Ancient UNIX is any early release of the Unix code base prior to Unix System III, particularly the Research Unix releases prior to and including Version 7 (the base for

UNIX/32V UNIX/32V is an early version of the Unix operating system from Bell Laboratories, released in June 1979. 32V was a direct port of the Seventh Edition Unix to the DEC VAX architecture. Overview Before 32V, Unix had primarily run on DEC PD ...

as well as later developments of

AT&T Unix The history of Unix dates back to the mid-1960s, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, AT&T Bell Labs, and General Electric were jointly developing an experimental time-sharing operating system called Multics for the GE-645 mainframe. ...

). After the publication of the Lions' book, work was undertaken to release earlier versions of the

codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code files; thus, a code ...

. SCO first released the code under a limited educational license. Later, in January 2002,

Caldera International Caldera International, Inc., earlier Caldera Systems, was an American software company that existed from 1998 to 2002 and developed and sold Linux- and Unix-based operating system products. Caldera Systems was created in August 1998 as a spinoff ...

(now SCO Group) relicensed (but has not made available) several versions under the four-clause

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

, namely: * Research Unix: (early versions only) ** Version 1 Unix ** Version 2 Unix ** Version 3 Unix ** Version 4 Unix ** Version 5 Unix ** Version 6 Unix ** Version 7 Unix ***

, there has been no widespread use of the code, but it can be used on emulator systems, and ''Version 5 Unix'' runs on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance using the SIMH

PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peri ...

. ''Version 6 Unix'' provides the basis for the MIT xv6 teaching system, which is an update of that version to ANSI C and the x86 or RISC-V platform. The

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berke ...

vi text editor is based on code from the ed line editor in those early Unixes. Therefore, "traditional" vi could not be distributed freely, and various work-alikes (such as

nvi NVI or nvi may refer to: * nvi, a text editor * Avial NV, an airline * ''no value indicator'', a non-denominated postage stamp * Navoiy Airport, in Uzbekistan * Negative volume index, a financial analysis method * ''Nationale Vliegtuig Indust ...

) were created. Now that the original code is no longer encumbered, the "traditional" vi has been adapted for modern Unix-like operating systems. SCO Group, Inc. was previously called Caldera International. As a result of the SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc. case, Novell, Inc. was found to not have transferred the copyrights of UNIX to SCO Group, Inc. Concerns have been raised regarding the validity of the Caldera license.

The Unix Heritage Society

First edition Unix was restored to a usable state by a restoration team from the Unix Heritage Society in 2008. The restoration process started with paper listings of the source code which were in Unix PDP-11 assembly language.

References

External links

The Unix Heritage Society
(TUHS), a website dedicated to the preservation and maintenance of historical UNIX systems
code, disk images, and related
at TUHS
Unix First Edition Manual PagesRestoration of 1st Edition UNIX kernel sources from Bell Laboratories
Bell Labs Unices Discontinued operating systems {{Unix-stub