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