CentOS - Apr 2015 - Real sh? Or other efficient shell for non-interactive scripts

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 03:15:27PM +0200, Joerg Schilling
wrote:
> Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org> wrote:
> 
> > Bash was bigger than ksh in the non-commercial Unix world because of
ksh88
> > licensing problems.  Back in 1998 I wanted to teach a ksh scripting
> > course to my local LUG, but AT&T (David Korn himsef!) told me I
couldn't
> > give people copies of the shell to take home.
> 
> AFAIR, ksh was OSS (but not using an OSI approved license) since 1997.
Since
In 1998 each user had to sign a license; you couldn't give away copies
to other people.

   Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:09:30 -0400 (EDT)
   From: David Korn <dgk at research.att.com>

   If you are going to make copies for use at your course there is
   no problem.  However, if users are to get their own copies
   to take home with them, then we need to get each of them
   to accpet the license agreement that is on the web.

[ snip other options, including printing out the license and having
  people sign it and sending the results back! ]

-- 

rgds
Stephen

Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org> wrote:
> > AFAIR, ksh was OSS (but not using an OSI approved license) since 1997.
Since
>
> In 1998 each user had to sign a license; you couldn't give away copies
> to other people.
>
>    Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:09:30 -0400 (EDT)
>    From: David Korn <dgk at research.att.com>
>
>    If you are going to make copies for use at your course there is
>    no problem.  However, if users are to get their own copies
>    to take home with them, then we need to get each of them
>    to accpet the license agreement that is on the web.
OK, I remeber again: You had to click "accept" on the web to get your
copy of
the source. This need was removed in 2001.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Stephen Harris wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 03:15:27PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Bash was bigger than ksh in the non-commercial Unix world because
of
>> > ksh88 licensing problems.  Back in 1998 I wanted to teach a ksh
scripting
>> > course to my local LUG, but AT&T (David Korn himsef!) told me
I
>> > couldn't give people copies of the shell to take home.
>>
>> AFAIR, ksh was OSS (but not using an OSI approved license) since 1997.
>> Since
>
> In 1998 each user had to sign a license; you couldn't give away copies
> to other people.
>
>    Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:09:30 -0400 (EDT)
>    From: David Korn <dgk at research.att.com>
>
>    If you are going to make copies for use at your course there is
>    no problem.  However, if users are to get their own copies
>    to take home with them, then we need to get each of them
>    to accpet the license agreement that is on the web.
>
> [ snip other options, including printing out the license and having
>   people sign it and sending the results back! ]
Fascinating. As I'd been in Sun OS, and started doing admin work when it
became Solaris, I'd missed that bit. A question: did the license agreement
include payment, or was it just restrictive on distribution?

Oh, and to clarify what I said before, our production shell scripts, in
the mid-nineties, were corporately required to go to ksh.

I didn't know bash till I got to CentOS (I don't remember it in RH
9...),
and it's what I prefer (my manager and some other folks here like zsh),
but bash lets me use all my c-shell-isms that I learned when I started in
UNIX in '91.

     mark !se....

<m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> Fascinating. As I'd been in Sun OS, and started doing admin work when
it
> became Solaris, I'd missed that bit. A question: did the license
agreement
> include payment, or was it just restrictive on distribution?
Everything other than ksh93 is closed source. The POSIX shell used by various 
commercial UNIXes is based on ksh88. Sun tried to make this OSS in 2005 but 
"OSS lovers" as HP and IBM prevented this from happening.

ksh93 exists in a 1997 version with restricted redistribution and a 2001 
version with OSI OSS compliance.
> Oh, and to clarify what I said before, our production shell scripts, in
> the mid-nineties, were corporately required to go to ksh.
>
> I didn't know bash till I got to CentOS (I don't remember it in RH
9...),
> and it's what I prefer (my manager and some other folks here like zsh),
> but bash lets me use all my c-shell-isms that I learned when I started in
> UNIX in '91.
Most if not all of these goodies are in the Bourne Shell now as well. 

And bash still comes with a history editor that gives less features than the 
one I prototyped in 1982 and that is now available in the Bourne Shell.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 10:38:25AM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us
wrote:
> Fascinating. As I'd been in Sun OS, and started doing admin work when
it
> became Solaris, I'd missed that bit. A question: did the license
agreement
> include payment, or was it just restrictive on distribution?
In 1990, when I started using ksh88, it was totally commercial.  Binaries
were $$$ and source was $$$$.  We bought the source and compiled it for
SunOS, Ultrix and various SYSVr[23] machines (one machine was so old it
didn't understand #! and so needed it placed as /bin/sh).

By 1998, ksh93 was free (as in beer) but was restricted distribution.
Eventually ksh93 became properly free, but by this point bash was
already popular in the Free-nix arena and had even made it into
Solaris, AIX and others.
> I didn't know bash till I got to CentOS (I don't remember it in RH
9...),
Yes it was.  It was in RH(not EL) 4, which was the first RH I used.

Even the 0.11 "boot+root" combination from 1991 had a version of bash
in it!
  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Linux_0.11
(that was the first Linux version I used)

-- 

rgds
Stephen