RE: gnu and linux

["Dr. P. Sriram" <sriram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Oommen Thomas wrote:
> 2. One correction to Hansolo's mail: Unix was originally developed by/at 
> Bell Labs and not AT&T, although the latter took over the former later
> to become AT&T Bell Labs... Rest is history.

not quite; if my memory serves me right, at&t and bell were a single
company till about 1980 or so; in a landmark anti-trust judgement, the us
supreme court ruled that at&t bell was a monopoly telephone service
provider and broke up the company; local service continued to be a
monopoly, but the different geographical regions were to be served by
independent 'baby' bells as they are called now (bell south, bell atlantic
etc). long distance (trunk) services were handed over to at&t. customers
did not have to buy instruments provided by the local service provider,
but were free to buy from anywhere (including from other baby bells). long
distance was not a at&t monopoly anymore, but service providers could
lease lines from at&t (or whoever) and sell them out in turn to customers
(like mci, sprint etc started doing). at that point, bell labs came to be
renamed as at&t bell labs indicating ownership vesting in at&t.  nowadays,
the name lucent technologies is also brandished, but i dont where it
figures in the above. it was most fascinating for me to observe all this
as a grad student in the us.  this action of breaking up of the monopoly
visibly increased competition and reduced the prices of telephone
instruments and long distance call rates. 

sriram

ps: see, there are some uses to being old!


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