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Posted by pjmlp 4 days ago

Unix v4 (1973) – Live Terminal(unixv4.dev)
173 points | 79 commentspage 2
TZubiri 4 days ago|
Getting a rate limit error, but I haven't used the program.
ramon156 4 days ago||
Rate limited! a new record!
yunnpp 4 days ago|
I'm going to guess we're on the same VPN.
btdmaster 3 days ago||
Everything really is a file: if you do `cat /` you'll get back the internal representation of the directory entries in / (analogous to ls)

And they still had coredumps at the time if you press ctrl-\

zahlman 3 days ago||
Being able to cat directories like that doesn't surprise me as much as the contents being readable. Is there not a bunch of binary garbage in between the filenames?
chuckadams 3 days ago||
I remember `cat` on directories working on Unixen much newer than v4. Not sure if it ever was the case on Linux tho.
enricotr 4 days ago||
Almost slashdotted.
keepamovin 3 days ago||
Amber, always amber. Like the screens in Alien's Nostromo (1979).

Thank you for this, I enjoy digital archaeology. :)

badc0ffee 4 days ago||
The fi ligatures in the Help & Info section are killing me.
timzaman 4 days ago||
death by hn..
charcircuit 4 days ago||
Did they get a license from Novell for this or is this as illegal as many of the other emulator sites with copyrighted software on them? Considering the page doesn't mention it, I'm leaning towards it being copyright infringement.
LukeShu 4 days ago||
In 2002, Caldera licensed Research Unix <= 7th edition and 32-bit 32V Unix under a BSD-style license.

Gotta stick the "This product includes software developed or owned by Caldera International, Inc." notice on it though.

charcircuit 4 days ago||
This copy of Unix v4 came from AT&T and not one of the freely licensed ones Caldera released. Caldera may own the rights now for this unearthed copy, but I am not aware that they have provided licenses for this new release.
spijdar 4 days ago||
If your argument is that Caldera might not actually have the rights to UNIX in the first place to grant the license, that's fair.

But the license they provided (http://www.lemis.com/grog/UNIX/ancient-source-all.pdf) explicitly names versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of UNIX for the 16-bit PDP-11. Yes, these versions originated at AT&T (Bell Labs) but are distinct legally from SysIII and SysV UNIX, also from AT&T, which are explicitly not covered by the Caldera license.

msla 3 days ago|||
> If your argument is that Caldera might not actually have the rights to UNIX in the first place to grant the license, that's fair.

Yeah, everyone knows Unix is owned by SCO, just like C++, Linux, and the look on your face, which is priceless.

(So help me, SCO claimed to own C++ at one point:

https://lwn.net/Articles/39227/

> C++ is one of the properties that SCO owns today and we frequently are approached by customers who wish to license C++ from us and we do charge for that. Those arrangements are done on a case-by-case basis with each customer and are not disclosed publicly. C++ licensing is currently part of SCO's SCOsource licensing program.

Maybe they claimed to own an implementation of C++ but it would be typical of them to claim to own the moon and sun and be sublicensing the stars to God.)

charcircuit 4 days ago|||
Thank you for finding this.

>Redistributions of source code and documentation must retain the above copyright notice

The archived tape doesn't have this, which contradicts the license. This makes me think the license may only be referring to a set of source code that they released with this license text already applied as opposed to what was recently archived.

>Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice

I don't see the copyright notice on that page. So at the very least that may need to be added.

dekhn 4 days ago||
Why do you care about this so much?
charcircuit 4 days ago||
Because I think the history of rights ownership and licensing is interesting.
qarl 4 days ago||
You might also enjoy arguing.
fortyseven 4 days ago|||
Personal financial stake in this, or do you regularly police the use of ancient software?
charcircuit 4 days ago||
>Personal financial stake in this

In the sense that the company I work for would be financially harmed if copyright infringement of software was freely allowed. I benefit from the ability of people being able to sell rights to use software.

It's one thing to digitize and archive ancient software, it's another thing to allow people to freely use it without acquiring the proper license for it.

kube-system 4 days ago|||
I’m normally one defending copyright on this forum. But dude, this software is half a century old. Nobody is buying or selling this software. Nobody’s business or livelihood is threatened by this.
charcircuit 4 days ago||
>Nobody is buying or selling this software. Nobody’s business or livelihood is threatened by this.

Because the media was no longer in the rights holder's possession. This is a dangerous line of reasoning where someone can steal a copyrighted work and then be allowed to profit off of it because the artist has no way to do so.

