The Lions Commentary: A Socio-Technical and Pedagogical History of UNIX Version 6 (1977–2026)

22 July 2026

Note: I have constructed the following narrative with the help of Google Antigravity, using Claude and Gemini coding agents and Google AI Mode searches. I am in the process of verifying primary sources for every claim, so some errors and gaps are likely to remain. If you have first hand knowledge or primary documents, your help would be much appreciated.

Background and Context (UNSW, 1974–1977)

In the mid-1970s, the Department of Computer Science within the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) operated PDP-11 time-sharing mainframes running early versions of the UNIX operating system obtained from Bell Telephone Laboratories [35]. Associate Professor John Lions, appointed to UNSW's computing faculty in the early 1970s, introduced an intensive case-study approach to operating systems pedagogy based on the UNIX Version 6 kernel source code [1] [43]. In 1977, Lions completed a two-volume commentary and source code listing for classroom instruction, establishing a documented line-by-line operating system teaching model [1] [43].

Part One: Document Preparation and Institutional Integration (1974–1977)

UNSW and the UNIX Tape

UNSW was among the early academic institutions outside the United States to receive UNIX source code from Bell Labs [8]. In 1974, after reading Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie's paper "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" in the May 1974 issue of Communications of the ACM, UNSW academic Ken Robinson — who later contributed to international IEEE Computer Society curriculum guidelines [44] — requested a copy of UNIX from Dennis Ritchie [43]. Western Electric's educational licensing policy permitted research universities to obtain UNIX for a nominal fee of approximately US$400, provided it was restricted to non-commercial education and research. The Version 6 tape arrived in early 1975, was installed on the department's PDP-11/40, and entered production use [30].

Lions systematically examined the entire V6 codebase for instructional use. UNIX Version 6 comprised approximately 10,000 lines of C and PDP-11 assembly language, making it sufficiently compact for full primary-text analysis in an undergraduate course [1] [43]. Unlike contemporary commercial operating systems implemented in extensive assembly language, the C-based V6 kernel provided a structured case study for operating system design principles [2]. Lions' engagement with Bell Labs was further reinforced by three sabbatical leaves spent working directly at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in 1978, 1983, and 1989 [43].

The Beginner's Manual and Academic Software Sharing

To support undergraduate instruction alongside the kernel commentary, the UNSW Department of Computer Science produced the Unix Beginner's Manual Level Six (February 1978) [32] for students using PDP-11 CRT display terminals. The manual documented both locally authored UNSW tools and utilities acquired through academic software exchanges.

Because Western Electric provided no technical support for UNIX V6, UNSW established a software exchange network with the University of Toronto's Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) and Human Computing Resources (HCR), sharing patches and utilities via the Australian UNIX Users Group Newsletter (AUUGN) edited by Lions [8] [32]. Through this exchange, UNSW integrated early Toronto utilities — such as vcat (a CRT visual display paginator co-authored by Mike Tilson [4]) — alongside pre-1BSD Berkeley Pascal tools (pi, pix, and pcc, authored by Bill Joy). The February 1978 manual [32] records this early academic software pipeline combining Toronto, Berkeley, and UNSW tools prior to the emergence of commercial Unix distributions.

The UNSW Computing Ecosystem

Lions' commentary was supported by an active software development environment within UNSW's School of Electrical Engineering [30] [35]. Academic staff, including Ken Robinson [44] and Piers Lauder, developed custom software layers on top of UNIX V6, as documented in departmental publications [32] [33] [34] and course assignment materials (such as the %6.641/give submission utility prescribed for course 6.641 in 1980). The Unix Beginner's Manual Level Six (1978) [32] and UNIX Primer 1984-5 [33] record locally authored tools developed for student instruction. The AUSAM system [34] extended Unix with accounting, disk quotas, and process controls tailored to UNSW's multi-user student mainframes [34] [35] [43] [44].

Writing the Commentary

Between 1976 and 1977, Lions compiled, organized, and annotated the UNIX Version 6 kernel source code, assisted by UNSW students including Dave Horsfall [45]. He examined the kernel systematically from system initialization — including assembly startup routines in m40.s, process scheduling, memory swapping, interrupt handling, the inode-based file system, and device drivers — producing line-by-line explanations of the code's operation and architecture [1].

