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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.misc:2854 comp.os.linux.misc:20386 Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!netcomsv!calcite!vjs From: vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) Subject: Re: nonsense about BSD's death (was Usefulness of BSD/Linux Knowledge) Message-ID: <CtM1zK.4zG@calcite.rhyolite.com> Organization: Rhyolite Software Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 17:59:43 GMT References: <1994Jul24.185248.5906@escape.widomaker.com> <313tkg$nhd@Mercury.mcs.com> <CtLEK1.Ir8@news.cern.ch> Lines: 47 In article <CtLEK1.Ir8@news.cern.ch> danpop@cernapo.cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes: > ... >>This whole BSD is dead shit just doesn't add up missy. > >What he meant is that none of the five big Unix vendors (HP, Sun, IBM, >DEC and SGI) is currently developing a BSD-based OS for their workstations. >On the PC-Unix market, the situation is similar (BSDI being the exception, >not the rule). > >BSD is not dead, but it doesn't seem to have any commercial future. >Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a completely different >story. In my day job, I have intimate knowledge of one of those big 5 UNIX vendors kernel, and perhaps a hint or two about its immediate future, having been a senior kernel hack at that vendor for a while. To say that vendor is "not currently developing a BSD-based OS" is neither true nor false, but nonsense. None of those five vendors has "developed a BSD-based OS" in the sense apparently intended in the last 10 years. (SunOS was 4.2 based). On the other hand, System V Release 4, "SVR4", is far more like BSD, and contains far more BSD code than SVR0 through SVR3 did. Also on the other hand, in the last 10 years, all five of those vendors have shipped UNIX kernels with chunks of code that came from BSD tapes released by CSRG in the same period. Four of the five are currenting shipping BSD network code from those tapes (or other sources). Three or four currently ship systems that involve the classic BSD fast file system, and the filesystem of the other borrowed heavily from the FFS. More than one is thinking about log based filesystems and RAIDs. 4.4BSD-Lite will be as influential as the various releases of 4.3BSD. "BSD is dead" is just as valid today as it was in 1987. Since few would agree that the statement "BSD was dead in 1987" has any useful meaning, "BSD is dead in 1994" is at best of limited interest. If "BSD is dead" has any meaning, it means only "the small group that wrote much, coordinated the rest, and released the 4.*BSD tapes has been dissolved." That is a statement about people and politics, life and times, but it is not earth shattering. Which operating system is mentioned twice in the bibliography of "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" by Ritchie and Thompson? (#1 and #10 concern a Berkeley hack from the mid-1960's). Life just keeps going on. Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com