> Unix is proprietary software,
Actually, it was not until AT&T decided it could be useful,
and so they pulled the source license from most customers.
Since then, several variants have been written (the most
well-known one being BSD of course, in its BSDi / 386BSD
forms, which shaped into OpenBSD and NetBSD) and all those
are officially accepted as Unix, as they are all based on
the original source tree, where only a few core modules had
to be rewritten ("the missing files", go check the history
books.)> and Richard Stallman and a couple of friends started the > GNU project to mimick everything the Unix environment did, > but its all open source and everybody may use it as they > see fit. This started as only the Emacs project, and later the GCC project was added, and then whole series of projects were added and/or moved into that 'umbrella' project. None of the GNU projects is an actual operating system, however, unless you want to count HURD and/or GNU/Linux (Debian) as such. None of those systems can be called Unix, either, as they are not licensed by the trademark holder of that product. > Oh sure, there was something called Minix, which was a Unix > emulator under DOS, but it was very limited. Minix was a full operating system on its own, and not an amulator, let alone one "under DOS". It was mainly 16-bit, and because Andy wasn't too eager on extending it to x386, THAT prompted Linus into doing something of his own. > He called the kernel Linux, and put it on the internet. Yeah, I was there. > So yes... A real Open Source D-Star Software Stack, Much like Linux can never be called Unix, a stack compatible with D-STAR will probably also never be allowed to be called D-STAR, for the same reasons: ownership and licensing. > Mind you that the GPL states that if you change anything on GPL > software you have to redistribute it so others can profit from > your changes. No, the GPL states that if you change anything *AND WANT TO REDIST* that changed version. Besides, NONE of the current non-Icom D-STAR compatible systems are open source. Not even OpenG2. So... get some coffee, grab the specs, and "vi mydstarstack.c" ! > Altair. And this was just a big box with lights and buttons that > couldn't compete with apple's garagebuild pc. Actually, the Altair predates the Apple I a few years in design, and in computer time, that is "ancient". You also don't want to compare that same Apple with the nex-generation C64, right? > When IBM got into PC building for the regular man, No, that was for the small business owner, not the regular man. Retail price was around $10K. > MSDOS and sold it to IBM for $1 per machine, who rebranded it IBMDOS. No. IBM didn't expect that "pee cee" to go anywhere. They HAD to come with something to fight other vendors (Digital most of all, but Wang was also in that market) and so decided that rathet than paying Microsoft a fixed amount of money, they would go with a "royalty-based fee", as they were expecting to sell only a few of 'em. (this is one of the historic 'oopses' in this industry) > Apple in the meantime bought the GUI thing from Xerox, Actually, no, they didnt. Xerox PARC did a private demo session for a number of interested parties on their ALTOS system, which included the parts that we now consider standard (bitmapped screen, a mouse, software driven fonts, and ethernet networking.) Both Apple and Microsoft took to parts of that idea, and started working on it, with known results. PARC eventually was disbanded after most of the key figures had left, indeed, because the mgmt didn't take to the ideas presented. That resulted in those people starting their own companies.. Adobe (fonts) and 3Com (ethernet) are some of them. > In the meantime IBM wanted something simular so Microsoft wrote something > simular called OS/2. No. Microsoft and IBM worked together on the development of DOS and the later Windows GUI shell. They did want something better, and that became OS/2. By the time OS/2 2.0 had to be released, they had very different ideas on how to proceed with development, and that caused the separation of both parties. IBM continued the OS/2 "path", and Microsoft went back, revamped the system (which the help of the former leader of Digital's VMS design team) and turned that into Windows NT (3). > OS/2 was a big flop since it needed 4MB of ram and all MSDOS pc's OS/2 flopped mainly because yes, tit required more hardware, but much more because IBM was too strict with its software development politics. If you have a nice OS, but NO APPS, no users will buy it. > So microsoft was booted from IBM, and then took OS/2, slank it down to See above. --fred (computer systems historician, other hobby...)
