[From nobody Fri Nov 9 08:39:39 2007 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5 Received: from ALA-MAIL03.corp.ad.wrs.com ([147.11.57.144]) by ala-mail08.corp.ad.wrs.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830); Fri, 9 Nov 2007 08:26:37 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Received: from mail.wrs.com ([147.11.1.11]) by ALA-MAIL03.corp.ad.wrs.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830); Fri, 9 Nov 2007 08:26:37 -0800 Received: from mr1.windriver.com (mr1 [192.124.127.25]) by mail.wrs.com (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id lA9GQZNx023144 for <Lee.Courtney@mail.windriver.com>; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 08:26:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from va1.ihostsxode.net (va1.ihostsxode.net [64.34.161.7]) by mr1.windriver.com (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id lA9GQZmY013029 for <Lee.Courtney@windriver.com>; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 08:26:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from va3.ihostsxode.net (va3.ihostsxode.net [72.51.38.197]) by va1.ihostsxode.net (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id lA9GQNnx004406 for <Lee.Courtney@windriver.com>; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 11:26:24 -0500 Received: from fre-ingress.ihostsxode.net (host20.maxim.net [216.65.99.20] (may be forged)) by va3.ihostsxode.net (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lA9GQJQD018484 for <Lee.Courtney@windriver.com>; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 11:26:19 -0500 Received: from relay00.pair.com (relay00.pair.com [209.68.5.9]) by fre-ingress.ihostsxode.net (8.13.1/8.13.1) with SMTP id lA9GLEUp010165 for <Lee.Courtney@windriver.com>; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 11:21:14 -0500 Received: (qmail 40821 invoked from network); 9 Nov 2007 16:26:17 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?127.0.0.1?) (unknown) by unknown with SMTP; 9 Nov 2007 16:26:17 -0000 Content-class: urn:content-classes:message Subject: multics source is now open Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 08:26:16 -0800 Message-ID: <AB9EB66E-4EAB-40E3-836F-4D04A0EC64A7@multicians.org> X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: multics source is now open Thread-Index: Acgi7U170XergtFVTcS/3Ibk7QSrDA== From: "Tom Van Vleck" <thvv@multicians.org> To: "Bernard Nivelet" <bernard.nivelet@wanadoo.fr>, "Fernando Corbato" <corbato@lcs.mit.edu>, "Peter Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>, "John Gintell" <john@gintell.org>, "Charlie Clingen" <clingen@mindspring.com>, "Roger A. Roach" <rar@mit.edu>, "Jerry Grochow" <jgrochow@mit.edu>, "Olin Sibert" <osibert@siliconkeep.com>, "Jerry Saltzer" <Saltzer@mit.edu>, "Jean Bellec" <jeanbellec@wanadoo.fr> Cc: "Len Shustek" <Len_Shustek@ngc.com>, "Courtney, Lee" <Lee.Courtney@windriver.com>, "Dag Spicer" <spicer@computerhistory.org>, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/ The source of MR12.5, dumped at CGI in Calgary in 2000, "is provided =20 and donated to Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Group BULL =20 including BULL HN Information Systems Inc. as a contribution to =20 computer science knowledge. This donation is made also to give =20 evidence of the common contributions of Massachusetts Institute of =20 Technology, Bell Laboratories, General Electric, Honeywell =20 Information Systems Inc., Honeywell BULL Inc., Groupe BULL and BULL =20 HN Information Systems Inc. to the development of this operating =20 system." Discussions of making the source of Multics available go back many =20 years. Jean Bellec and Bernard Nivelet took the decisive steps in =20 late 1999 or early 2000, by raising the matter with G=E9rard Roucairol, = who helped to secure the approval of Herv=E9 Mouren, then VP&GM of =20 Bull. It took from 2000 until now to obtain approvals and legal =20 opinions within Bull and MIT. The last six months or so have been =20 spent waiting for a strategy for announcing this donation to the =20 press: it was finally agreed that the source should be opened up =20 without waiting for the press releases and ribbon cutting event. =20 Such formalities may still happen in the future. In the meantime the =20 source is online. A page giving credit to all who helped should be on the MIT site .. =20 it may have been temporarily left out of the tree. We would not have =20 access to the source now if not for the seven years' hard work and =20 attention to detail by Bernard Nivelet (former director of the INRIA =20 computing center and retired director at Bull). Roger Roach was =20 instrumental in getting MIT to accept the donation and put it up on =20 the web. Many others helped us make key steps as well.. I want to =20 send this today so I will research an honor roll later. I hope that now the source of Multics (with all its faults) is =20 somewhere stable and will be a part of the permanent resources of the =20 Web. What next? We no longer need to be secret about this project. =20 On the other hand having everybody jump on mit.edu and copy the whole =20 tree with wget is probably not optimum. This message is for a few =20 folks who have waited a long time for this. If you have time, look =20 over the pages and see how they work for you. Feel free to pass the =20 URL on. Early next week I will post a version of this message to the =20 "multicians" mailing list multicians@yahoogroups.com, which comprises =20 about 100 people, and I will add links from pages at =20 www.multicians.org to the MIT pages. Then I'll post a message to =20 alt.os.multics. Somewhere in that time frame, presumably, the news =20 will be picked up by slashdot etc, and the site will become very =20 overloaded for a while. That's one reason I am letting the =20 information out in phases. In the long term, I would like to see us develop finding aids, ways =20 of linking to particular source statements, and a hypertextual way of =20 commenting on and explaining specific code. Imagine having a dialogue =20 where the original programmer explains why the code was written a =20 certain way, the assumptions made at the time, and perhaps how it =20 would be done today. A good place to discuss such future innovation =20 is multicians@yahoogroups.com. Anyway this is a great day, a long time coming. Thanks to all who =20 helped make it possible. Enjoy MR 12.5. regards, tom ]