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Date:      Fri, 16 Jan 1998 19:43:30 -0500 (EST)
From:      Bill Vermillion <bill@bilver.magicnet.net>
To:        freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Is FreeBSD UNIX?
Message-ID:  <199801170043.TAA03250@bilver.magicnet.net>
In-Reply-To: <19980117090750.07770@lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Jan 17, 98 09:07:50 am"

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Recently Greg Lehey said:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 1998 at 05:38:44PM +0200, Ruslan Shevchenko wrote:
> > Das Devaraj wrote:

> >> (This is _reluctantly_ sent to freeBSD-isp also, in case the
> >>  commercial folks - ISPs - see it in a different light).

> >> Can I _legally_ claim that my box running FreeBSD is UNIX?
> >> Or should it phrased that the OS is a _UNIX clone_.  Note that

> > clone.  UNIX is register trademark of X/Open.www.xopen.org

> As used in computing, a clone is a copy made to imitate the original.
> That definition doesn't fit FreeBSD.  It's more like a disowned member
> of the family.

But it's really not disowned.  When the first BSD started from the
old version 7 at Berkeley, it was built upon the AT&T code.

The 4.4 Lite was the BSD distribution with all AT&T copyrighted
code taken from it.   Since BSD was >THE< Unix for most of the
educational world, I think that BSD is closer to the original than
all the Sys V variants - that have strayed a long way from the
'true course' :-).

If you look at the BSD manual from O'Reilly, a good hunk of them
are just reprints (with slight modifications) from the old Version
7 Bell Labs books I have from about 1983.

It even feels more like the old stuff than most of the newer OS'es.
But this is just my own warped opinion.

Bill
-- 
bill@bilver.magicnet.net | bill@bilver.com



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