what does "UNIX" really stand for? (also Plan 9)

Theo A. DeRaadt deraadt at xenlink.UUCP
Sat Oct 29 10:48:07 AEST 1988


In article <18479 at ism780c.isc.com>, kirkl at ism780c.isc.com (Kirk Lillis) writes:
! In article <2156 at cloud9.UUCP> bob at cloud9.UUCP (Bob Toxen) writes:
! >> The way I heard it was as follows.  ... "You: nix!", ...
! >Sorry, no.  UNIX is a play on names of Multics.  The latter was supposed
! >to be all things to all people with every feature including the
! >kitchen sink.  The modern counterpart is Ada.
! The way I recall it (from Tannenbaum's book on operating systems) is that 
! MULTICS stood for MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service.  An associate 
! of Dennis and Ken's at Bell Labs called their scaled down version UNICS, for 
! UNiplexed Information and Computing Service.  This nameplay evolved into UNIX.

And what of the other Multics related tale - that Unix like a Multics
with a number of things "cut out", hence, Unix is, a castrated multics,
or a enuch, ie. Unix.
 <tdr.
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