18 Mar
2017
18 Mar
'17
12:52 a.m.
This brings up questions about how GNU and BSD
operated around 1990ish.
I'm aware of Bostic's campaign to replace the AT&T code in BSD, which led
to the almost-completely-free Net/2. What I wonder is how much of this was
duplicating work also done under the GNU umbrella? How much of it was
authors donating their rewritten utilities to both projects? What was the
state of the GNU project when Bostic started his campaign?
Have a look at the following:
GNU's Bulletin, vol. 1 no. 6, January, 1989
Contents of Beta Test Tape
https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull6.html#SEC17
GNU's Bulletin, vol. 1 no. 7, June, 1989
https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull7.html
"A collection of utilities for file manipulation, including ls, mv, cp,
cat, rm, du, head, tail and cmp will be released soon."
...
"The GNU project is working to provide reimplementations of System V
features that Berkeley Unix lacks, such as improved shells and make
commands."
GNU's Bulletin, vol. 1 no. 9, June 1990
https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull9.html#SEC10
GNU Project Status Report
"We have added a collection of utilities for file manipulation to the
Pre-Release tape. The collection includes ls, mv, cp, cat, rm, du, head,
tail, cmp, chmod, mkdir, and ln."
So around same time GNU project didn't publish some the most common
tools, but soon did. I didn't check, but I am pretty sure these are all
different code than the rewritten BSD code. Duplicated work.