31 Aug
2024
31 Aug
'24
4:12 a.m.
From: Kevin Bowling
https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent page
on seem to suggest
it originated off Net/2 directly.
I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
*BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have gotten
details wrong
I myself later just tried to quickly, without much effort, work out roughly
what the relationship was between those *BSD systems, based on what other
people had written. E.g the now-'BSD/OS' page was originally at
'386/BSD',
and I seem to have worked out that it's correct name was BSD/OS and moved it
there. The BSD/386 page is probably roughly correct, since it contains a scan
of a contemporary ad for it.
(So confusing that '386BSD' is something different from 'BSD/386'. Was
there ever
actually a '386/BSD'?)
Someone who knows the early history of all the *BSD systems (as in, you lived
through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any errors therein.
Noel
31 Aug
31 Aug
4:40 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 9:12 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
I am not that person but I hit the google pretty hard to mostly
satisfy my curiosity. I would be delighted to hear from such a
person. Sadly, I think the best guy would have been Mike Karels.
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2. Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
I don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
Not much sourcing to go on for BSD/OS 3.x.
Luckily for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
*
https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.…
*
https://ia800900.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/21/items/bsdos-4.…
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on but we can take an indirect
approach from some FreeBSD SMPng reports where BSDi donated source
code that was not used wholesale but instead had to be reintegrated or
rewritten:
* http://www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html
* https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/lehey/le…
And what I was initially after, a comparative report on how BSD/OS
related to others:
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix99/full_papers/metz/metz.pdf
(page 6)
I would be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2 that eventually wound
up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in its later years. According to
grog in (www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html) there
was an attempt by BSDi to rebase to FreeBSD but it was abandoned.
I've found scant detail on what WindRiver did with 5.0 and 5.1 so I am
unsure, but in playing around with 5.1 it does have FreeBSD's CAM
layer but does not look like i.e. FreeBSD 5.x in a variety of material
ways.
Regards,
Kevin
From: Kevin Bowling
https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent
page on seem to suggest
it originated off Net/2 directly.
I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
*BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have gotten
details wrong
I myself later just tried to quickly, without much effort, work out roughly
what the relationship was between those *BSD systems, based on what other
people had written. E.g the now-'BSD/OS' page was originally at
'386/BSD',
and I seem to have worked out that it's correct name was BSD/OS and moved it
there. The BSD/386 page is probably roughly correct, since it contains a scan
of a contemporary ad for it.
(So confusing that '386BSD' is something different from 'BSD/386'.
Was there ever
actually a '386/BSD'?)
Someone who knows the early history of all the *BSD systems (as in, you lived
through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any errors therein. Noel
6:38 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Saturday, 31 August 2024 at 0:12:16 -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
FWIW, my understanding is also that it came from Net/2. But it's been
a few years now, and I wasn't directly involved. I just can't think
of anything else from which it could have been derived.
From: Kevin
Bowling
https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent
page on seem to suggest
it originated off Net/2 directly.
I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
*BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have gotten
details wrong (So confusing that '386BSD' is something
different from
'BSD/386'. Was there ever actually a '386/BSD'?)
Not to my knowledge.
Someone who knows the early history of all the *BSD
systems (as in,
you lived through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any
errors therein.
I wouldn't exactly call it early history, but my first exposure to
(any kind of) BSD was in March 1992, when I installed BSDI's BSD/386
(something like Beta 0.3.1). You can read more than you want at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-mar1992.php
I subsequently (August 1992) visited Rob Kolstad, who was running the
show at the time, and he filled me in. With his help, what I recall
is:
- Some time in or before 1991, a company called Berkeley Software
Design Inc (BSDI) was formed with the intention of completing and
marketing a BSD variant. The system was released as BSD/386 in
1992.
- BSDI had a number of prominent BSD people, including Bill Jolitz.
Bill was not in agreement that they should charge money for it, and
as Rob tells me, in December 1991 Bill left the company after
significant altercations, destroying all his work. He later
released his version, 386BSD.
- At some later date BSDI released a SPARC port, at which point the
name BSD/386 seemed inappropriate, so they changed it to BSD/OS. I
have a CD set of release 2.0 labeled BSD/OS.
- The last CD set I have is undated, version 3.0, labeled BSDI
Internet Server. I think it was still called BSD/OS, but I can't be
sure.
Round this time I moved away from BSD/OS, since it cost money, and
FreeBSD seemed to be just as good.
- In June 2000 we (FreeBSD) discussed merging the code bases of BSD/OS
and FreeBSD, specifically for SMP improvements. At the time the
BSD/OS release was 4.x, and we were looking at the 5.0 code. This
is also the first time where I saw the name written as BSDi;
previously, including all the CDs, it was always BSDI.
On Friday, 30 August 2024 at 21:40:29 -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2. Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
As mentioned above, not at all. When the first flaky 386BSD betas
were released, BSD/386 was already up and running.
I don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it
seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
Yes, this would have been one of the results of the AT&T lawsuit.
FreeBSD 2.0 was also rebased on 4.4BSD-Lite.
Luckily for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
*
https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.…
Yes, that looks good. It also narrows the time frame for when BSDI
became BSDi, some time between July 1998 and June 2000.
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on but we
can take an indirect
approach from some FreeBSD SMPng reports where BSDi donated source
code that was not used wholesale but instead had to be reintegrated or
rewritten:
* http://www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html
Heh. I had forgotten about that.
I would be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_
a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2
Yes, I think so. I can't think of anything else that could have been
in between.
... that eventually wound up looking a little bit like
FreeBSD in
its later years.
Hmm. You haven't discussed how FreeBSD evolved, which was from
386BSD. And my understanding is that 386BSD, like BSD/386, was also
derived from Net/2. I used both BSD/OS and FreeBSD side by side for a
number of years without noticing significant differences. It wasn't
until I started porting the SMP code from BSD/OS 5.0 to FreBSD
(coincidentally also 5.0) that I realized how different the kernel had
become.
According to grog in
(www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html) there was an
attempt by BSDi to rebase to FreeBSD but it was abandoned.
My recollection was that the intention was to merge rather than
rebase. What we did do (the SMP code) was definitely from BSD/OS to
FreeBSD. The rest of the merge idea didn't get very far, and I can't
recall any significant attempts to push it forward.
I've found scant detail on what WindRiver did
with 5.0 and 5.1 so I
am unsure, but in playing around with 5.1 it does have FreeBSD's CAM
layer but does not look like i.e. FreeBSD 5.x in a variety of
material ways.
It's worth considering what things were like at the time. You, as
potential user, have the choice: BSD/OS for $1000 or FreeBSD for free.
What advantage do you get from BSD/OS? Yes, there were some, but they
weren't really enough to keep BSD/OS viable. That's why I had made
the change a few years earlier, and I don't think that WindRiver's
heart was really in it. So the SMP code was really something like a
swan song.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
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2:13 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at 12:38 AM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com>
wrote:
As did NetBSD for 1.0, though they took a different tact: FreeBSD did
a fresh import into a fresh repo, while NetBSD removed bits incrementally
until it was clean, but then had issues making their repo public due to the
settlement with AT&T.
Everybody had to rebase. Nobody could continue to use NET/2 that was using
it when the lawsuit started. After 4.4-lite came out, there was no real
reason for
others to start with net/2, so I'm not aware of anybody else using that
code for
a full kernel.
Yes. By the time SMPNG had started, the divergence made lots of the
kernel code not a drop in. But lots of code was integrated into SMPNG,
in addition to lots being written / modified.
BSDi came from net/2. FreeBSD came from net/2. They shared code
back and forth in the FreeBSD 3.x, 4.x, 5.x and 6.x time period.
Yes. net/2 -> BSD/386 -> BSD/OS and net/2 -> 386bsd -> patch kit ->
FreeBSD.
But after the BSD/386, BSDi added SMP work (ASMP) and some vm improvements.
They did a lot of driver work, including supporting PC Cards and a few
other things.
They also wrote 'witness' to debug their locking work that would wind up
later in FreeBSD.
FreeBSD also added VM improvement from John Dyson in 3.x and 4.x as well as
ASMP support in 4.x from Steve Passe. CAM was added between 3 and 4 as well,
so we lost a bunch of drivers because CAM was a steep learning curve
compared
to the Julian Elischer scsi code that had come before (though in the end not
that different from it, the different world view was hard to approach).
FreeBSD also
got a new device model in 3.2 by Doug Rabson (to this day called Newbus,
despite
being over 25 years on from whatever oldbus was).
During this time, small bits of code flowed back and forth. You can still
find commits
that mention the committer got the code from BSDi, though sometimes that's
spelled
'from Mike Karls' :).
So BSD/386 was 1992 and FreeBSD 1.0 was late 1993. SMP/ng work started in
2001
or so, almost a full decade of evolution where both groups were heavily
innovating
core parts of the kernel. These changes made it hard to drop in code.
That's what I recall as well. I do recall that FreeBSD had to significantly
rework much of the code we got from BSD/OS due to the evolution
in both the kernel, and some of Steve Passe's work had to be unwound
before we could move forward. And it took years to get done. We'd originally
hoped to do a release in like 2001, and then did a tech preview of 5.0 in
2003
a full release in 5.2 in 2004 that was useable, but it wasn't really until
maybe
2007 or so that SMP was solid.
Yes. BSDi's business model hadn't expected the rise of Open Source being
serious competitors. And the pressures from Linux also helped to slow sales
around the time the rebase / merge / whatever had been contemplated. Plus
the sale to WindRiver was supposed to be this wonderful thing, but in the
end turned out to be not so great.
I've not studied the BSDi CAM. I'll have to do that. I have studied the
Ultrix/OSF/1
CAM and it is quite different than the FreeBSD CAM (which has evolved
significantly
since 3.x days). The notion of source code compatibility for all SCSI
drivers was an
interesting thing, but even between the Ultrix and FreeBSD CAMs, there's
huge differences
in headers and function blocks that don't seem to be described by the
standard and
that need slightly different code as well... I've also not been able to
find source to
the original MacOS CAM nor the early DOS CAM frameworks, though references
to
them litter the early literature from the mid 90s. Both of them moved on
from CAM
after the first generation of SCSI devices.
Warner
On Saturday, 31 August 2024 at 0:12:16 -0400, Noel
Chiappa wrote:
gotten
Yes. They started with net/2. Other accounts have Bill Jolitz bringing some
preliminary 386 porting work to BSDi and then leaving in a huff over
charging for it. He released 386BSD based on that work (or a redo of
that work, I've seen both accounts, not sure which one to believe). He
released
them to the world, and then had no ability to manage the project he created
leading to the patch kit which without a leader fissioned into NetBSD
and FreeBSD, each with different aims.
From:
Kevin Bowling
https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent
page on seem to suggest
it originated off Net/2 directly.
I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of the
*BSD pages were done by people I don't know well, and who might have details wrong
FWIW, my understanding is also that it came from Net/2. But it's been
a few years now, and I wasn't directly involved. I just can't think
of anything else from which it could have been derived.
(So confusing that '386BSD' is
something different from
'BSD/386'. Was there ever actually a '386/BSD'?)
Not to my knowledge.
Someone who knows the early history of all the
*BSD systems (as in,
you lived through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any
errors therein.
I wouldn't exactly call it early history, but my first exposure to
(any kind of) BSD was in March 1992, when I installed BSDI's BSD/386
(something like Beta 0.3.1). You can read more than you want at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-mar1992.php
I subsequently (August 1992) visited Rob Kolstad, who was running the
show at the time, and he filled me in. With his help, what I recall
is:
- Some time in or before 1991, a company called Berkeley Software
Design Inc (BSDI) was formed with the intention of completing and
marketing a BSD variant. The system was released as BSD/386 in
1992.
- BSDI had a number of prominent BSD people, including Bill Jolitz.
Bill was not in agreement that they should charge money for it, and
as Rob tells me, in December 1991 Bill left the company after
significant altercations, destroying all his work. He later
released his version, 386BSD.
- At some later date BSDI released a SPARC port, at
which point the
name BSD/386 seemed inappropriate, so they changed it to BSD/OS. I
have a CD set of release 2.0 labeled BSD/OS.
- The last CD set I have is undated, version 3.0, labeled BSDI
Internet Server. I think it was still called BSD/OS, but I can't be
sure.
Round this time I moved away from BSD/OS, since it cost money, and
FreeBSD seemed to be just as good.
- In June 2000 we (FreeBSD) discussed merging the code bases of BSD/OS
and FreeBSD, specifically for SMP improvements. At the time the
BSD/OS release was 4.x, and we were looking at the 5.0 code. This
is also the first time where I saw the name written as BSDi;
previously, including all the CDs, it was always BSDI.
There were also a number of items that did get merged into FreeBSD at
this time. We also looked at the PC Card stack moving over, but I didn't
have the time to get it working on FreeBSD because significant SMPNG
work made bringing over the code more difficult and a bigger project than
I had time for.
On Friday, 30 August 2024 at 21:40:29 -0700, Kevin
Bowling wrote:
Yes. Jolitz code was in both, but BSDi's BSD/386 was first. There was
a longer beta for it as well. That code circulated a bit before it was
officially released. I think this was to attract VC funding for BSDi, but
that detail is from a half-remembered conversation with Mike Karls and
Kirk McKusick over beers far too many years ago.
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2. Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
As mentioned above, not at all. When the first flaky 386BSD betas
were released, BSD/386 was already up and running.
I don't
have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
Yes, this would have been one of the results of the AT&T lawsuit.
FreeBSD 2.0 was also rebased on 4.4BSD-Lite.
Luckily for
BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
*
https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.…
Yes, that looks good. It also narrows the time frame for when BSDI
became BSDi, some time between July 1998 and June 2000.
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on but
we can take an indirect
approach from some FreeBSD SMPng reports where BSDi donated source
code that was not used wholesale but instead had to be reintegrated or
rewritten:
* http://www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html
Heh. I had forgotten about that.
I would be
pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2
Yes, I think so. I can't think of anything else that could have been
in between.
... that
eventually wound up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in
its later years.
Hmm. You haven't discussed how FreeBSD evolved, which was from
386BSD. And my understanding is that 386BSD, like BSD/386, was also
derived from Net/2. I used both BSD/OS and FreeBSD side by side for a
number of years without noticing significant differences. It wasn't
until I started porting the SMP code from BSD/OS 5.0 to FreBSD
(coincidentally also 5.0) that I realized how different the kernel had
become.
According to
grog in
(www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html) there was an
attempt by BSDi to rebase to FreeBSD but it was abandoned.
My recollection was that the intention was to merge rather than
rebase. What we did do (the SMP code) was definitely from BSD/OS to
FreeBSD. The rest of the merge idea didn't get very far, and I can't
recall any significant attempts to push it forward.
I've
found scant detail on what WindRiver did with 5.0 and 5.1 so I
am unsure, but in playing around with 5.1 it does have FreeBSD's CAM
layer but does not look like i.e. FreeBSD 5.x in a variety of
material ways.
It's worth considering what things were like at the time. You, as
potential user, have the choice: BSD/OS for $1000 or FreeBSD for free.
What advantage do you get from BSD/OS? Yes, there were some, but they
weren't really enough to keep BSD/OS viable. That's why I had made
the change a few years earlier, and I don't think that WindRiver's
heart was really in it. So the SMP code was really something like a
swan song.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php
6:56 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On 8/31/24 10:13 AM, Warner Losh wrote:
Yes. They started with net/2. Other accounts have Bill
Jolitz bringing some
preliminary 386 porting work to BSDi and then leaving in a huff over
charging for it.
Yep. I remember the BSD BOF at one Usenix (1992 maybe?) where Bill got up
from his seat and started yelling at Kirk/Mike/Keith, asking how they could
live with themselves. Good times.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
7:31 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at 02:56:10PM -0400, Chet Ramey via TUHS wrote:
On 8/31/24 10:13 AM, Warner Losh wrote:
I actually hired Bill because I knew about that drama and he really got the
short end of the stick. Unfairly, in my opinion. It's sad. So I gave
him a job for a while.
--lm
Yes. They started with net/2. Other accounts have
Bill Jolitz bringing some
preliminary 386 porting work to BSDi and then leaving in a huff over
charging for it.
Yep. I remember the BSD BOF at one Usenix (1992 maybe?) where Bill got up
from his seat and started yelling at Kirk/Mike/Keith, asking how they could
live with themselves. Good times. 
8:01 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
I was interested in BSDi initially because of the AT&T lawsuit against BSDi
and the University of California Board of Regents. Dumb move, and relevant
only that it suppressed the distribution and use of BSD-based Unix while
Linux took off, while doing nothing good for AT&T.
Rob Kolstad, the CEO of BSDi, told me that they were paying Jolitz to port
the memory management to the 386 architecture, then Jolitz got upset over
the BSD386 version costing money. Some companies needed a commercially
supported BSD, including UUnet, who used BSD for their port concentrators
(where they connected up the dozens of modems used for dial-in access to
the Internet). Rick Adams (UUnet) was involved in the lawsuit because he
wanted a BSD for his business, and supported BSDi financially AFAIK.
Today, FreeBSD does this with support from donations to the FreeBSD
Foundation.
Rik
On Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at 7:14 AM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at 12:38 AM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com>
wrote:
As did NetBSD for 1.0, though they took a different tact: FreeBSD did
a fresh import into a fresh repo, while NetBSD removed bits incrementally
until it was clean, but then had issues making their repo public due to the
settlement with AT&T.
Everybody had to rebase. Nobody could continue to use NET/2 that was using
it when the lawsuit started. After 4.4-lite came out, there was no real
reason for
others to start with net/2, so I'm not aware of anybody else using that
code for
a full kernel.
Yes. By the time SMPNG had started, the divergence made lots of the
kernel code not a drop in. But lots of code was integrated into SMPNG,
in addition to lots being written / modified.
BSDi came from net/2. FreeBSD came from net/2. They shared code
back and forth in the FreeBSD 3.x, 4.x, 5.x and 6.x time period.
Yes. net/2 -> BSD/386 -> BSD/OS and net/2 -> 386bsd -> patch kit ->
FreeBSD.
But after the BSD/386, BSDi added SMP work (ASMP) and some vm improvements.
They did a lot of driver work, including supporting PC Cards and a few
other things.
They also wrote 'witness' to debug their locking work that would wind up
later in FreeBSD.
FreeBSD also added VM improvement from John Dyson in 3.x and 4.x as well as
ASMP support in 4.x from Steve Passe. CAM was added between 3 and 4 as
well,
so we lost a bunch of drivers because CAM was a steep learning curve
compared
to the Julian Elischer scsi code that had come before (though in the end
not
that different from it, the different world view was hard to approach).
FreeBSD also
got a new device model in 3.2 by Doug Rabson (to this day called Newbus,
despite
being over 25 years on from whatever oldbus was).
During this time, small bits of code flowed back and forth. You can still
find commits
that mention the committer got the code from BSDi, though sometimes that's
spelled
'from Mike Karls' :).
So BSD/386 was 1992 and FreeBSD 1.0 was late 1993. SMP/ng work started in
2001
or so, almost a full decade of evolution where both groups were heavily
innovating
core parts of the kernel. These changes made it hard to drop in code.
That's what I recall as well. I do recall that FreeBSD had to significantly
rework much of the code we got from BSD/OS due to the evolution
in both the kernel, and some of Steve Passe's work had to be unwound
before we could move forward. And it took years to get done. We'd
originally
hoped to do a release in like 2001, and then did a tech preview of 5.0 in
2003
a full release in 5.2 in 2004 that was useable, but it wasn't really until
maybe
2007 or so that SMP was solid.
Yes. BSDi's business model hadn't expected the rise of Open Source being
serious competitors. And the pressures from Linux also helped to slow sales
around the time the rebase / merge / whatever had been contemplated. Plus
the sale to WindRiver was supposed to be this wonderful thing, but in the
end turned out to be not so great.
I've not studied the BSDi CAM. I'll have to do that. I have studied the
Ultrix/OSF/1
CAM and it is quite different than the FreeBSD CAM (which has evolved
significantly
since 3.x days). The notion of source code compatibility for all SCSI
drivers was an
interesting thing, but even between the Ultrix and FreeBSD CAMs, there's
huge differences
in headers and function blocks that don't seem to be described by the
standard and
that need slightly different code as well... I've also not been able to
find source to
the original MacOS CAM nor the early DOS CAM frameworks, though references
to
them litter the early literature from the mid 90s. Both of them moved on
from CAM
after the first generation of SCSI devices.
Warner
On Saturday, 31 August 2024 at 0:12:16 -0400,
Noel Chiappa wrote:
suggest
the
Yes. They started with net/2. Other accounts have Bill Jolitz bringing some
preliminary 386 porting work to BSDi and then leaving in a huff over
charging for it. He released 386BSD based on that work (or a redo of
that work, I've seen both accounts, not sure which one to believe). He
released
them to the world, and then had no ability to manage the project he created
leading to the patch kit which without a leader fissioned into NetBSD
and FreeBSD, each with different aims.
From:
Kevin Bowling
> https://gunkies.org/wiki/BSD/386 and the parent page on seem to it
originated off Net/2 directly.
I wouldn't be putting too much weight on what that page says; most of *BSD pages were done by people I don't know
well, and who might have
gotten
details wrong
FWIW, my understanding is also that it came from Net/2. But it's been
a few years now, and I wasn't directly involved. I just can't think
of anything else from which it could have been derived.
(So confusing that '386BSD' is
something different from
'BSD/386'. Was there ever actually a '386/BSD'?)
Not to my knowledge.
Someone who knows the early history of all the
*BSD systems (as in,
you lived through all that) is welcome, nay invited, to fix any
errors therein.
I wouldn't exactly call it early history, but my first exposure to
(any kind of) BSD was in March 1992, when I installed BSDI's BSD/386
(something like Beta 0.3.1). You can read more than you want at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-mar1992.php
I subsequently (August 1992) visited Rob Kolstad, who was running the
show at the time, and he filled me in. With his help, what I recall
is:
- Some time in or before 1991, a company called Berkeley Software
Design Inc (BSDI) was formed with the intention of completing and
marketing a BSD variant. The system was released as BSD/386 in
1992.
- BSDI had a number of prominent BSD people, including Bill Jolitz.
Bill was not in agreement that they should charge money for it, and
as Rob tells me, in December 1991 Bill left the company after
significant altercations, destroying all his work. He later
released his version, 386BSD.
- At some later date BSDI released a SPARC port,
at which point the
name BSD/386 seemed inappropriate, so they changed it to BSD/OS. I
have a CD set of release 2.0 labeled BSD/OS.
- The last CD set I have is undated, version 3.0, labeled BSDI
Internet Server. I think it was still called BSD/OS, but I can't be
sure.
Round this time I moved away from BSD/OS, since it cost money, and
FreeBSD seemed to be just as good.
- In June 2000 we (FreeBSD) discussed merging the code bases of BSD/OS
and FreeBSD, specifically for SMP improvements. At the time the
BSD/OS release was 4.x, and we were looking at the 5.0 code. This
is also the first time where I saw the name written as BSDi;
previously, including all the CDs, it was always BSDI.
There were also a number of items that did get merged into FreeBSD at
this time. We also looked at the PC Card stack moving over, but I didn't
have the time to get it working on FreeBSD because significant SMPNG
work made bringing over the code more difficult and a bigger project than
I had time for.
On Friday, 30 August 2024 at 21:40:29 -0700,
Kevin Bowling wrote:
Yes. Jolitz code was in both, but BSDi's BSD/386 was first. There was
a longer beta for it as well. That code circulated a bit before it was
officially released. I think this was to attract VC funding for BSDi, but
that detail is from a half-remembered conversation with Mike Karls and
Kirk McKusick over beers far too many years ago.
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2. Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
As mentioned above, not at all. When the first flaky 386BSD betas
were released, BSD/386 was already up and running.
I
don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
Yes, this would have been one of the results of the AT&T lawsuit.
FreeBSD 2.0 was also rebased on 4.4BSD-Lite.
Luckily
for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
*
https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.…
Yes, that looks good. It also narrows the time frame for when BSDI
became BSDi, some time between July 1998 and June 2000.
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on but
we can take an indirect
approach from some FreeBSD SMPng reports where BSDi donated source
code that was not used wholesale but instead had to be reintegrated or
rewritten:
* http://www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html
Heh. I had forgotten about that.
I would
be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2
Yes, I think so. I can't think of anything else that could have been
in between.
... that
eventually wound up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in
its later years.
Hmm. You haven't discussed how FreeBSD evolved, which was from
386BSD. And my understanding is that 386BSD, like BSD/386, was also
derived from Net/2. I used both BSD/OS and FreeBSD side by side for a
number of years without noticing significant differences. It wasn't
until I started porting the SMP code from BSD/OS 5.0 to FreBSD
(coincidentally also 5.0) that I realized how different the kernel had
become.
According
to grog in
(www.lemis.com/grog/Daemons-advocate/unix-way-c.html) there was an
attempt by BSDi to rebase to FreeBSD but it was abandoned.
My recollection was that the intention was to merge rather than
rebase. What we did do (the SMP code) was definitely from BSD/OS to
FreeBSD. The rest of the merge idea didn't get very far, and I can't
recall any significant attempts to push it forward.
I've
found scant detail on what WindRiver did with 5.0 and 5.1 so I
am unsure, but in playing around with 5.1 it does have FreeBSD's CAM
layer but does not look like i.e. FreeBSD 5.x in a variety of
material ways.
It's worth considering what things were like at the time. You, as
potential user, have the choice: BSD/OS for $1000 or FreeBSD for free.
What advantage do you get from BSD/OS? Yes, there were some, but they
weren't really enough to keep BSD/OS viable. That's why I had made
the change a few years earlier, and I don't think that WindRiver's
heart was really in it. So the SMP code was really something like a
swan song.
