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Date:      Sat, 24 Jul 1999 00:11:26 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        dg@root.com
Cc:        tlambert@primenet.com, unknown@riverstyx.net, brett@lariat.org, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: poor ethernet performance?
Message-ID:  <199907240011.RAA16381@usr09.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <199907231424.HAA22103@implode.root.com> from "David Greenman" at Jul 23, 99 07:24:20 am

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> >> I'm curious -- How long has FreeBSD existed?
> >
> >FreeBSD is a direct descendent of a planned 0.5 interim release of
> >386BSD.  It was released as FreeBSD when Bill Jolitz denied the
> >use of the 386BSD trademark in order to prevent the release, and
> >backed out of the agreement whereby the 0.5 interim release was
> >being prepared.  The denial came about as a result of a firestorm
> >on Usenet, touched off by Lynne Jolitz.
> >
> >As a derivative work of 386BSD 0.1, FreeBSD can properly be said
> >to have existed as long as 386BSD existed, even though the 2.x
> >code branch is 4.4BSD-Lite derived and contains no 386BSD code.
> >
> >In other words, FreeBSD dates to 1991.
> 
>    386BSD 0.0 was released in March 1992. 0.1 didn't come out until mid-92.
> FreeBSD 1.0 was released in Q4 1993. The first release of Linux was two
> years earlier. We also had the USL lawsuit set us back a fair bit. The
> point is that although the codebase is much older than Linux, BSD was
> released to the public well after Linux was.

I'm pretty sure that it was Slightly earlier, but maybe still 1992;
Bill's "The Road Not Taken" was published on 14 Mar 1992:

	http://www.de.freebsd.org/de/ftp/releases/386BSD-0.0

And this was a response to the question of why 386BSD-0.0 was
not released through Berkeley (the release predates this message).

The anti-UUNET request in the license actually predates "The
Road Not Taken".

I'm pretty sure my 0.0 floppy predates even this, but I don't
have an old enough machine to boot it on, and it wouldn't
boot on newer hardware because it doesn't have my "640k"
patch (the first of those listed in the Unofficial FAQ, and
what later inspired me to create the patchkit).  Maybe next
time I visit Utah; they still have all the old machines there.

It looks like Linux has a "history project":

	http://www.linuxsa.org.au/meetings/1997-06/intro/page03.html

Which claims a 0.02 "release" on 5 Oct 1991.  As I remember it,
this was a Minix kernel replacement, and didn't boot multiuser
until sometime in 1992 (the "history" claims March 1992 for 0.95,
but I think the boot multiuser milestome was 0.89 -- I used to
follow both projects back then, before the license became an
impediment to actual commercial work).

When you go back that far, it looks like the archives start
to degrade into web inaccessibility, which is really a shame;
there is a PhD in Internet History waiting for some ambitious
soul who is willing to trace back through peoples tape
archives to get it... it's sad to think of the information just
vanishing.  Like the "Futurama" story about the moon landing
being inspired by "Some day Alice, some day... Whoosh!  Right to
the moon!".  8-(.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.


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