Lions Book
Lions Book: n. "Source Code and Commentary on Unix level 6", by
John Lions. The two parts of this book contained (1) the entire
source listing of the Unix Version 6 kernel, and (2) a commentary on
the source discussing the algorithms. These were circulated
internally at the University of New South Wales beginning 1976-77,
and were, for years after, the _only_ detailed kernel documentation
available to anyone outside Bell Labs. Because Western Electric
wished to maintain trade secret status on the kernel, the Lions Book
was only supposed to be distributed to affiliates of source
licensees. In spite of this, it soon spread by samizdat to a good
many of the early Unix hackers.
[1996 update: The Lions book lives again! It was put back in print
as ISBN 1-57398-013-7 from Peer-To-Peer Communications, with
forewords by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. In a neat bit of
reflexivity, the page before the contents quotes this entry.]
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