The department published the work in a two-volume set:

• Volume I: "A Commentary on the Sixth Edition UNIX Operating System" — Lions' narrative analysis, cross-referenced to source code line numbers [1].

• Volume II: "UNIX Operating System Source Code Level Six" — the complete kernel source listing, printed with line numbers for concurrent reading [1].

"Operating systems are often regarded as being very complex... the purpose of this book is to demonstrate that an actual operating system kernel can be understood in detail by undergraduate students." — John Lions, Preface to Volume I, 1977 [1]

The volumes were completed in 1977 for students enrolled in Lions' operating systems course (6.632). The 1981 UNSW Engineering Handbook provides the official syllabus [31]:

"6.632 Operating Systems S1 L3T2 Prerequisites: 6.631 or 6.021E, 6.641. Introduction to operating systems via an intensive case study of a particular system, namely the UNIX Time-sharing system which runs on the PDP11 computer. Includes system initialization, memory management, process management, handling of interrupts, basic Input/output and file systems."

By publishing the complete kernel source alongside detailed annotations, Lions enabled students to trace execution, memory management, and file operations directly in code [1] [2] [3]. Eric S. Raymond later characterized the Commentary as "the first serious documentation of the Unix kernel internals" [12].

[!NOTE] Raymond's text dates the Commentary to "1976 notes" [12]. Physical Third Printing volumes (Tier V2) are dated 1977, which is used as the formal publication date in this document. The 1976 date refers to internal UNSW working drafts; the bound two-volume set was distributed in 1977.

The Wollongong Port and Regional Networking

In 1977, Juris Reinfelds and Robert Miller at the University of Wollongong completed a port of UNIX Version 6 to non-DEC hardware (the Interdata 7/32) [27], demonstrating that UNIX's kernel architecture was machine-independent. Members of the Wollongong team subsequently founded The Wollongong Group in Silicon Valley, an early commercial Unix networking vendor [8] [27].

UNSW academics participated in founding the Australian Unix Users Group (AUUG) to share patches and instructional software across Australian institutions [8] [24]. Concurrently, Piers Lauder at UNSW and Robert Kummerfeld at the University of Sydney developed the Australian Computer Science Network (ACSnet) using Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) protocols [40], connecting university PDP-11 and VAX systems for electronic mail and file transfer prior to commercial internet access [8] [40].

Institutional Adoption at UC Berkeley

At UC Berkeley, Professor Bob Fabry acquired a PDP-11/45 in 1974 under a Western Electric educational licence [14]. During 1975–1976, Ken Thompson spent a sabbatical year at Berkeley, assisting faculty and introducing Version 6. Fabry and Domenico Ferrari incorporated V6 source code case studies into Berkeley's CS 162 operating systems course [14]. When Lions' commentary arrived in 1977, it was integrated into Berkeley's source-based operating systems curriculum [28].

Part Two: Licensing Constraints, Samizdat, and Alternatives (1979–1993)

AT&T Commercialization and Licensing Shifts

In 1979, the corporate context surrounding UNIX shifted dramatically. Western Electric — the commercial arm of AT&T — issued new licensing terms restricting classroom source code distribution [8]. This policy shift was primarily driven by AT&T's commercial launch of System V and 32V on VAX hardware, aimed at preventing corporate hardware vendors from commercializing proprietary UNIX enhancements without paying expensive commercial licence fees ($20,000+ per CPU) [4] [8].

While AT&T restricted formal inclusion of full source listings in new commercial textbooks, its corporate management largely tolerated informal academic photocopying of the Lions V6 volumes, choosing not to prosecute universities or individual academics as long as basic institutional educational licences were maintained [3] [5]. For existing licensees like UNSW, grandfathered terms permitted Lions to continue teaching course 6.632 with the original text through his retirement in 1995 [31]. However, for new computer science departments globally, formal adoption of the V6 source code in official curricula became legally constrained [3].

The Photocopy Network and Media History

The Lions Commentary subsequently circulated through universities, research laboratories, and engineering departments via an informal network of photocopies [10].

