Tom was my manager for a while when I was a programmer at UCSF (~20 years after this event). He ran the Computer Graphics Lab which had a bunch of SGIs and DEC

Tom was my manager for a while when I was a programmer at UCSF (~20 years after this event). He ran the Computer Graphics Lab which had a bunch of SGIs and DEC Alpha servers to do molecular modelling and I was 'the first linux guy in the group' (they asked me why I used linux when bsd existed). I remember him saying that whenever he licensed a commercial UNIX he insisted the contract include a section giving him access to the source code for the kernel ("because you never know when you will have to recompile the kernel or debug a kernel-space problem"). He's also known for presenting at USENIX on how to enable a hardware-disabled (but physically present) instruction on a cheaper version of the PDP/11. You'd cut a trace in the microcode and add a jumper wire, and presto! you had a fast floating point instruction that was previously disabled.