Greg
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4 Sep
4 Sep
3:16 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
Greg 'groggy' Lehey writes:
In the mid 90s I was at the U of Northern British Columbia. In
late 1992 or early 93 we acqired a site licence for BSD/386 (with
source) for the U. IIRC it was mosly Net/2 at the start, with
some proprietary BSDi kernel (and other) enhancements.
When the campus opened in 1994 we had it deployed on > 100
student PC workstations, running in a mostly "dataless"
configuration (in Sun speak). It worked very well, exept
for the X server, which regularly dumped core. I was more
that a little surprised (and annoyed) to one day discover
every one of those core dump was being emailed back to the
mother ship. I forget who I takled to as BSDI about this,
but they mentioned they were even more annoyed than us
and had installed a custom sendmail rule to direct those
messages into the bit bucket.
I also recall taking my first run at FreeBSD in the fall
of 1994. Release 1.05 sticks in my mind for some reason.
After leaving the U, transitioning to FreeBSD was seamless.
Towards the end of the 90s I was supporting a commercial
IMAP server. I remember us entering into an agreement with
BSDi to port and sell our code on their platform. Shortly
after sealing that deal they were bought by Wind River, and
their layers immediately got to work trying to undo that deal.
Fuzzy memory says this was circa 2000.
Apart from this, though, In 1993 I was still trying to figure
out what UNIX (if any) we were going to run on the PCs in
the student labs (the campus didn't open until 94). I
had been eyeing up Sun's 386 offering, since I had a
lot of experience with SunOS. I was at an Interop that
year and tried pinning down one of the Sun sales rep's
to talk about site licensing options. He could not
have made it anymore more clear that anyone speaking
of SunOS/Solaris on 386 should piss off! Immediately!
Needless to say, BSDi won that deal.
--lyndon
I would be
pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2
Yes, I think so. I can't think of anything else that could have been
in between.
31 Aug
31 Aug
6:49 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On 8/31/24 12:40 AM, Kevin Bowling wrote:
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of net/2.
Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
We ran all of these at CWRU for many years. The mail system, DNS, and
other services all ran on BSD/OS machines. Nice, clean distribution
will full source code and excellent support.
I don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x but it
seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
This is about where we got seriously into the game. I probably still have
the source for it somewhere.
I did a bunch of development on that version.
Not much sourcing to go on for BSD/OS 3.x.
Probably have the source for this, too.
Luckily for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
*
https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.…
*
https://ia800900.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/21/items/bsdos-4.…
We definitely used these versions heavily, up through the mid-aughts.
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on
I think I have a box with this distribution in my office. That was
after I got out of the server game.
And what I was initially after, a comparative report on how BSD/OS
related to others:
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix99/full_papers/metz/metz.pdf
(page 6)
I would be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2 that eventually wound
up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in its later years.
Yep.
BSDI employed a bunch of BSD heavy hitters.
Mike Karels
Keith Bostic
Donn Seeley
Chris Torek
Rob Kolstad (President)
Jeff Honig
Bill Jolitz
Kirk McKusick (one of the founders)
They were a pleasure to work with.
Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
1 Sep
1 Sep
5:50 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
Chet Ramey via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
BSDI employed a bunch of BSD heavy hitters.
Mike Karels
Keith Bostic
Donn Seeley
Chris Torek
Rob Kolstad (President)
Jeff Honig
Bill Jolitz
Kirk McKusick (one of the founders)
What nobody has mentioned so far (at least as far as I've gotten in
my email) is that they were the ones who woke the sleeping giant,
by advertising their product as "UNIX" and with a phone number 1-800-ITS-UNIX.
That started off all the lawsuits. At least, that is how I remember it.
Arnold
11:59 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
The phone number 1-800-ITS-UNIX, didn't help. But ATT sued the Regents of
California first because of UCBs net releases. And while there were many of
the same principles, the two lawsuits were different.
At&t did not have much choice. Unix was protected by trade secret, and once
it was available, the trade secret was gone. Rick Adams asked a lawyer if
somebody posted it to Usenet by uploading it from a phone booth. Would
happen, The lawyers gulped and said it's available now.
2:49 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 5:59 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The phone number 1-800-ITS-UNIX, didn't help.
But ATT sued the Regents of
California first because of UCBs net releases. And while there were many of
the same principles, the two lawsuits were different.
At&t did not have much choice. Unix was protected by trade secret, and
once it was available, the trade secret was gone. Rick Adams asked a lawyer
if somebody posted it to Usenet by uploading it from a phone booth. Would
happen, The lawyers gulped and said it's available now.
Trade Secret is one of the big reasons there was a preliminary ruling in
the UCB/ATT lawsuit that 32V had lost its copyright protection. It had been
distributed outside of AT&T to a large degree without the Trade Secret
warning. It's why all the 4BSD releases are publicly available now.
Warner
11:12 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On 2/9/24 00:49, Warner Losh wrote:
Trade Secret is one of the big reasons there was a preliminary ruling
in the UCB/ATT lawsuit that 32V had lost its copyright protection. It
had been distributed outside of AT&T to a large degree without the
Trade Secret warning. It's why all the 4BSD releases are publicly
available now.
Absolutely true, but there was a bit more work needed than just the
preliminary ruling. In parallel, the TUHS folk were petitioning old SCO
(not TSG) to release the ancient Unixes under a BSD-style license:
https://www.tuhs.org/PUPS/petition.html. Eventually old SCO agreed to a
BSD-style hobbyist license which cost US$100:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010603053221/http://www.sco.com/offers/ancien….
Some details of the process are here:
https://www.tuhs.org/PUPS/pstatus.html.
Then a while later, Caldera (who had bought the Unix licensing from old
SCO) offered their $0 license:
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf.
I want to give a shout out to Dion Johnson who was the driving force at
old SCO that finally got them to agree to putting the ancient Unixes
under a BSD-style license.
Cheers, Warren
11:24 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote:
Absolutely true, but there was a bit more work needed
than just the
preliminary ruling. In parallel, the TUHS folk were petitioning old SCO (not
TSG) to release the ancient Unixes under a BSD-style license:
https://www.tuhs.org/PUPS/petition.html. Eventually old SCO agreed to a
BSD-style hobbyist license which cost US$100:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010603053221/http://www.sco.com/offers/ancien….
Some details of the process are here: https://www.tuhs.org/PUPS/pstatus.html.
Then a while later, Caldera (who had bought the Unix licensing from old SCO)
offered their $0 license: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf.
