Unix History

[Steven Brian McKechnie Sargent]

> In article <6780 at utzoo.UUCP> henry at utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
> >> Could anyone give me a short run down on lineage
> >> of the major lines of UNIX? Perhaps a brief narration 
> >> or a family tree showing how sys V and 4.3 and such 
> >> are all related...
> >
> >Between V6 and V7, draw a branch starting out "PWB" and
> >proceeding on through "SysIII" and "SysV" to "SysV.3.2.4.etc".
> 
> This raises the burning question:  whatever happened to
> Systems I and II, and, especially, IV?  I never hear them
> discussed.  Were they ever released commercially, and if
> not, why not?
> -- 
> 
> 					Scott Anderson
> 					ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra

If memory serves, what you call Systems I and II existed as
versions of the UNIX Time Sharing System and the Programmer's
Workbench system (versions 1.0 and 2.0).  System III was made
commercially available about 1981, during which time System IV
was in use inside the phone company -- but at the same time that
4BSD was in its first blush of youth.  So they leapfrogged IV
altogether, presumably to avoid confusing the UNIX(TM)-buying public.

Friends tell me there is also a System VI, which has been ruthlessly
crushed for internal political reasons; but that's vicious rumour.

The 8th Edition system is based on 4.1BSD, and I hear there's a Version
9 as well; so I think we've gotten the 1-digit numbers pretty well
nailed down and bleeding, and the phone company will iterate forever on
the System V.3.1.4a.870422.9:33:04am.Rev3 naming scheme.


"After changes upon changes we are more or less the same."
					- Paul Simon
S.

(TM) UNIX is a Footnote of AT&T Bell Laboratories.