An Overview of the Spring System (1994) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

An Overview of the Spring System (1994) [pdf]

cs.fsu.edu

29 pointskick6 comments

This was initially driven as a joint attempt by Sun and AT&T to “merge” the two strains of a Unix at the time, while introducing cutting edge features (object orientation, distributed computing, ability to run multiple OS) [0]. A “1.1” version of the “Spring Research Distribution” was available from Sun for a fee [1].

I don’t suppose anybody here has a copy? I can’t find any legitimate way to procure a copy. Did Oracle get this as part of their acquisition? What were the terms of the original license? Would love to know.

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_(operating_system)

[1]. https://www.cs.albany.edu/~sdc/CSI400/Resources/comp.os.rese...

'bcantrill says he does, and he's offered it to people who've wanted it[1], but I think he's managed to not check his /threads every time someone's asked. I haven't found any way to procure a copy, let alone a legitimate way.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10325362

I would not say this is a fair interpretation of events.

At Sun, the effort to merge BSD and System V was called the "lulu" project and the end result was System V release 4 from AT&T and Solaris 2 from Sun. I was part of that effort and responsible for the transport independent RPC piece amongst others.

The Spring project was, in my opinion, an aspirational project to re-imagine UNIX according to Mike Powell and others at Sun, as opposed to Plan 9 which was re-imagining UNIX according to Rob Pike and others at the Computer Science Research Center (CSRC) of Bell Labs.

There were interesting rivalries in AT&T about who "owned" UNIX. On one side was the staff at CSRC who had invented it, and on the other side was Murray Hill which had commercialized it. For nearly identical reasoning, AT&T would not let the CSRC folks call their new OS UNIX, and Sun would not let the Spring folks call their new OS SunOS. Both groups had, at their core, some of the original architects of the OS that their respective company had become known for.

So glad to see you in this thread; thanks for sharing! I've considered mailing you about Spring & Sun before (among other things: Blekko is also fascinating given how impressive it was, how much talent it had behind it, and then how it just sort of got subsumed/murdered into/by IBM); it's such an interesting project! You wouldn't happen to have a copy or know anyone who might have one, would you?

You might consider putting a contact email in your profile.

Shot you a message to the one in yours, though it might have gotten sent to spam.

I'd throw a contact address up on my HN profile if I used a provider with something resembling decent spam-filtering, but I don't presently and I don't really use mail enough to justify switching.

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