UNIX License Makes Linux the Last Major Piece of the Puzzle

Takahashi, Nobuo; Takamatsu, Tomofumi

doi:10.7880/abas.12.123

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

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“…As a result, companies involved in the so-called 'Unix wars' [77, p. 225] between competing implementations were often aggressively and indiscriminately piling up features, which were haphazardly 'taped together' [77, p. 211]. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s AT&T's licensing terms became more intricate and restrictive, limiting the availability of Unix source code [142], which was carefully guarded as a trade secret [93, p. 20]. These restrictions led Berkeley's CSRG and others to work on open source implementations of Unix, and the emergence of a structure that was conductive to open source development.…”

Section: Propositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of the Unix System Architecture: An Exploratory Case Study

Spinellis

Avgeriou

2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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Unix has evolved for almost five decades, shaping modern operating systems, key software technologies, and development practices. Studying the evolution of this remarkable system from an architectural perspective can provide insights on how to manage the growth of large, complex, and long-lived software systems. Along main Unix releases leading to the FreeBSD lineage we examine core architectural design decisions, the number of features, and code complexity, based on the analysis of source code, reference documentation, and related publications. We report that the growth in size has been uniform, with some notable outliers, while cyclomatic complexity has been religiously safeguarded. A large number of Unix-defining design decisions were implemented right from the very early beginning, with most of them still playing a major role. Unix continues to evolve from an architectural perspective, but the rate of architectural innovation has slowed down over the system's lifetime. Architectural technical debt has accrued in the forms of functionality duplication and unused facilities, but in terms of cyclomatic complexity it is systematically being paid back through what appears to be a self-correcting process. Some unsung architectural forces that shaped Unix are the emphasis on conventions over rigid enforcement, the drive for portability, a sophisticated ecosystem of other operating systems and development organizations, and the emergence of a federated architecture, often through the adoption of third-party subsystems. These findings have led us to form an initial theory on the architecture evolution of large, complex operating system software.

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Section: Propositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of the Unix System Architecture: An Exploratory Case Study

Spinellis

Avgeriou

2021

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Benefitting from Contributions to the Android Open Source Community

Shiu

Yasumoto

2016

ABAS

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The open source community (OSC) is a place to develop collective knowledge available to anyone, thereby inevitably engendering free riders. Despite this, many firms have contributed to OSCs. This study examines 10 Android smartphone manufacturers between 2010 and 2013 with regard to their (a) source code contributions and the relation of those contributions to (b) time to market as measured by the release of their first Android smartphones. The results of the analysis are divided into the following two groups: (A) a group that released smartphones faster than their competitors through source code contributions and (B) a group that made few source code contributions and was slower to release smartphones than group (A). In addition, in a few years, some firms were observed to have move from group (B) to group (A).

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Free and Open Source Are Not Necessary Conditions of Successful Development

Fujita

Ikuine

2013

ABAS

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"Free" and "open source" are not requirements for successful software development. The argument that "early and frequent upgrades" are one indicator of successful software development does not imply the necessity of users updating the source code but the importance that they function as testers and debuggers. In the development of Japan's non-open source, non-free shareware "Hidemaru Mail," the users perform the functions of testers and debuggers. It is evident from the case of Hidemaru Mail that early and frequent upgrades are neither result nor performance indicators, but rather the way to intrinsically motivate users so that they can function as testers and debuggers. In actuality, the developer of Hidemaru Mail motivates users to submit requests and reports more often by meticulously responding to almost all users' requests and reports and upgrading early and frequently. Existing studies are overly particular about whether the source code should be open, and lack the perspective a) Undergraduate School of Business Administration, Toyo University, fujita-h@toyo.jp b) Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems Division of Policy and Planning Sciences, University of Tsukuba, fikuine@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp A part of this paper was originally published as Fujita and Ikuine (2005) in Japanese.

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UNIX License Makes Linux the Last Major Piece of the Puzzle

Cited by 4 publications

References 17 publications

Evolution of the Unix System Architecture: An Exploratory Case Study

Evolution of the Unix System Architecture: An Exploratory Case Study

Benefitting from Contributions to the Android Open Source Community

Free and Open Source Are Not Necessary Conditions of Successful Development

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