What would the world be like if, instead of PCs, computing for the masses had arrived in the form of Unix-powered terminals similar to France's Minitel, administered not by the Baby Bells but by the US Postal Service with iron-clad First and Fourth Amendment protections after the US government took the rights to Unix from AT&T under eminent domain, put Unix into the public domain, and put the whole Bell Labs crew on the government payroll?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jun/28/minitel-france-says-farewell
@tbeckett Unix was a powerful multitasking multiuser system and a potential mainframe replacement in mid-1970s, when personal computing meant buying an Altair kit, building it yourself, and programming it.
Also, I've been using some kind of Unix-style OS since I was a young man, and had never been exposed to VMS.
