Date: 27 Sep 2002 19:15:21 -0700 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Congrats to Brett Glass for new BSD history article Message-ID: <wq65wq6erq.5wq@localhost.localdomain>
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Which is at
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,555451,00.asp
and has been mentioned at
http://daily.daemonnews.org/
and
http://slashdot.org/
http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/27/1655220&mode=thread&tid=122&threshold=0
That was much better than the protest he seemed to be contemplating.
And good coverage and detail for an article.
I'll mention one quibble which someone might be able to straighten me
out about. Though it's believable that the "Berkeley Software
Distribution" name was "first given" to something that was only an
"enhancement" or "suppliment", it seems to me that the introduction
is somewhat misleading by not mentioning how soon the term "BSD"
became a name for a complete OS. This article from 1984 certainly
implies it was thought of as an OS long before the mass-replacement
of the AT&T code of the early '90s before it was "freed":
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/3909.html
A History of UNIX before Berkeley: UNIX® Evolution, 1975-1984
And it provides this clue which implies that the B.S.D. was actually an
AT&T release which only contained some Berkeley software:
And when the 4.1BSD release of the system came out, I was pleasantly
surprised to see that style and diction were present [Cher1981a].
Bell Labs has a policy of sometimes releasing software to
educational institutions; this probably explains the release at
Berkeley.
Though the B.S.D. long contained (some) "free" Berkely code, I don't
think it's fair to try to get people to consider the B.S.D. as having
initially been free, even if it was licensed to some schools for no cost.
The 75-84 history also refers to "buying a 4.1 or 4.2BSD system", which
speaks to its non-freeness (in 1984), but that might be referring only
to the price of the tapes and handling, etc.; I can't remember if AT&T
licensed their part of the BSDs for a fee or only to the schools for
free.
After writing the above (and mis-posting it to -doc), I read at
http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/sharing.html
this:
Eventually, many of these enhancements were incorporated into what
became known as Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Version 4.2,
which many other universities also bought.
and:
Ritchie recalled, "The contractors got the UNIX licenses from Bell
Labs, but they got the BSD software from Berkeley."
Anybody know when the B.S.D. first became a complete OS? (Doesn't
4.2 sound too late? Was 4.1 just patches and extras?)
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