One, on the computing side, the threat of breakup is part of what was good about the Bell Labs culture before the actual breakup. Why was Unix free-ish? Because

One, on the computing side, the threat of breakup is part of what was good about the Bell Labs culture before the actual breakup. Why was Unix free-ish? Because Bell Labs was forbidden from going into computers. After the breakup, they suddenly expected to make money from Unix, and that was a major problem for Plan 9. Okay, so that didn't work out, but if Bell Labs had been trying to make money from Unix from the beginning, it would have been worse. Two, it's hard to get the exact cause-and-effect, but clearly the breakup coincides with a period of extreme telecommunications flourishing. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but it clearly didn't hurt on the telcom side.