On Tue, 4 Apr 2017 12:09:35 -0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie  wrote:

> On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:53:17 +0100, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
> > AFAIK there were no patents on Unix, there were however copyright
> > restrictions on the AT&T source code which Linux avoided by the simple
> > (in principle) expedient of being a clean rewrite while BSD got
> > embroiled in a legal argument over which bits they could distribute and
> > which bits they could not.
>
> I thought Linux was originally a clean rewrite of Minix, which was itself
> a clean rewrite of UNIX for early Intel chips/PCs.

 It was originally a task switcher because Linus had spotted a neat
way of making one on an 80386, it grew into a complete kernel for a unix
like OS. Early development took place under Minix.

 Minix was not originally intended to be a rewrite of unix so much as
a demonstration vehicle for Tanenbaum's book on OS design and microkernel
architecture. It was however call compatible with unix from the start.

 Strictly speaking Linux is the kernel, pretty much all the basic
userland in a Linux distro is from GNU which was originally a project to
produce an open source unix (sensibly starting with a compiler) that never
produced a kernel.

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