Unix conspiracy

Unix conspiracy

[ITS] According to a conspiracy theory long popular amongITS and TOPS-20 fans, Unix's growth is the result of aplot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent wasto hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent upon asystem whose future evolution was to be under AT&T's control.This would be accomplished by disseminating an operatingsystem that is apparently inexpensive and easily portable, butalso relatively unreliable and insecure (so as to requirecontinuing upgrades from AT&T). This theory was lent asubstantial impetus in 1984 by the paper referenced in theback door entry.

In this view, Unix was designed to be one of the firstcomputer viruses (see virus) - but a virus spread tocomputers indirectly by people and market forces, rather thandirectly through disks and networks. Adherents of this "Unixvirus" theory like to cite the fact that the well-knownquotation "Unix is snake oil" was uttered by DEC presidentKenneth Olsen shortly before DEC began actively promoting itsown family of Unix workstations. (Olsen now claims to havebeen misquoted.)