Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 02:40:52 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), bartequi@inwind.it (Salvo Bartolotta), cjclark@alum.mit.edu, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The origins of FreeBSD (was: Unix 2000...) Message-ID: <200010010240.TAA18898@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20001001115221.H43885@wantadilla.lemis.com> from "Greg Lehey" at Oct 01, 2000 11:52:21 AM
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> On Sunday, 1 October 2000 at 2:03:47 +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: > >> Four years... hmmm, correct me if I am wrong or partial: in four > >> years, the FreeBSD Project not only developed a whole operating > >> system, but also achieved technical excellence. > > > > FreeBSD started from 386BSD ~ June of 1994. > > No, you're out by a year. Mid-1993. I was approached to be on the core team in May of 1994, which I declined because of the upcoming USL purchase by my then employer Novel UNIX Systems Group, which could have put FreeBSD on shaky legal ground with regards to intellectual property, were I a core team member. I didn't leave Novell for Artisoft, until I had rallied the troops to first get FreeBSD and NetBSD the same grace period that BSDI got (rather than a "cease and desist" order), and later, to get the lawsuit dropped entirely. I left for Artisoft on October 20th, 1994. If you want to pick nits, you could go to the archive on Minnie, and check out the Usenet article in which Lynne lambasted the patchkit, and the later one in which Bill withdrew permission for the 0.5 interim release. That was _truly_ the birthday of FreeBSD. If you want to count the work on 386BSD that was rolled in and later became FreeBSD, then Mid 1993 was about when the 0.5 386BSD interim release by the patch kit maintainers was OK'ed by Bill Jolitz. If you want to count the origins of the patchkit, I did the first patch to the VM system in about February, and published it in the first "386BSD unofficial FAQ", which led to my creation of the patchkit, as the patches got too big and too interrelated to publish in the FAQ. If you want to go back to the origins of 386BSD, that was about the end of the first quarter in 1992, though it wasn't published widely until later. If you want to trace the lineage further, I think you could trace it back to Bell Labs in 1974 or so. 8-). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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