I was reading a recent thread, over on the FreeBSD forums about groups that quickly devolved into a discussion on the origin of the operator group:

I thought y’all would be the best place to ask the questions that arose in me during my read of the thread. 

Here they are in no special order:

1. Where did operator come from and what was it intended to solve?

2. How has it evolved.

3. What’s a good place to look/ref to read about groups, generally?

I liked one respondent’s answer about using find, heir, and the files themselves to learn about groups being used in a running system, paying attention to the owner, Audi, etc along the way and this is how I do it now, but this approach doesn’t account for the history and evolution.

Thanks!

Willu