[SPG_Active_Members] Fw: Here it is! - APL for the Burroughs B5500

[John R. Mashey]

Well, I wouldn't say that, but it was a big leap, in the sense of trying to have a serious OS that was much more portable, a fairly
alien concept at the time.
Of course it was the last one where Ken and Dennis were still the clear arbiters.
On the other hand, many features added later had pretty good reasons for existence, if not necessarily done as well as they might
have.
Inside BTL, we really did need a lot of other things to enable UNIXizing the numerous operations support systems.
I will admit, about that time is when I started using the phrase "Creeping featurism".

-----Original Message-----
From: Van Snyder [mailto:Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov] 
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 12:05 PM
To: John R. Mashey
Cc: 'Len Shustek'; 'Nigel Williams'; scc_active at computerhistory.org; 'Paul Kimpel'; 'Stan Sieler'; 'John C. Hollar'
Subject: RE: [SPG_Active_Members] Fw: Here it is! - APL for the Burroughs B5500

On Sun, 2013-09-08 at 22:26 -0700, John R. Mashey wrote:
> I offer some related UNIX history:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lions John got a copy of UNIX V6, 
> which was thoroughly obsolete by the (much more portable and
> general) V7,

Who said "Version 7 was an improvement on all of its successors?"