Unix History

[Henry Spencer]

> 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...

If you want a *very* brief version, draw a line of development marked "V1"
through "V8".  Between V6 and V7, draw a branch starting out "PWB" and
proceeding on through "SysIII" and "SysV" to "SysV.3.2.4.etc".  Between
V6 and V7, draw another branch starting out "1BSD" and going on to "2BSD"
and "2.nBSD".  Draw a branch from V7 and another from somewhere in the 2.xBSD
series, and merge them into a line starting "3BSD" and going on into the
4BSD series.  That's roughly right.

Then cover the whole drawing with a dense tangle of lines indicating
variants, independent sub-lines of development, and cross-fertilization in
various directions.  There were several *major* independent lines (tangles)
of development within AT&T alone.  Some friends of mine tried to draw up
an accurate family tree; it took them a long time and considerable research
and there were still gray areas and question marks.
-- 
Usenet(n): AT&T scheme to earn
revenue from otherwise-unused	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
late-night phone capacity.	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry