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Date:      Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:09:14 +0100
From:      "Karel J. Bosschaart" <karelj@wop21.wop.wtb.tue.nl>
To:        Tyler K McGeorge <treznor@sunflower.com>
Cc:        "Mr. Makarand Kulkarni" <naveenpchandra@hotmail.com>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: 
Message-ID:  <20001220150913.A4001@wop21.wop.wtb.tue.nl>
In-Reply-To: <000f01c06a68$137bd700$103b7c18@treznor>; from treznor@sunflower.com on Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 03:34:39AM -0600
References:  <000601c06a67$72a0f220$1703a8c0@nirmitee> <000f01c06a68$137bd700$103b7c18@treznor>

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On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 03:34:39AM -0600, Tyler K McGeorge wrote:
> University of California at Berkeley at one point in time bought the rights 
> to work on UNIX from Bell Systems back in 1978. They shortly thereafter 
> forged their own variant of UNIX which they called BSD (Berkeley Software 
> Distribution). Soon after came 2BSD (which shipped 75 copie, as opposed to 
> the 30 shipped of BSD.) 2.8.1BSD gave way to many enhancements, and is more 
> important than 3BSD in that aspect. 
> 4BSD was released in 1980, 4.1BSD in 1981 (which has revisions made between 
> 82 and 83), 4.2 in 83, and finally 4.4BSD in 93. (I think some of those dates
> are inaccurate, but I only have one source on this at the moment.)) After 
> 4.4BSD, UCB was forced to become BSDI, which is now a major non-free Unix. 
> Using 4.4BSD, there have been multiple offspring. OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD 
> and BSD Lite. Open referring to Open source, Net referring to Networking 
> based and Free being without cost. BSD Lite is a small version of BSD (never 
> really had much experience with anything but FBSD.)
>
Some corrections:
OpenBSD focuses on security, NetBSD on portability and FreeBSD on the i386
(and alpha) platform and ease of use. All of [Open|Net|Free]BSD are both
open source and free. BSD Lite is the base for all of the BSD's, being the
final release of BSD from UCB. The 'original' 4.4BSD is called 
'encumbered' because AT&T had the lawsuit over it and claimed it contained
portions of their code. The 'small version' is PicoBSD, which is based 
on FreeBSD.
Look up http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html for
a very nice history of Berkely Unix.

> And if the rumors I've heard have any validity, I hear FBSD 5.0 is planning 
> on united OBSD, NBSD and FBSD. Yay!

I'm wondering where you heard that rumors... maybe you're referring to the
fact that BSDI (the company behind the commercial BSD version) and Walnut
Creek Cdrom (the company selling FreeBSD CDroms and main sponsor of
FreeBSD) have merged this year. What it means for the code base is that
portions of BSD/OS will be merged into FreeBSD, i.e. the SMP code of
FreeBSD 5.0 is totally rewritten now based on BSD/OS - I don't know about
details though. The official announcement about the merger can be found
here http://www.wccdrom.com/press/merger.html .

OpenBSD and NetBSD are not really involved in this merger, but as open
source projects it's just natural that code is going from one to another.
For example, OpenSSH was initiated by the OpenBSD guys but became rather
quickly integrated in FreeBSD as well.

Note that Walnut Creek sold also other products besides FreeBSD, which are
being continued of course. One of them is Slackware Linux :-). See 
http://www.wccdrom.com/ for their cdroms.

>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Mr. Makarand Kulkarni 
>   To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG 
>   Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 2:24 AM
> 
> 
>   Sir i want to know what is the meaning of FreeBSD, please let me know its fullform
>

BSD stands for 'Berkeley Software Distribution', and FreeBSD is a BSD version
based on 4.4BSD-Lite2.

Karel.


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