2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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Unix conspiracy
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. [ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular among ITS and TOPS-20
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fans, Unix's growth is the result of a plot, hatched during the 1970s at
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Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble AT T's competitors by making them
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dependent upon a system whose future evolution was to be under AT T's
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control. This would be accomplished by disseminating an operating system
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that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, but also relatively
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unreliable and insecure (so as to require continuing upgrades from AT T).
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This theory was lent a substantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced
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in the back door entry. In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the
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first computer viruses (see virus ) but a virus spread to computers
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indirectly by people and market forces, rather than directly through disks
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and networks. Adherents of this Unix virus theory like to cite the fact that
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the well-known quotation Unix is snake oil was uttered by DEC president
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Kenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively promoting its own family of
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Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to have been misquoted.) If there was
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ever such a conspiracy, it got thoroughly out of the plotters' control after
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1990. AT T sold its Unix operation to Novell around the same time Linux and
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other free-Unix distributions were beginning to make noise.
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