Drive),
LG> with a Seiko CM-1430 SVGA (1024x768) monitor on an Orchid ProDesigner
LG> 256k video card. Total cost of hardware: $4,000 give or take.
LG> Obviously, even the $6500 to setup an SCO Xenix system in 1989 would
LG> have been a major purchase for most companies!
LG> It wasn't until SCO adopted the licensing theories of Novell in the
LG> early 90s, and began selling SCO Unix, and later OpenDesktop/OpenServer
LG> in 2-user, 5-user, etc bundles, at prices more affordable to the
LG> smaller companies, not to mention that by then low end 386 machines
LG> were well under $2,000 so the total cost of setup of an SCO Unix
LG> machine was now well under $3500.
LG> But it was the development of the FREE Linux kernel, that put Unix in
LG> the hands of every Unix enthusiast worldwide, and of course, by that
LG> time, an entry level 386 machine was almost impossible to buy, and
LG> entry level i486 machines were about $1500.
WH> Where does Berkeley UNIX  (The Cuckoo's Egg) fit in? Thanks.
LG> Berkeley obtained Unix from AT&T because AT&T, in the early days, gave
LG> Unix away for free to educational institutions, in order to encourage
LG> developmental work on the kernel, as well as OS utilties.
LG> Berkeley was one of the schools that took the bull by the horns, made
LG> the Unix system a school-wide involved project, and today we reap the
LG> benefits of the students who studied at UCBerkeley in the 1970s and
LG> 1980s.
LG> While it's true roots are in the same Unix that Microsoft Xenix/SCO
LG> Xenix, SCO Unix, and Solaris all came from, the students and staff at
LG> Berkeley created a whole new image of the system.
LG> In fact, much of the 'standard' utilties that ship today with SCO,
LG> Solaris, and other "AT&T-flavor" Unices, are actually Berkeley written
LG> utilities. I'd daresay that if it weren't for the development efforts
LG> of the Berkeley people, Unix might have never grown beyond the text
LG> processor system it was originally designed to be in 1969.
LG> lawrence@eforest.houston.tx.us
LG> -!-
LG>  ! Origin: The Enchanted Forest | Houston, Texas (1:106/6018)

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 ** From Lawrence Garvin to William Hurn on 23 Aug 97  07:18:00
 ** UNIX Machines
 [Email: dmccunney@roper.com]