Media historian Lisa Gitelman situates the Lions Commentary within the history of xerography and documentary reproduction [11]. Gitelman notes that the Commentary became widely photocopied in computer science departments. The term samizdat was applied to this informal circulation by computer scientist Ken Arnold, in a passage quoted by Eric S. Raymond:

"The Lions book was a samizdat publishing sensation. Because of copyright infringement or some such it couldn't be published in the U.S., so copies of copies seeped everywhere. I still have my copy, which was at least 6th generation. Back then you couldn't be a kernel hacker without a Lions." — Ken Arnold, quoted in Eric S. Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming [12]

Gitelman identifies a structural parallel between xerography and UNIX: Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, worked briefly in the Bell Labs patent department in the 1930s. Decades later, when Thompson and Ritchie requested PDP-11 hardware to construct UNIX, their administrative justification to Bell Labs management was developing text preparation tools for that same patent department [11]. Anthropologist Christopher Kelty argues in Two Bits that the physical copying and distribution of source code fostered shared norms around software access and peer review, which later informed open-source licensing models [9] [10].

Berkeley's Use of the Commentary

The institutional practice at UC Berkeley illustrates how the Commentary was utilized alongside expanding codebases. Professor Bob Fabry adopted Lions' V6 commentary in Berkeley's operating systems curriculum [14]. McKusick notes that as the production BSD codebase grew too large for undergraduate instructional reading, Lions' compact V6 Commentary served as an introductory text [14]:

"By 1984, the BSD kernel was over 200,000 lines long — far too large to teach undergraduates in a semester. We continued to use Lions' V6 commentary in lectures to teach kernel primitives while students wrote code on BSD mainframes in the lab." — Marshall Kirk McKusick, Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, 1999 [14] Between 1989 and 1991, Keith Bostic and CSRG developers executed a clean-room reimplementation of BSD utilities to remove AT&T proprietary code [12] [14].

In 1980, DARPA selected Berkeley Unix as the platform to implement its TCP/IP networking stack because its source code was accessible to research institutions [12]. The resulting 4.2BSD TCP/IP release (1983) established a standard networking stack. The UNSW-Berkeley software exchange continued through this period, and the TCP/IP stack developed at Berkeley was integrated into the networked Unix environment with which UNSW's ACSnet infrastructure aligned [40].

MINIX, System V, and Linux

In 1987, Professor Andrew Tanenbaum created MINIX at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to provide an unencumbered, microkernel-based teaching operating system when AT&T source licensing restricted classroom use of V6 [13]. In Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, Tanenbaum cited Lions' Commentary as both an instructional precedent and the benchmark MINIX aimed to replace [13]:

"When AT&T banned the Lions book from being taught in universities, I decided to write a new operating system from scratch, encumbered by no one's license, so that students could continue to study how a real kernel works." — Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, 1987 [13]

When Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel in 1991, MINIX served as his initial development environment [13] [36]. Torvalds did not read the Lions Commentary during Linux's creation [36]. Instead, he relied on Tanenbaum's MINIX textbook, Maurice Bach's The Design of the UNIX Operating System (which detailed AT&T System V architecture) [38], and Intel 80386 documentation [36]. During the 1992 Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate, Torvalds advocated a monolithic kernel design suited to 80386 hardware rather than Tanenbaum's microkernel architecture [37]. Linux was an independent implementation based on System V interface standards rather than a direct code continuation of Lions' V6 PDP-11 annotations [36] [37] [38].

International Circulation

The Commentary circulated internationally through academic photocopying networks. In Japan, peer-reviewed documentation in IPSJ Magazine records that informal translation groups used copied chapters to study kernel architecture [19]. ASCII Corporation published an authorized Japanese translation in 1998, acknowledging two decades of informal circulation [20]. A Chinese commercial edition followed in 2000 [21].

In Brazil, under the 1980s reserva de mercado policy restricting computer hardware and software imports, federal universities (including UFRJ and UFMG) used copies of the Commentary to analyze operating system internals while developing domestic UNIX-like systems, such as COBRA's SOX operating system [22] [23].

