Why not Multics? (was Re: BSD tty security, part 3: How to Fix It)

[Eric Lee Green]

>From article <1991May3.184152.28644 at sctc.com>, by smith at sctc.com (Rick Smith):
> Now, I first encountered MULTICS just about ten years ago, having come
> off of TENEX, RSX, RT-11, Unix-V6-and-a-half, and various other
> dogs and cats. As far as "user friendliness" goes, MULTICS was equivalent
> and usually better than the competition. It sure beat Unix back then,

Granted. For most of Multic's life-span, it was far more user-friendly than
the competition. Heck, at least it operated interactively, which was nice
in an era where punched cards were still in vogue ("Can't waste those
cycles waiting for user input, can we?"). By the time the end came,
though... the times, they'd passed it by. One really needed thing was
a standard display handling library. I don't remember whether one was ever
written (something along the lines of termcap/curses), but if so, I never
saw any software that used it. What Emacs used (a file full of MacLisp
functions, one file for each available terminal, if I recall right) wasn't
too accessible to PL/1 folks.

Now, if Multics had continued to be developed... and if Honeywell had
actually tried to SELL the stupid thing... the story probably would have
been different.

--
Eric Lee Green   (318) 984-1820  P.O. Box 92191  Lafayette, LA 70509
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