mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) (10/28/88)
This was in comp.misc and it took my notice.
NeXT's distribution method for formatted system disks will break new
ground for the computer industry, it being currently hard
to buy AT&T derived Unix in the bookstore for $50, including the disk.
Does AT&T have to let them do this, as opposed to each copy being restricted
to a specific machine?
Mike
-------------------
Article 4288 of comp.misc:
>From: barry@kiwi.UUCP (barry klawans)
Subject: NeXT, students, and optical disks
Date: 19 Oct 88 19:03:37 GMT
Organization: Sybase, Inc.
[...]
According to Jobs NeXT wants to have optical disk bootable. They are still
negotiating with AT&T about distribution rights. (Why is AT&T involved?
Mach is not UNIX, it just resembles UNIX. Can anyone shed some light on
this?)
[...]
--------------------bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) (10/29/88)
From: mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) >NeXT's distribution method for formatted system disks will break new >ground for the computer industry, it being currently hard >to buy AT&T derived Unix in the bookstore for $50, including the disk. > >Does AT&T have to let them do this, as opposed to each copy being restricted >to a specific machine? > >Mike >------------------- >>From: barry@kiwi.UUCP (barry klawans) >Subject: NeXT, students, and optical disks >[...] >According to Jobs NeXT wants to have optical disk bootable. They are still >negotiating with AT&T about distribution rights. (Why is AT&T involved? >Mach is not UNIX, it just resembles UNIX. Can anyone shed some light on >this?) I believe binary distributions are tied to a CPU, not a disk, so as long as each machine has a license it's ok, the fact that there's more than one disk image isn't necessarily unusual. I'll assume you can't buy a NeXT w/o an AT&T binary license. I could imagine AT&T changing that though and charging some copying fee, it obviously is of some value to NeXT's way of doing business (let's face it, it's contracts, not science, they can make it up as they go along...er...unlike science :-) Going back to a previous poster's comments, in the days of RK05's and V6 on PDP-11's each RK05 had its own Unix system on it since we had only one RK05 drive, we'd bring down the machine, pop in our disk and reboot with our disk (gee! just like a NeXT! only 2.5MB tho.) The core memory made life exciting (see, on power-up Unix had a tendency to sync the super-block to disk, even if it was a different disk...even onto RT-11 disks...urg.) Mach contains sufficient AT&T code (via 4.3BSD) that it comes under AT&T licensing, some are trying to change that but that will take some work, not there yet by a long shot. -Barry Shein, ||Encore||