Being able to see a long lost UNIX version is interesting and I could imagine it being worth paying to see it or play with it similar to how people pay money to see things at a museum.

kube-system 4 days ago|||
Dangerous line of reasoning??? Allowing time for an author to monetize a work is the legal rationale for copyright protection. There is no commercial value to this software.
charcircuit 4 days ago||
Here is a hypothetical. You see someone on their iPad making a nice drawing. You then steal the iPad and then start making prints of that art and start selling them. To me the artist should be able to disallow such prints from being sold.

But your line of reasoning says that since the artist is unable to make money from the print, then there is nothing wrong with someone else doing so as the artist isn't missing out on any profit since they have no way to sell prints.

kube-system 3 days ago|||
That scenario is materially different. The details matter a lot in IP law.

Also please note that I have not said that the copyright is not valid. However, a case for fair use is not unfounded here.

> your line of reasoning says

It ain’t my line of reasoning. I’m paraphrasing the actual law:

As 17 USC § 107 says:

> In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

zenethian 3 days ago|||
This is a false equivalence. The iPad would have to be 45 years old and, after the artist had sold the art many times before to others, had the iPad rediscovered by someone after it had been lost in their mom’s attic.
charcircuit 3 days ago||
I'm specifically referring to the line of reasoning that if it doesn't cause material harm to infringe copyright, then it's okay to do.
II2II 4 days ago||||
The people who preserve vintage software typically respect boundaries in order to avoid cases where the copyright holder would be financially harmed. It is not a perfect guarantee, but it is a reasonable one.

Hardline stances usually cause more harm than good anyhow. I remember collecting Apple II gear in the late 1990's and early 2000's. The people saying that any form of copyright infringement was bad were either ignored or flamed since a lot of people just looked at their collection of software from the late 1970's and early 1980's and said, "we're at risk of losing this if we don't make it available, and the copyright holders won't lose anything if we do make it available." Which wasn't strictly true since there were some software developers who created software in the early 1990's who were still selling it. Unfortunately their absolutist attitude did not earn them many allies, so it became a lost cause.

LastTrain 4 days ago|||
I mean if you are assigning points I’d actually say the former is worse than the latter.
publicdebates 4 days ago||
What do you think about GOG?
charcircuit 4 days ago|||
It's good to have competition against Steam.
yunnpp 4 days ago||||
GOG is perfectly legal.
unit149 3 days ago|||
[dead]
colesantiago 4 days ago|
Just a heads up:

> By using this service, you acknowledge that terminal sessions may be logged for educational and debugging purposes. No personal data is collected beyond your IP address.

Is this all open source and is the code available? So that we know where the data is truly going?

Hard to trust it if it isn't fully OSS.

This is a cool demo though.

altairprime 4 days ago||
> Hard to trust it

Clarification requested: How is ‘trust’ applicable to this site?

skulk 4 days ago|||
I don't want them to see my blunders in the chess game I lost against the 40 year old computer program.
voidfunc 4 days ago|||
Even if it was open source how do you know its not a fork?
lo_zamoyski 4 days ago||
And even more to the point: this is a website. What is he afraid of this website doing that all the other websites don't already do? Why single this one out?
qarl 4 days ago||
WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO OPEN A WEBPAGE.
derrida 4 days ago||
Exception: -1 Page already opened. Time can only flow forward.
mmooss 4 days ago|||
It would be an excellent phishing attack if your target is senior IT. You filter out every non-geek, of course, and certainly your responses would lean heavily toward an older crowd. They's all see 'Unix v4', be too excited to consider the risks, and being a 1973 OS assume it is innocent and safe (not thinking about the platform delivering it).

Maybe you'd get too many retirees ...

Now you just need

StableAlkyne 4 days ago|||
> Hard to trust it if it isn't fully OSS

It's an emulated PDP-11, could you elaborate on the threat model here?

I get that companies are being gross about logging everything online, but come on. It's okay to have fun.

Who in their right mind is using this for anything other than curiosity's sake?

utopiah 4 days ago||
Little bit of banking on an emulator on a random website, why not?
cocodill 4 days ago||
bitcoin will not be mined on its own.
znpy 4 days ago||
Yeah it’s unlikely that this site will collect any meaningful data and it’s unlikely that you lose any meaningful data by playing with a virtual unix from the 70ies.

You aren’t getting downvoted enough.