Lions Book


Lions Book

(publication)"Source Code and Commentary on Unix level 6", byJohn Lions.

The two parts of this book contained the entire source listingof the Unix Version 6 kernel, and a commentary on thesource discussing the algorithms. These were circulatedinternally at the University of New South Wales beginning1976-77, and were, for years after, the *only* detailed kerneldocumentation available to anyone outside Bell Labs.Because Western Electric wished to maintain trade secretstatus on the kernel, the Lions book was never formallypublished and was only supposed to be distributed toaffiliates of source licensees (it is still possible to get aBell Labs reprint of the book by sending a copy of a V6 source licence to the right person at Bellcore, but *real* insidershave the UNSW edition). In spite of this, it soon spread bysamizdat to a good many of the early Unix hackers.

http://peer-to-peer.com/catalog/history/lions.html.

In 1996 it was reprinted as a "classic":

[John Lions, "Lions' Comentary on UNIX 6th Edition with SourceCode", Computer Classics Revisited Series, Peer-to-PeerCommunications, 1996, ISBN 1-57398-013-7].