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List:       tuhs
Subject:    [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 83, Issue 8
From:       a.phillip.garcia () gmail ! com (A !  P !  Garcia)
Date:       2011-07-16 1:05:30
Message-ID: CAFCBnZuVa1TDkf5LVd1nr=j9zuji1kbjkzz7J_xp8ZbGZB4ZoQ () mail ! gmail ! com
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> To call this joint is complete nonsense. ?Sun was in a cash bind, AT&T
> wanted to make SVR4 the main Unix platform and SunOS was winning. ?The
> story I heard, not widely known, is that AT&T bought a big pile of Sun
> stock at 35% over market - in return for which Sun had to dump their BSD
> based SunOS and go to SVR4.
>
> Biggest mistake Sun ever made in my opinion.

"Sun has helped spark a major controversy within the UNIX community
that may have split it into different directions.

The controversy began to heat up in October 1987, when AT&T announced
that it would license Sun's SPARC architecture as the basis for AT&T
computer systems. Furthermore, said AT&T, it was going to collaborate
with Sun to develop a UNIX "standard" that would eliminate
deficiencies in the operating system--such as lack of features for
commercial applications--and be compatible at the binary level across
the entire SPARC architecture.

Not surprisingly, other companies in the UNIX Community smelled
incipient monopolistic practices that would give AT&T and Sun an
unqualified advantage in the UNIX market. These moves would
effectively make the Sun/AT&T-developed System V and SPARC proprietary
standards controlled by the two companies. This perception was
bolstered in January 1988, when AT&T announced that it had agreed to
purchase 20 percent of Sun by buying shares, in amounts and at times
determined by Sun, at 25 percent above current market value."
[Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems, p. 112-113]

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