Editing Inferno (operating system) (section)

== History ==
[[File:Lucent 1997 Ad.jpg|thumb|upright|Lucent advertisement for Inferno in [[IEEE Internet Computing]], Volume 1, Number 2, March–April 1997]]

Inferno is a descendant of [[Plan 9 from Bell Labs]], and shares many design concepts and even source code in the kernel, particularly around devices and the Styx/9P2000 protocol.
Inferno shares with Plan 9 the Unix heritage from Bell Labs and the [[Unix philosophy]]. Many of the command line tools in Inferno were Plan 9 tools that were translated to Limbo.

In the mid-1990s, Plan 9 development was set aside in favor of Inferno.<ref>{{cite news |title=AT&T reveals plans for Java competitor |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xT4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA3 |newspaper=InfoWorld |first=Jason |last=Pontin |date=19 February 1996 |page=3}}</ref>
The new system's existence was leaked by Dennis Ritchie in early 1996, after less than a year of development on the system, and publicly presented later that year as a competitor to Java. At the same time, Bell Labs' parent company [[AT&T]] licensed Java technology from [[Sun Microsystems]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Bell Lab's Inferno aims to rival Java |date=19 February 1996 |newspaper=[[Computerworld]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jwH_IrNuHmoC&pg=PT5 |page=6 |first=Frank |last=Hayes}}</ref>

In March–April 1997 [[IEEE Internet Computing]] included an advertisement for Inferno networking software. It claimed that various devices could communicate over "any network" including the Internet, telecommunications and LANs. The advertisement stated that video games could talk to computers,–a [[PlayStation]] was pictured–cell phones could access email and voice mail was available via TV.

[[Lucent Technologies|Lucent]] used Inferno in at least two internal products: the Lucent VPN Firewall Brick, and the Lucent Pathstar phone switch. They initially tried to sell source code licenses of Inferno but found few buyers. Lucent did little marketing and missed the importance of the Internet and Inferno's relation to it. During the same time [[Sun Microsystems]] was heavily marketing its own [[Java (programming language)|Java programming language]], which was targeting a similar market, with analogous technology, that worked in [[web browser]]s and also filled the demand for [[object-oriented language]]s popular at that time. Lucent licensed Java from Sun, claiming that all Inferno devices would be made to run Java. A Java byte code to Dis byte code translator was written to facilitate that. However, Inferno still did not find customers.

The Inferno Business Unit closed after three years, and was sold to Vita Nuova Holdings. Vita Nuova continued development and offered commercial licenses to the complete system, and free downloads and licenses (not [[GNU General Public License|GPL]] compatible) for all of the system except the kernel and VM. They ported the software to new hardware and focused on distributed applications. Eventually, Vita Nuova released the 4th edition under more common [[free software]] licenses, and in 2021 they relicensed all editions under mainly the [[MIT License]].<ref name="licenses-2003"/><ref name="license-2021-mit"/><ref name="bitbucket-inferno-os"/>

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Release timeline
|-
! Date
! Release
! Comment
|-
| 1996
| Inferno Beta
| Released by Bell Labs
|-
| May 1997
| Inferno Release 1.0
| Winter 1997 Bell Labs Technical Journal Article
|-
| July 1999
| Inferno 2nd Edition
| Released by Lucent's Inferno Business Unit
|-
| June 2001
| Inferno 3rd Edition
| Released by Vita Nuova
|-
| 2004
| Inferno 4th Edition
| Open Source release; changes to many interfaces (incompatible with earlier editions); includes support for 9P2000.
|}