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Started by Barry Shein
Wed, 01 Oct 1986 21:41
Re: 68000 Memory Managment (Bechtolsheim patent) (SUID Patent)
Author: Barry Shein
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1986 21:41
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1986 21:41
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Would you people all referencing systems which had/have SUID-ish features "way back in 1976" note that UNIX and SUID pre-dates 1976*, I am not sure exactly when it was introduced but very early 70's is a good guess (the patent may have been dated 1979 but that's the date the patent was granted, not the date all prior claims starts at.) For example, someone mentioned a similar feature in TOPS-10, UNIX completely predates TOPS-10 as far as I know tho not it's predecessor TENEX, the person didn't mention whether this feature was in TENEX. Just because TOPS-10 got old and died doesn't mean its older than UNIX. Having had experience with some of these other similar schemes I would say they would be very weak prior claims in that they mostly stunk. It's like saying round tires shouldn't be patented cause someone had come up with a square tire earlier...Be careful, it's the precise description of the thing, not "a patent on a way to access a priv'd file" which is what these arguments seem to be reducing it to to make their point. There is also an attitude problem here. Yes, a patent does indeed give certain rights to the patent holder. It also gives certain rights to the patent non-holder. A major reason for patents is to encourage inventors to publish the details of their invention, with protection, so the general public may benefit. It also puts some limits on those protections (time limit, must be utilized etc.) You people speak like it's some sort of con-job of no benefit to the industry in general, that's patently untrue :-) -Barry Shein, Boston University * I used UNIX with SUID around 1976-7, V6.
Re: 68000 Memory Managment (Bechtolsheim patent) (SUID Patent)
Author: David Dyer-Bennet
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1986 06:42
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1986 06:42
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In article <1611@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU>, bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > > Would you people all referencing systems which had/have SUID-ish > features "way back in 1976" note that UNIX and SUID pre-dates 1976*, > > For example, someone mentioned a similar feature in TOPS-10, UNIX > completely predates TOPS-10 as far as I know tho not it's predecessor > TENEX, the person didn't mention whether this feature was in TENEX. > Just because TOPS-10 got old and died doesn't mean its older than UNIX. TENEX was derived from tops-10, not the other way around. Tops-20 was derived from Tenex. Unix was developed partly because they couldn't get Bell to buy them a pdp-10 to play with (read the standard early unix history article), so I believe that tops-10 predates unix significantly. -- David Dyer-Bennet, former DEC LCG employee -- David Dyer-Bennet Usenet: ...ihnp4!umn-cs!starfire!ddb Fido: sysop of fido 14/341, (612) 721-8967 Telephone: (612) 721-8800 USmail: 4242 Minnehaha Ave S Mpls, MN 55406
Re: SUID Patent and TOPS-10 History
Author: Alan Lehotsky
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1986 12:16
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1986 12:16
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In discussing the age of SUID in UNIX, Barry Shein claims that UNIX predates TOPS-10,
but that he wasn't sure about its predecessor TENEX. In the interest of architectural
history, I want to set the record straight.
TOPS-10 was one of the first "time-sharing" systems - and dates back to approximately
1966! So, it significantly precedes any version of UNIX (even the PDP-7 proto-UNIX)! I
don't have a date for when .JACCT was invented - and my "TOPS-10 Phonebook" is at home, not
at work - but I think that it was in place by 1969. TENEX was an operating system built
originally by BBN [could be wrong about this] and then adopted by DEC as TOPS-20 and released
in the mid-70's.
The amusing thing about the age of TOPS-10 is that when the file system was originally
designed, they only had about 12 bits to store dates (file-creation, modification, etc.) But
that was okay, because it was stored relative to 1966, which gave them 9 years - and they were
sure that the machine would be obsolete LONG before that! When 1975 roled around you can imagine
the chagrin (and broken programs) when the dates rolled around! (Luckily, they managed to find
another 6 bits)
Re: 68000 Memory Managment (Bechtolsheim patent) (SUID Patent)
Author: Jerry Leichter
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1986 17:41
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1986 17:41
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Bsrry Shein writes about TOPS-10 as "a descendent of TENEX" and perhaps not as old as Unix. This has the history quite confused. I used TOPS-10 in 1969 or so; at the time it was already at Version 5 or thereabouts. JACCT was already there; I don't know exactly when it was introduced. TOPS-10 itself descended from earlier OS's for the PDP-15 (?), which, for all I know, already had JACCT or some analogue. TENEX was considerably later, and while not a direct descendent of TOPS-10 had some similarities. It was TOPS-20 that descended from TENEX. None of this has anything to do with the patentability of SUID. Clearly, the original idea in SUID is NOT that some programs can be privileged - in one form or another, that's been present in every OS with any idea of protection - but that "privilege" is not a unique things belonging only to the OS, but something any user has, in some sense, and can share. Years ago, an article appeared - in Software Practice and Experience, I believe - which described a game of some sort, with a master list of high scores. A challenge was given: Maintain such a master list, given the constraints that (a) anyone who runs the game program can have their score recorded; (b) no one can spoof the records by accessing the master list directly; (c) any user, without special privileges, can create a new master list for his version of the game. These constraints are easy to satisfy on Unix with a SUID program. To this day, they are quite difficult to satisfy on most other systems. (Often, they simply CANNOT be satisfied.) -- Jerry
Re: 68000 Memory Managment (Bechtolsheim patent) (SUID Patent)
Author: billw
Date: Sat, 04 Oct 1986 00:38
Date: Sat, 04 Oct 1986 00:38
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Actually TOPS10 is close to 20 years old, making it consdierably older than UNIX. TENEX was the predecessor to TOPS20, both of which come after TOPS10. The first version of TOPS20 was in 1976 or 77, and it doesn't have anything like SUID (nor does TENEX). BillW, a TOPS20 and TOPS10 systems programmer. Still.
Re: 68000 Memory Managment (Bechtolsheim patent) (SUID Patent)
Author: Tim Rentsch
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1986 06:04
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1986 06:04
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Just a note in the interest of historical accuracy. The JACCT bit on PDP-10's has been around a long long time. I first used a PDP-10 in 1970, and the JACCT bit was in the operating system then. (btw, JACCT is mnemonic for Job ACCounTing bit, since originally the only program which ran with JACCT was the login/logout programs.) I believe JACCT existed ever since the days of the PDP-6 (1968? 1966? anyone know?), and it had the same function, BUT it did not then trap control-C's -- they instead were translated to escapes! [For those of you out there in netland to know the pleasure of running your own jacct'ed programs -- cheers. today's hackers never had it so good.]
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