From: dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 9:41 PM, Thomas Mueller <mueller6...@twc.com> wrote:
> My experience with Gnumeric is favorable. There are differences in syntax and navigation with Quattro Pro for DOS. > > Quattro Pro three-dimensional spreadsheets are practically impossible to import, even Excel can't do that. How much use do you make of the 3D feature? > Gnumeric runs on Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD, but is not portable to Haiku. No surprise, but who runs Haiku? > Regarding BSD requiring AT&T source license, are you talking about FreeBSD, NetBSD or BSDI? I was referring to before FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD existed. > I don't think FreeBSD and NetBSD required AT&T source license, even in their early days. They came about rather late in the game. BSD originated as a fork of AT&T Unix. Back then, AT&T was still Ma Bell, the regulated national telecommunications monopoly. AT&T developed Unix for internal use, and wasn't allowed to *sell* it. They *could* give it away in unsupported source form* to accredited educational institutions. One institution who took them up on it was the University of California at Berkeley, and UCB's Computer Research Group jumped on it and ran with it. The Berkeley Standard Distribution was CRG's hacks on AT&T code, and various things they developed like the C shell, the vi editor, and termcap found their way back into AT&T Unix. Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy was a grad student in computer science at UCB, and principal architect of BSD Unix. (Guess which flavor of Unix Sun chose for their systems when they started making boxes? :-) ) BSD was adopted by other institutions, but because it had roots in and still contained AT&T code, you needed an AT&T source license to run it. * A friend active back then said you *could* get support from AT&T - you just had to know who to call at Bell Labs and have a verifiable bug to report or suggestion or question they considered interesting. :-) Things changed after the consent decree that ended the Justice Department anti-trust suit against AT&T, and AT&T got broken up into the Baby Bells. AT&T was able to get into the computer business, and AT&T System V became the basis of various commercial offerings. AT&T also sold hardware, both manufactured internally by Western Electric (the 3B2 line), acquired from elsewhere in an OEM deal (The AT&T Unix-PS and 3B1 machines, made by Convergent Technologies, which is part of Unisys now), and PCs made by Olivetti, who AT&T bought. BSD code was steadily modified to remove any code originally developed by AT&T, and offerings like FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD were the result. The Gnu Project had already produced open source versions of the standard utilities that came with Unix, and both Linux and *BSD bundled them. Essentially, what differed between Linux and BSD was the OS kernel. > I remember when FreeBSD floppy boot disks would hang "Probing for devices...", and I couldn't get any further. That's an area Linux has gotten a lot better about, and a reason I run Ubuntu. The.last I looked, BSD was still "batteries not included" and "some assembly required", so it never got the penetration Linux did. > Tom ______ Dennis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user --- Internet Rex 2.29 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901) --- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3 * Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
