Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 16:38:23 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Tyler K McGeorge" <treznor@sunflower.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD history Message-ID: <14913.13535.887486.212993@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <55810272@toto.iv>
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Tyler K McGeorge <treznor@sunflower.com> types: > 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.=20 > 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: When UCB got their first Unix tape, the *only* way you could get it was as a source distribution from WE. Everyone who had Unix had the right to work on it, and people regularly swapped patches/applications/etc. for them. The folks at UCB did enough work that they bundled them up. 3.0 was the VAX version of BSD; BSD 2.x continued through at least 2.11, as a distribution for PDP/11s. Later, the Computer Systems Research Group at UCB got a government contract to add a TCP/IP stack, which is how the 4.x distributions were funded. UCB turning into BSDI is an interesting image - what became of the tens of thousands of students, the buildings, and the other things one associates with a university? In any case, after 4.3 the federal funding vanished (the project was pretty much finished). 4.3 came in two different versions: 4.3 BSD and 4.3BSD Lite (aka Net). The latter was supposedly free of AT&T code, and hence didn't require a license from AT&T to use or sell. Many of the people at CSRG formed BSDI, to market the software they had written - without getting a license from AT&T. 386BSD was also derived from that code, and release as an open source project. AT&T objected, there was a lawsuit, AT&T got zapped for violating the BSD license, and the end result was that most of the BSD source was available for others to use. A final BSD distribution was done - 4.4BSD (requiring an AT&T license) and 4.4BSD Lite (which didn't). While this was going on, 386BSD had spawned NetBSD and FreeBSD. When it arrived, 4.4BSD Lite was merged into the ongoing development of those systems, as well as BSDI. Later, OpenBSD split from NetBSD over what amounted to personality clash. > And if the rumors I've heard have any validity, I hear FBSD 5.0 is = > planning on united OBSD, NBSD and FBSD. Yay! Well, BSDI and Walnut Creek CDROM (a source of much FreeBSD stuff) merged, and a lot of the BSDI source code became available to the FBSD group. I'm not privy to what's going on inside, but it would make sense to me if all the popular components of BSDI merged with FBSD, and BSDI started concentrating on selling support and hardware. That's pretty much what VA Linux has done for Linux. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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