Part Three: Legal Resolution and Formal Liberation (1993–2002)

USL v. BSDi Litigation Context

In 1992, UNIX System Laboratories (USL) sued Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDi) and UC Berkeley for trademark and trade-secret infringement over 4.4BSD Net/2 [5].

Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise's 1993 ruling denying USL's preliminary injunction rested on two main grounds: first, Berkeley's contractual rights under the 32V licence agreement to create derivatives; and second, evidence that AT&T had distributed 32V and Version 7 source code without required copyright notices, undermining its trade secret claims [5]. The ruling made no reference to Lions, UNSW, or informal photocopying networks [5].

The case settled in 1994 after Novell acquired USL from AT&T. Marshall Kirk McKusick summarizes the settlement terms:

"Code copying and theft of trade secrets was alleged. The actual infringing code was not identified for nearly two years. The lawsuit could have dragged on for much longer but for the fact that Novell bought USL from AT&T and sought a settlement. In the end, three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up the distribution, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, with the stipulation that those files continued to be freely redistributed." — Marshall Kirk McKusick, quoted in Raymond [12]

The settlement enabled the unencumbered release of 4.4BSD-Lite. However, the dissolution of CSRG at Berkeley between 1992 and 1994 coincided with the fragmentation of BSD into FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD projects, during which Linux expanded rapidly as an unencumbered alternative [12] [14].

USENET Transcription and Commercial Publication

In 1994, Warren Toomey coordinated a digital transcription of the Lions Commentary onto USENET (alt.folklore.computers) [26], laying the ground for digital preservation under the Australian UNIX User Group Preservation Society (PUPS, later the Unix Heritage Society / TUHS) [24] [25].

Formal commercial publication followed sustained academic advocacy. Prior to UNIX's 25th anniversary in 1995, John Lions and computer historian Peter Salus requested Novell's permission to publish the V6 Commentary [25] [26]. Following Novell's 1995 transaction with The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), Salus — assisted by Dennis Ritchie — secured publication authorization from SCO [25] [26]. In July 1996, Peer-to-Peer Communications issued the authorized edition [1], featuring prefatory notes by Ken Thompson [2], Dennis Ritchie [3], and Michael Tilson [4]. Thompson noted that Lions' text remained an effective line-by-line kernel exposition [2], while Ritchie documented academic efforts to maintain open systems instruction [3]:

"After 20 years, this is still the best exposition of a working operating system." — Ken Thompson, Prefatory Quote to Authorized Edition, 1996 [2]

"Lions’s commentary was for years the only available description of a real, operating system kernel... Its circulation, though illicit, preserved the idea that software should be read and understood." — Dennis M. Ritchie, Prefatory Notes to Authorized Edition, 1996 [3]

The terms of the 1996 P2P release restricted converting printed source listings into machine-readable formats [25] [26].

Formal Licence Grants

The corporate ownership of UNIX source code passed through several transactions prior to formal public release. AT&T created Unix System Laboratories (USL) as a subsidiary to manage its UNIX intellectual property. In 1993, Novell acquired USL. In 1995, Novell sold UNIX business assets to The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) under an Asset Purchase Agreement (APA). However, SCO Group v. Novell (2010/2011) subsequently established that UNIX copyrights were not transferred to SCO in 1995 and remained with Novell [7].

Efforts to secure an open licence for early UNIX versions were led by PUPS/TUHS founders Warren Toomey and Steven Schultz beginning in early 1996 [25] [26]. Toomey noted the archive's early status: "The building of an archive of early UNIX systems was initially quite dubious, legally... Most of TUHS' members were covered by various UNIX source code licenses from AT&T or USL, but not every license covered the sum of material stored in the archive" [25] [26].

When Toomey and Schultz requested a public release in 1996, SCO initially declined to issue an unencumbered release, citing potential dilution of trade secret protections for commercial SCO UNIX [25] [26]. Working with Dion Johnson at SCO, Toomey conducted a Usenet survey in mid-1996 and launched an online petition in July 1997 (signed by over 300 researchers) [25] [26]. In March 1998, SCO released a US$100 individual non-commercial "Ancient UNIX" licence covering 1st through 7th Editions, 32V, PWB, and Mini-UNIX [25] [26]. Inclusion of 32V was necessary because a 32V licence was required to obtain CSRG's tainted Berkeley Software releases [25] [26]. This transaction involved The Santa Cruz Operation ("old SCO"), distinct from The SCO Group (formerly Caldera International) [25] [26].

