Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code

The Lions book is an annotated edition of John Lions of the source code of the operating system Unix V6.

1976 wrote Professor John Lions of the University of New South Wales in Australia detailed comments in the source code of Unix V6 that his university had licensed for teaching purposes. He used this plant in his lectures. He presented a copy of AT & T available, which reprinted it for internal use. John Lions received permission to his comments - henceforth, Lions Book ' called - other universities that had a source license to provide.

1979 AT & T changed his mind and said the spread of the book. At that time, however - quite legally - so many copies in the world that a retransmission samizdat was unavoidable. Only in 1996 there was again an official edition - including at the instigation of Dennis Ritchie. Ken Thompson called the book even after all this time, as the best description of Unix internals.

The prohibition of the book was an impetus for Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Minix to develop, so that he had material for his lectures.

Although AT & T was right, it felt many legal owner of the book to be incorrect, other institutions to refuse access to this unique source - especially since AT & T even used the book for internal purposes. A sense of wrongdoing did not arise under these circumstances. AT & T has also avoided to take against this samizdat vigorous legal action.