I want to give a shout out to Dion Johnson who was the driving force at old
SCO that finally got them to agree to putting the ancient Unixes under a
BSD-style license.
Am I confabulating an incident where TSG's people were trying to claim
that "a group of hackers called Caldera International" were behind the
license and that it never happened (despite reality) ? I could swear I
recall that happening but I can't find any evidence.
-uso.
11:36 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On 2/9/24 09:24, Steve Nickolas wrote:
Am I confabulating an incident where TSG's people were trying to claim
that "a group of hackers called Caldera International" were behind the
license and that it never happened (despite reality) ? I could swear I
recall that happening but I can't find any evidence.
That I haven't heard of, but it is possible.
The Caldera license is somewhat problematic. My take on the situation is
that old SCO had the rights to issue source code and binary licenses,
even though they didn't actually have the copyright to the code (at the
time Novell did). Old SCO had the right to create the US$100 "Ancient
UNIX" license. And when old SCO sold the licensing rights to Caldera,
Caldera had the right to grant the free license at
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf.
Cheers, Warren
2 Sep
2 Sep
12:13 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote:
The Caldera license is somewhat problematic. My take
on the situation is that
old SCO had the rights to issue source code and binary licenses, even though
they didn't actually have the copyright to the code (at the time Novell did).
That's my take as well.
Caldera would assumedly have inherited these rights when they bought old
SCO. But as you said, they didn't have the copyright - and the copyright
notice and the Third Clause on the Caldera license require a copyright
attribution to them.
My stance is: While we can't be 100% sure on 32V, it's probably the
_safest_ place to start, if one were to pinch from pre-S3 Unix. If Xinuos
or another claimant were to come at someone over it, it would put the
"invalid copyright" theory to the test.
Anyway, copyright on the actual AT&T code is a rat's nest and I actually
started trying to come up with an analog so as to avoid getting finked
over the code.
-uso.
3:32 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 6:13 PM Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote:
Plus, Novell knew about these licenses, so the principle of latches would
likely preclude any legal action as well... Or at least make it more
difficult
to do so. So even if the copyright didn't transfer, and the rights to
sublicense
were somehow exceeded their grant and someone wanted to make trouble,
it would be a very tricky case.
The Caldera license does include 32V as well as V7, so the 2BSD line, which
is based heavily on V7 unix + bug fixes and big code flows from 4.2BSD,
4.3BSD
and 4.4BSD, is also a bit in limbo.
My stance is: While we can't be 100% sure on 32V, it's probably the
The Caldera license is somewhat problematic. My
take on the situation is
that
old SCO had the rights to issue source code and
binary licenses, even
though
they didn't actually have the copyright to
the code (at the time Novell
did).
That's my take as well.
Caldera would assumedly have inherited these rights when they bought old
SCO. But as you said, they didn't have the copyright - and the copyright
notice and the Third Clause on the Caldera license require a copyright
attribution to them.
_safest_ place to start, if one were to pinch from
pre-S3 Unix. If Xinuos
or another claimant were to come at someone over it, it would put the
"invalid copyright" theory to the test.
Yes. Xinuos showed up at a FreeBSD vendor summit some years ago when
they launched their latest thing, based on FreeBSD. The story at the time
was they were super keen on putting the past in the past.
I'd say that either there's no copyright at all on 32V (since it was
authored
before the US was signatory to the Berne Convention, and since it relied
on trade secret for its protection and since it was distributed without the
proper notice for hat) or if there is, Caldera license covers it. And since
the
ruling was in 2010 and nobody has shown up to contest the Caldera
license, it would be tricky to to show up now that the cat is substantailly
out of the bag. One might speculate that the Caldera license might
not be valid after that, the matter hasn't been litigated and IANAL, but
since we can only speculate whether or not Caldera exceeded its
rights in granting the license. I think that one relying on the Caldera
license
to govern their actions would have a good faith defense should the situation
change, but I'm not sure how much that would mitigate the consequences.
But if Xinuos don't own the copyright, then it's the residual of Novell,
which
according to Wikipedia:
The company was an independent corporate entity until it was acquired as a
wholly owned subsidiary by The Attachmate Group in 2011. Attachmate was
subsequently acquired in 2014 by Micro Focus International which was
acquired in turn by OpenText in 2023. Novell products and technologies are
now integrated within various OpenText divisions.
So maybe OpenText owns Unix. There were efforts to clear things up with
MicroFocus before Covid, that last I heard had gone nowhere. There's also
this post, which I ran into 3 or so years ago...
https://community.microfocus.com/welcome_to_the_community/f/over-the-back-f…
But OpenText sold its AMC business to Rocket Software May 1, 2024, the
press release in parts ays:
"Closing the acquisition of the Application Modernization and Connectivity
(AMC) business of OpenText, formerly part of Micro Focus, Rocket Software
now offers customers"
So maybe Rocket Software owns Unix now? Or maybe OpenText retaineed it.
https://www.rocketsoftware.com/news/rocket-software-closes-2275b-acquisitio…
So the plot thickens, eh?
Anyway, copyright on the actual AT&T code is a
rat's nest and I actually
started trying to come up with an analog so as to avoid getting finked
over the code.
Yes. At best, a researcher could get by with some kind of 'fair use'
defense, and anybody not basing a System Vish product not on OpenIndian
(and its kin) would be significantly exposed...
Warner
2:54 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 11:33 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
Plus, Novell knew about these licenses, so the
principle of latches would
likely preclude any legal action as well... Or at least make it more
difficult
to do so. So even if the copyright didn't transfer, and the rights to
sublicense
were somehow exceeded their grant and someone wanted to make trouble,
it would be a very tricky case.
For the benefit of those of us who don't know legal jargon, "laches" is a
legal principle whereby a court can deny relief to a claimant with an
otherwise valid claim when the party bringing the claim unreasonably
delayed asserting the claim to the detriment of the opposing party.
In this case, Novell knew about the SCO and Caldera "archaic Unix" licenses
being issued but did nothing at the time. Were they to try to sue years
later to block use of those licenses, the party being sued could invoke the
principle of laches and claim that Novell knew about the licenses, did
nothing at the time, and it's now too late to bring the claim before the
court.
-Paul W.
1 Sep
1 Sep
11:14 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On 1/9/24 21:59, Rich Salz wrote:
The phone number 1-800-ITS-UNIX, didn't help.
But ATT sued the
Regents of California first because of UCBs net releases. And while
there were many of the same principles, the two lawsuits were different.