In January 2002, Caldera International issued an expanded Ancient UNIX licence following its acquisition of SCO's server division in 2001. CEO Ransom Love granted non-exclusive, royalty-free redistribution rights for UNIX Editions 1 through 7 — including the V6 kernel annotated by Lions — for non-commercial and commercial use [6]:

"Caldera International, Inc. hereby grants a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to redistributable UNIX 1st through 7th Editions source code for non-commercial and commercial use." — Ransom Love, CEO, Caldera International, Jan. 23, 2002 [6]

Although SCO Group v. Novell (2010/2011) later determined that Novell retained the underlying copyrights [7], Novell never disputed or revoked Caldera's 2002 licence grant.

The UNIX V6 source code is de-facto unencumbered, as no copyright holder has initiated legal action against its distribution, satisfying the IEEE History Committee's standard of Freedom from Active Litigation. The Lions Commentary narrative text itself remains de-facto unencumbered following its 1996 authorized publication [1] [25] [26].

Part Four: Technical Legacy and Educational Evolution (1991–2026)

Modern Kernel Lineages (BSD, macOS, and Linux)

Modern production operating systems incorporate major architectural developments beyond early PDP-11 kernel design:

• FreeBSD / macOS (XNU): BSD incorporated 32-bit virtual memory (3BSD), socket networking (4.2BSD), VFS abstractions (4.3BSD-Reno), and clean-room utility rewrites [12] [14]. Apple's XNU kernel in macOS and iOS combines Mach microkernel thread scheduling with FreeBSD network and POSIX subsystems [17] [18]. Official Apple developer documentation and technical references cite the Lions Commentary as a foundational text for understanding core POSIX kernel concepts [17] [18].

• Linux: Linux utilizes a monolithic kernel architecture based on System V interfaces and global open-source contributions rather than V6 PDP-11 source code [36] [37] [38].

Educational Transitions and the MIT xv6 Reboot

By the early 1990s, universities transitioned away from aging PDP-11 hardware, adopting instructional platforms such as Nachos (a MIPS-simulated OS developed at UC Berkeley in 1992) [39] and JOS [16].

In 2006, Professors Frans Kaashoek and Robert Morris at MIT CSAIL created xv6 to replace JOS in course 6.828 [16]. xv6 is a multi-processor C re-implementation of UNIX V6 for x86 and RISC-V architectures, adopting Lions' two-volume, line-numbered layout format for modern computer science instruction [16].

Institutional Memory and Preservation

John Lions died in 1998 [1]. An obituary published in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing evaluated Lions' commentary as "another of the critical elements in the spread of Unix, by helping its readers understand the source code and key principles of its operating system" [43]:

"His commentary was so much appreciated by the growing Unix community that it was often photocopied, even to the point of being almost illegible, in spite of restrictions on its distribution. As the photocopies spread through the Unix community, Lions's name became almost legendary." — J. A. N. Lee, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 21, no. 2, 1999, p. 77 [43]

Archives at UNSW preserve course records (6.632) [31], student guides [32] [33], and departmental software projects such as AUSAM (Level 7 UNIX) [34].

Digital preservation by TUHS — founded by Warren Toomey at UNSW Canberra (ADFA) — maintains early UNIX source code, UNSW releases (UNSW/88, UNSW/106), and the apout PDP-11 emulator [24] [25] [26]. Toomey's work in preserving early UNIX source code is documented in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing [24]:

"Restoring early UNIX source code ensures that foundational computing artifacts remain runnable and studyable under modern emulation." — Warren Toomey, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 2010 [24]

In his acknowledgements, Toomey notes that Dennis Ritchie provided guidance and historical details during the restoration process [25].

Epilogue

John Lions' 1977 commentary established a structured method for teaching operating systems through line-by-line source code analysis [1] [2] [10]. Following a period of informal distribution caused by corporate licensing changes [9] [11], the commentary was formally republished in 1996 [1]. Lions' two-volume layout continues to influence modern operating systems pedagogy [3] [16].

