Unix philosophy

[gwyn%brl-vld at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:      Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn at brl-vld>

Bell UNIX (System V) does include IPC in the form of semaphores,
shared memory, and message passing.  Berkeley UNIX (4.2BSD) includes
sockets.  The problem I see is that no one known form of IPC or
process synchronization mechanism is best for all applications.

A "semaphore" device driver was distributed long ago on a USENIX
tape; this seems like the simplest semi-portable addition one could
make to a deficient UNIX in order to give it semaphores.