When Dennis Ritchie was still with us, he cached many of the legal
documents from both lawsuits on his home page:
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/bsdi/bsdisuit.html
Cheers, Warren
7:32 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at 11:49 AM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey(a)case.edu> wrote:
On 8/31/24 12:40 AM, Kevin Bowling wrote:
By sourcing I was meaning finding primary documentation for my
summary. I am only pointing this out to make a related point that is
worth recording: BSD/OS always seemed to ship with the source code,
and it was "easy" to build unlike some commercial UNIX where the
source was provided ceremonially and had complicated build processes.
In that respect, BSD/OS is a "source provided" commercial program and
this seems to be making a reappearance lately as some companies are
deciding whether or not they still like open source licenses or
struggling to meet inflated expectations of their fundraising.
Many of the BSD/OS versions have disc images on archive.org or
osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
BSD/386 seems to be a first order derivative of
net/2. Source:
https://ia902809.us.archive.org/25/items/BSD3861.1CD/bsd1.1-manual.pdf.
To what degree that it incorporated anything from 386bsd would
probably rely on first hand accounts.
We ran all of these at CWRU for many years. The mail system, DNS, and
other services all ran on BSD/OS machines. Nice, clean distribution
will full source code and excellent support.
I don't have much to go on for BSD/OS 2.x
but it seems like it was
about rebasing on 4.4-lite if we look at the family tree
http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html
This is about where we got seriously into the game. I probably still have
the source for it somewhere.
I did a bunch of development on that version.
Not much sourcing to go on for BSD/OS 3.x.
Probably have the source for this, too.
Luckily for BSD/OS 4.x we get some release notes:
*
https://ia600908.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/bsdos-4.…
*
https://ia800900.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/21/items/bsdos-4.…
We definitely used these versions heavily, up through the mid-aughts.
For 5.x I again don't have much to go on
I think I have a box with this distribution in my office. That was
after I got out of the server game.
And what I was initially after, a comparative report on how BSD/OS
related to others:
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix99/full_papers/metz/metz.pdf
(page 6)
I would be pretty confident in saying BSD/OS is _not_ a FreeBSD
derivative but a first order derivative of net/2 that eventually wound
up looking a little bit like FreeBSD in its later years.
Yep.
BSDI employed a bunch of BSD heavy hitters.
Mike Karels
Keith Bostic
Donn Seeley
Chris Torek
Rob Kolstad (President)
Jeff Honig
Bill Jolitz
Kirk McKusick (one of the founders)
They were a pleasure to work with.
Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/ 
4 Sep
4 Sep
8:49 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 3:33 AM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com> wrote:
Many of the BSD/OS versions have disc images on
archive.org or
osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
Check again. The contrib image in the 7.4GB rar has the same hash as
the one on archive.org and elsewhere. I have no idea if the install
image is 100% correct. Hell, it's possible every image in that archive
and on archive.org is bad. I just don't know.
So if anybody has any BSD/OS CDs please speak up.
Jim
7 Sep
7 Sep
10:53 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at 4:49:47 -0400, Jim Carpenter wrote:
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 3:33 AM Kevin Bowling
<kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com> wrote:
I have CDs of 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. I had 1.x, but I can't put my hands
on them right now. Maybe they were on QIC tape, in which case they're
probably unrecoverable. I also have source trees for 4.0, 4.1 and the
development version of 5.0 which I used to write the code for FreeBSD.
What's the legal situation about distributing them?
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
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Many of the BSD/OS versions have disc images on
archive.org or
osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
Check again. The contrib image in the 7.4GB rar has the same hash as
the one on archive.org and elsewhere. I have no idea if the install
image is 100% correct. Hell, it's possible every image in that archive
and on archive.org is bad. I just don't know.
So if anybody has any BSD/OS CDs please speak up.
11:52 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sat, Sep 7, 2024, 4:53 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at 4:49:47 -0400, Jim
Carpenter wrote:
I have CDs of 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. I had 1.x, but I can't put my hands
on them right now. Maybe they were on QIC tape, in which case they're
probably unrecoverable. I also have source trees for 4.0, 4.1 and the
development version of 5.0 which I used to write the code for FreeBSD.
What's the legal situation about distributing them?
No one is left to go after you for diing so. Wind river left bsdi support
behind years ago....
But that's a slippery slope that depends on how you feel about ancient
abandonware...
Warner
Greg
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 3:33 AM Kevin Bowling
<kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com>
wrote:
Many of
the BSD/OS versions have disc images on archive.org or
osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
Check again. The contrib image in the 7.4GB rar has the same hash as
the one on archive.org and elsewhere. I have no idea if the install
image is 100% correct. Hell, it's possible every image in that archive
and on archive.org is bad. I just don't know.
So if anybody has any BSD/OS CDs please speak up. --
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php
8 Sep
8 Sep
12:19 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Saturday, September 7th, 2024 at 4:52 PM, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
On Sat, Sep 7, 2024, 4:53 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
IANAL but a tiny bit of CYA can be added to the process by drafting a clear disclaimer
that the materials are of currently-unknown copyright last known to be held by <company
XYZ> and that all questions of license to *use* the code for anything you cannot
affirmatively answer. For instance with the disassemblies of old console games I produce,
which I've found no EULA stating disassembly is verboten, I usually add something to
the effect of:
I am not in a position to provide licensing terms on this material I have preserved. I
myself will not lay restrictions on what you can and can't do but I also do not have
the authority to make any affirmative claims on the matter.
Additionally making it clear in your distribution you are receptive to claims by proven
copyright holders to C and D actions related to distribution shows good faith, if someone
*does* take issue, hopefully they'll see that and contact you realizing you are
interested in balancing preservation with respect to copyrights.
I repeat though, I've not once set foot in the soul crushing environment that is the
legal profession, so if you want to play an air tight game, consider retaining legal
counsel.
- Matt G.
On Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at 4:49:47 -0400,
Jim Carpenter wrote:
No one is left to go after you for diing so. Wind river left bsdi support behind years
ago....
But that's a slippery slope that depends on how you feel about ancient
abandonware...
Warner
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 3:33 AM Kevin Bowling
<kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com> wrote:
I have CDs of 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. I had 1.x, but I can't put my hands
on them right now. Maybe they were on QIC tape, in which case they're
probably unrecoverable. I also have source trees for 4.0, 4.1 and the
development version of 5.0 which I used to write the code for FreeBSD.
What's the legal situation about distributing them? Many of the BSD/OS versions have disc images on
archive.org or
osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
Check again. The contrib image in the 7.4GB rar has the same hash as
the one on archive.org and elsewhere. I have no idea if the install
image is 100% correct. Hell, it's possible every image in that archive
and on archive.org is bad. I just don't know.