Bibliography

[1] J. Lions, A Commentary on the Sixth Edition UNIX Operating System. Kensington, NSW, Australia: Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of New South Wales, 1977; reprinted, San Jose, CA, USA: Peer-to-Peer Communications, 1996.

[2] K. Thompson, "Prefatory Quote," in Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with Source Code, San Jose, CA, USA: Peer-to-Peer Communications, 1996, p. ii.

[3] D. M. Ritchie, "Prefatory Notes," in Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with Source Code, San Jose, CA, USA: Peer-to-Peer Communications, 1996, pp. v–vi.

[4] M. Tilson, "Foreword," in Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with Source Code, San Jose, CA, USA: Peer-to-Peer Communications, 1996, p. iv.

[5] UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. v. Berkeley Software Design, Inc., 832 F. Supp. 790 (D.N.J. 1993).

[6] Caldera International, Inc., "UNIX Ancient Source License," Letter of License Grant by R. Love, Lindon, UT, USA, Jan. 23, 2002. [Online]. Available: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf

[7] The SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc., Case No. 2:04-CV-00139, Verdict Form (D. Utah Mar. 30, 2010), aff'd, 578 F.3d 1201 (10th Cir. 2011).

[8] P. H. Salus, A Quarter Century of UNIX. Reading, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

[9] C. M. Kelty, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press, 2008.

[10] C. M. Kelty, "Sharing Source Code," in Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press, 2008, ch. 4, pp. 95–117, doi: 10.1515/9780822389002-007.

[11] L. Gitelman, Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press, 2014.

[12] E. S. Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming. Boston, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley, 2003.

[13] A. S. Tanenbaum, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice Hall, 1987.

[14] M. K. McKusick, "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable," in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, C. DiBona, S. Ockman, and M. Stone, Eds. Sebastopol, CA, USA: O'Reilly Media, 1999, pp. 31–46.

[15] S. J. Leffler, M. K. McKusick, M. J. Karels, and J. S. Quarterman, The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System. Reading, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley, 1989.

[16] MIT Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems (PDOS) Group, "History and Background," Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system, MIT CSAIL, Sep. 2017. [Online]. Available: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2017/xv6.html

[17] Apple Inc., "Bibliography," in Kernel Programming Guide, Apple Developer Documentation Archive, Oct. 2013. [Online]. Available: https://developer.apple.com

[18] A. Singh, Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach. Boston, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006.

[19] A. Akama, "Revisiting the Lions Book," Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Magazine, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 235–240, 1997.

[20] J. Lions and S. Iwamoto, Trans., Lions' Commentary on UNIX (Japanese Translation). Tokyo, Japan: ASCII Corporation, 1998.

[21] J. Lions and Peer-to-Peer Communications, Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with Source Code (Chinese Translation). Beijing, China: China Machine Press, 2000.

[22] S. R. Maranhão, História da Computação no Brasil: Tecnologia, Política e Autonomia. Campinas, SP, Brazil: Editora Unicamp, 1988.

[23] Cobra Computadores, SOX: Um Sistema Operacional Baseado no Padrão UNIX. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil: Coletânea Técnica Cobra, 1987.

[24] W. Toomey, "First Edition Unix: Its Creation and Restoration," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 74–82, Jul.–Sep. 2010.

[25] W. Toomey, "The Restoration of Early UNIX Artifacts," in Proc. 2009 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC '09), San Diego, CA, USA, 2009, pp. 1–12.

[26] W. Toomey, "Saving UNIX from /dev/null," The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS), 2002. [Online]. Available: https://minnie.tuhs.org/Seminars/Saving_Unix/index.html

[27] J. Reinfelds and R. Miller, "First UNIX Port to Non-DEC Hardware (Interdata 7/32)," Dept. of Computing Science, Univ. of Wollongong, NSW, Australia, Tech. Rep., 1977.

