Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 08:30:26 -0500 (EST) From: Bill Vermillion <bill@bilver.magicnet.net> To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD UNIX? Message-ID: <199801171330.IAA16918@bilver.magicnet.net> In-Reply-To: <19980117182511.02714@lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Jan 17, 98 06:25:11 pm"
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Recently Greg Lehey said: > On Fri, Jan 16, 1998 at 07:43:30PM -0500, Bill Vermillion wrote: > > 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. > I think we're disagreeing about the term "disowned". Okay. > > It even feels more like the old stuff than most of the newer OS'es. > > But this is just my own warped opinion. > Fine. You're saying "BSD is the real UNIX". I'm saying "yes, but > we're not allowed to call it UNIX, because the other side of the > family has reserved that name for themselves". That's why I call it > disowned. But even BSD wasn't being called Unix. The BSD people wouldn't want to be caught dead running Unix - which them implied System III, or System V. Up until the early '90s you could only call your OS Unix IF it was derived from the standard tapes that AT&T shipped. About 10 years ago in the comp.unix groups there was a running thread about the 'names' of Unix. I recall that there were about 70 different names for product that came from these AT&T sources, but had been modified. They were all Unix - but couldn't be called that. Then about the only machines that ran Unix were the Vaxes and AT&T product. It's basically semantics, but I think 'disowned' is not the word - derived perhaps is better. You can always tell people that BSD is where networking really got started and if it werent' for BSD we would have the 'net as we know it today. I was at a Usenix conference in 1986 when they showed the map of the network at UCB (the home of BSD). There were 8000 machines all interconnected then - and for that year that was GIGANTIC. So if some one says BSD is not UNIX, you can tell them 'Absolutely, it's BETTER than UNIX'. Bill -- bill@bilver.magicnet.net | bill@bilver.com
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