So if anybody has any BSD/OS CDs please speak up.
2:19 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sat, Sep 07, 2024 at 05:52:29PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
On Sat, Sep 7, 2024, 4:53???PM Greg 'groggy'
Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
My personal opinion on these old operating systems is don't set up a store
and try make money from it and you are golden. Don't set up a website and
say "Get Unix for free here".
It's sort of like dirt where I live. Technically, you can't move more than
5 yards without a permit. Yet people do it all the time, they just don't
advertise it.
And no offense to the ancient Unix versions but I'm not sure anyone really
wants them for anything other than history. Nor should they. I'm a SunOS
guy, huge fan, it's where I learned how to be a kernel guy. Would I want
to run that rather than Linux today? Oh, hell, no. Everything works on
Linux, graphics, sound, video, email attachments, so much of that was a
mess on SunOS and a bigger mess on other systems, including peers of
SunOS.
If there was value in BSD/OS the lawyers would come after you but there is
no value other than history.
On Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at 4:49:47
-0400, Jim Carpenter wrote:
I have CDs of 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. I had 1.x, but I can't put my hands
on them right now. Maybe they were on QIC tape, in which case they're
probably unrecoverable. I also have source trees for 4.0, 4.1 and the
development version of 5.0 which I used to write the code for FreeBSD.
What's the legal situation about distributing them?
No one is left to go after you for diing so. Wind river left bsdi support
behind years ago.... On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 3:33???AM Kevin Bowling
<kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com>
wrote:
Many of
the BSD/OS versions have disc images on archive.org or
osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
Check again. The contrib image in the 7.4GB rar has the same hash as
the one on archive.org and elsewhere. I have no idea if the install
image is 100% correct. Hell, it's possible every image in that archive
and on archive.org is bad. I just don't know.
So if anybody has any BSD/OS CDs please speak up. 
6:08 a.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On 8/09/24 14:19, Larry McVoy wrote:
On Sat, Sep 07, 2024 at 05:52:29PM -0600, Warner Losh
wrote:
I wish there was some way we could get the remnants of the Unix(tm)
companies together for long enough to sign something along the lines of
the "Statement Regarding Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10"
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dan_Cross_v8/
"Statement Regarding Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10 Alcatel-Lucent
USA Inc. (“ALU-USA”), on behalf of itself and Nokia Bell Laboratories
agrees, to the extent of its ability to do so, that it will not assert
its copyright rights with respect to any non-commercial copying,
distribution, performance, display or creation of derivative works of
Research Unix®1 Editions 8, 9, and 10. The foregoing does not (i)
transfer ownership of, or relinquish any, intellectual property rights
(including patent rights) of Nokia Corporation, ALU-USA or any of their
affiliates, (ii) grant a license to any patent, patent application, or
trademark of Nokia Corporation, ALU-USA. or any of their affiliates,
(iii) grant any third-party rights or licenses, or (iv) grant any rights
for commercial purposes. Neither ALU-USA. nor Nokia Bell Laboratories
will furnish or provided support for Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and
10, and make no warranties or representations hereunder, including but
not limited to any warranty or representation that Research Unix
Editions 8, 9, and 10 does not infringe any third party intellectual
property rights or that Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10 is fit for
any particular purpose."
for their various versions of Unix that are no longer in development but
still have historical interest for the rest of us.
Wesley Parish
On Sat, Sep 7, 2024, 4:53???PM Greg
'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
My personal opinion on these old operating systems is don't set up a store
and try make money from it and you are golden. Don't set up a website and
say "Get Unix for free here".
It's sort of like dirt where I live. Technically, you can't move more than
5 yards without a permit. Yet people do it all the time, they just don't
advertise it.
And no offense to the ancient Unix versions but I'm not sure anyone really
wants them for anything other than history. Nor should they. I'm a SunOS
guy, huge fan, it's where I learned how to be a kernel guy. Would I want
to run that rather than Linux today? Oh, hell, no. Everything works on
Linux, graphics, sound, video, email attachments, so much of that was a
mess on SunOS and a bigger mess on other systems, including peers of
SunOS.
If there was value in BSD/OS the lawyers would come after you but there is
no value other than history.
On Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at 4:49:47
-0400, Jim Carpenter wrote:
No one is left to go after you for diing so. Wind river left bsdi support
behind years ago....
On Sun, Sep 1, 2024 at 3:33???AM Kevin Bowling
<kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com>
wrote:
> Many of the BSD/OS versions have disc images
on archive.org or
> osarchive.org where the 7.4GB rar file was helpful for getting a 5.1
> contrib disc since the archive.org one is corrupt. So the binaries
> and source seem fairly well preserved for future explorers.
Check again. The contrib image in the 7.4GB rar has the same hash as
the one on archive.org and elsewhere. I have no idea if the install
image is 100% correct. Hell, it's possible every image in that archive
and on archive.org is bad. I just don't know.
So if anybody has any BSD/OS CDs please speak up.
I have CDs of 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. I had 1.x, but I can't put my hands
on them right now. Maybe they were on QIC tape, in which case they're
probably unrecoverable. I also have source trees for 4.0, 4.1 and the
development version of 5.0 which I used to write the code for FreeBSD.
What's the legal situation about distributing them?
9 Sep
9 Sep
12:32 p.m.
New subject: BSD/OS
On Sat, Sep 7, 2024 at 6:53 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com>
wrote:
I have CDs of 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. I had 1.x, but I
can't put my hands
on them right now. Maybe they were on QIC tape, in which case they're
probably unrecoverable. I also have source trees for 4.0, 4.1 and the
development version of 5.0 which I used to write the code for FreeBSD.
That's a good collection there. A generous list member has shared 1.0 with me.
I have looked at the 5.1 Contrib CD. The "PACKAGES" directory has had
its first block overwritten with a directory(?) block from HFS(?).
Some sort of memory corruption happened. However, I've recovered every
file. They are either short, readable text or gzipped tarballs with
MD5 files. Everything checks out fine. I'll be creating a new iso and
making it available.
But assuming that most of the other BSD/OS images are from the same
source, we can't trust that any are okay. :(
What's the legal situation about distributing
them?
Only some lawyer somewhere might someday be able to answer that to
some extent. I'd be surprised if whoever the current IP owner is knows
that they are.
Jim
10
days inactive
19
days old
26 comments
16 participants
participants (16)
-
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Chet Ramey -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Jim Carpenter -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
Kevin Bowling -
Larry McVoy -
Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) -
Paul Winalski -
Rich Salz -
Rik Farrow -
segaloco -
Steve Nickolas -
Warner Losh -
Warren Toomey -
Wesley Parish