[28] UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, Berkeley Software Distribution Records, 1974–2005, Collection BANC MSS 2006/142 c, The Bancroft Library, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

[29] UC Berkeley Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Records of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, 1968–1995, Collection CU-39.3, The Bancroft Library, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

[30] UNSW Faculty of Engineering, UNSW Engineering Handbook 1977. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Univ. of New South Wales, 1977.

[31] UNSW Faculty of Engineering, UNSW Engineering Handbook 1981. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Univ. of New South Wales, 1981, p. 109.

[32] UNSW Dept. of Computer Science, Unix Beginner's Manual Level Six. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Univ. of New South Wales, Feb. 1978.

[33] G. Whale, Ed., UNIX Primer 1984-5. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of New South Wales, Jan. 17, 1984.

[34] P. Lauder, J. Lions, and C. Maltby, UNIX Level 7 AUSAM (Australian Unix Share Accounting Method). Sydney, NSW, Australia: Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of New South Wales, 1979–1981. [Online]. Available: TUHS Archive, https://www.tuhs.org

[35] W. Toomey, "Computing at UNSW and IJCAI-13," UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sydney, NSW, Australia, Tech. Rep., 2013.

[36] L. Torvalds, "Interview on the Origins of Linux and the Lions Book," CNet News / Linux History Archives, 2001.

[37] A. S. Tanenbaum and L. Torvalds, "LINUX is obsolete," Usenet comp.os.minix debate, Jan. 1992.

[38] M. J. Bach, The Design of the UNIX Operating System. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice-Hall, 1986.

[39] W. A. Christopher, S. Procter, and T. Anderson, "The Nachos instructional operating system," in Proc. 1993 USENIX Winter Technical Conference, San Diego, CA, USA, 1993, pp. 481–488.

[40] P. Lauder and R. Kummerfeld, "ACSnet: The Australian Computer Science Network," Proc. Australian Unix Users Group Conference (AUUG), Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1983.

[41] P. Lauder and K. Robinson, "Automated Assignment Assessment in ELEC70 Labs," UNSW Dept. of Electrical Engineering Technical Note, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1980.

[42] UNSW Students' Union, The Alternative Handbook: A Student Guide to Courses and Lecturers. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Univ. of New South Wales Students' Union, 1980–1984.

[43] J. A. N. Lee, "Obituary: John Lions (1937–1998)," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 21, no. 2, p. 77, Apr.–Jun. 1999, doi: 10.1109/MAHC.1999.773177.

[44] IEEE Computer Society and Association for Computing Machinery, Software Engineering 2004: Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering (SE2004). Los Alamitos, CA, USA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 2004.

[45] D. Horsfall and L. McVoy, "In Memoriam: John Lions," The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS) Mailing List Archives, Dec. 5, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-December/019585.html

Comments on the National AI Plan 

14 December 2025

Following are my personal thoughts on the National AI Plan [1]. They focus on three related areas, which I see as gaps in the Plan.

1. The Plan does not attempt to define the term "Artificial Intelligence". It instead assumes that the reader knows what "AI" means. This is a missed opportunity. Providing a definition, even acknowledging that a strict definition is difficult, provides a scoping opportunity. It provides an opportunity to state which aspects or interpretations of AI are in scope or out of scope for this Plan, and most importantly, to state reasons for this scoping in the context of this Plan. It also provides an opportunity to state what the Australian Government is doing to address those aspects and interpretations of AI that are considered to be out of scope for this Plan.

2. The plan appears to focus on large language models and generative AI, and does not explicitly mention other approaches. These other approaches are not obscure. In fact they are fast becoming mainstream. These include embodied intelligence, proof assistance, and non-binary computation. Because the Plan does not specifically address these other approaches, it misses the opportunity to address the societal challenges and opportunities they pose.
   By "embodied intelligence" I mean a wide scope of related approaches, including Internet of things, swarms, autonomous vehicles, and robotics in general. The Plan has missed the opportunity to envision the impact that autonomous agents interacting with the environment will have on agency and safety of the general public, and the challenges that this poses to laws, commerce and education [2]. See Section 3 of [3] and Section 3.2 of [4] for deeper discussions on the role of embodiment in artificial intelligence.
   Increasingly, AI systems are being combined with proof assistants to tackle benchmarks in mathematical reasoning [5]. Examples include Goedel-Prover [6], DeepSeek-Prover [7], AlphaProof [8], and HERMES [9].
   The application of non-binary computation to artificial intelligence is an active field of research. Non-binary computation includes neuromorphic computing [10,11,12] and quantum computing [13].

3. While the Plan addresses data centre capacity, and AI research and training capabilities, it does not explicitly deal with Australia's existing publicly funded high performance computing capability, nor does it explicitly address the expertise and resources needed to conduct fundamental research into AI, and especially into alternative approaches to AI. These two omissions miss the opportunity to explore what is meant by sovereign AI capability, and what resources may be needed and available to Australia to achieve such capability [14].
   Action 1 in the Plan focuses on data centre investment, giving the examples of CDC Data Centres, Firmus, Amazon and Microsoft, but it does not mention Australia's national computing infrastructure organizations such as National Computational Infrastructure, and the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre [15]. Both types of infrastructure are needed.
   Action 5 in the Plan focuses on skills, but does not explicitly mention the skills involved in research into the fundamental principles, software and hardware that is needed to support AI. The focus instead appears to be on the skills needed for the adoption and application of AI. Both types of skills are needed [16,17].

References

[1] Australian Government Department of Industry, Science and Resources (2025). National AI Plan.

[2] Vellante, D. (2025) A Strategic Analysis of the Future of AI and Robotics: From Industrial Efficiency to Embodied Intelligence, theCUBE Research.

[3] Mumuni, A., & Mumuni, F. (2025). Large language models for artificial general intelligence (AGI): A survey of foundational principles and approaches. arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.03151.

[4] Zilberman, J., & Tamir, B. (2025). AGI imagined: how is AGI configured by the theories of mind. AI & SOCIETY.

[5] Yang, K., Poesia, G., He, J., Li, W., Lauter, K., Chaudhuri, S., & Song, D. (2024). Formal Mathematical Reasoning: A New Frontier in AI. arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.16075.

[6] Lin, Y., Tang, S., Lyu, B., Yang, Z., Chung, J. H., Zhao, H., ... & Jin, C. (2025). Goedel-Prover-V2: Scaling Formal Theorem Proving with Scaffolded Data Synthesis and Self-Correction. arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.03613.

[7] Ren, Z. Z., Shao, Z., Song, J., Xin, H., Wang, H., Zhao, W., ... & Ruan, C. (2025). DeepSeek-Prover-V2: Advancing Formal Mathematical Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning for Subgoal Decomposition. arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.21801.

[8] Hubert, T., Mehta, R., Sartran, L., Horváth, M. Z., Žužić, G., Wieser, E., ... & Silver, D. (2025). Olympiad-level formal mathematical reasoning with reinforcement learning. Nature.

[9] Ospanov, A., Feng, Z., Sun, J., Bai, H., Shen, X., & Farnia, F. (2025). HERMES: Towards Efficient and Verifiable Mathematical Reasoning in LLMs. arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.18760.

[10] Kudithipudi, D., Schuman, C., Vineyard, C. M., Pandit, T., Merkel, C., Kubendran, R., ... & Furber, S. (2025). Neuromorphic computing at scale. Nature, 637, 8047.

[11] Muir, D. R., & Sheik, S. (2025). The road to commercial success for neuromorphic technologies. Nature Communications, 16(1).

[12] Borra, R., Neuromorphic Computing: Bridging Biological Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence (2024). International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology, 14(2).

[13] García Pineda, V., Valencia-Arias, A., López Giraldo, F. E., Zapata-Ochoa, E. A. (2026) Integrating artificial intelligence and quantum computing: A systematic literature review of features and applications, International Journal of Cognitive Computing in Engineering, 7.

[14] Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE). (2024). Made in Australia: Our AI opportunity.

[15] National Computational Infrastructure. (2025). Record Demand Highlights Australia's Growing Need for Supercomputing Power. NCI News.

[16] Reynolds, M. (2018). Training the Next Generation of AI Researchers. Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA).

[17] Panchanathan, S. (2024). Envisioning the future of the AI research ecosystem. PNAS Nexus, 3(2).