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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!news.ac.net!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!ken From: ken@direct.ca (Ken Clark) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Curious about *BSD History Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Date: 5 Apr 1996 00:02:22 GMT Organization: Global Election Systems Lines: 48 Message-ID: <4k1nue$lm8@orb.direct.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: van-as-10c04.direct.ca Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:16587 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2733 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:432 comp.os.linux.misc:95981 Hi. The recent discussions on UNIX history got me to thinking about the "Good Old Days," and was wondering if the flames have settled enough for people who know to give an account of what happened circa 1993 with *BSD. I have read Jordan Hubbard's FreeBSD history, but it seems to duck the details of what happened to Bill Jolitz and why FreeBSD and NetBSD went their seperate paths. I am honestly not trying to incite a flame war here, and hope that enough time has passed that there may be some "clear heads" accounts of what happened exactly. Here are a number of specific questions I am curious about, but if you have more to vent/add, please do. What happened to Jolitz? What happened that so radically changed his position on 386BSD? (If you read the old release notes, there were very grandiose plans). What happened that caused him not to make any releases after 0.1? Why did he not support the patchkits? The FreeBSD history says that Jolitz "withdrew his support" for the BSD interim (later FreeBSD) project. Why? Does anyone have any old posts from the era explaining this? Wasn't there to be a 386BSD 1.0 from Jolitz alone to be released on CDROM? Did this happen? I seem to recall people saying Jolitz was writing a book on BSD. Did he? What does he do now? I am sure there are more details here that would be interesting. Next, why exactly did *BSD fracture into FreeBSD and NetBSD? I think I might have trouble getting an answer to this one, but certainly wanting multiplatform support is not a good enough reason for two independent 4.4 Lite ports. Not passing any judgement here, just interested to know the factors that caused the split. More recently, and even harder for someone not in the know to understand, why OpenBSD? What caused this, especially so late in the game? Something else you also don't hear much about: What became of the "encumbered" 4.4BSD? Are there people/institutions that have a UNIX license and use the "real" 4.4BSD, or has it been wiped out by free efforts? With hindsight, what effect did the USL/Novell/BSDI/UCB have on *BSD other than causing certain kernel files to be re-written? Did Novell "win" anything in the final analysis? Where any lessons learned? Finally, and I know I am going to get it for this one, what happened to Jesus Monroe Jr? I am actually more serious about this question than you might suspect -- he was a household name to anyone who was on USENET in 1993 and deserves a page in history. Did he eventually make it into everyone's kill file and go away? Got committed maybe? Did he ever release his famous QIC-40 tape driver? Thanks for any thoughts. I hope that this will stir some nostalgia about that period. - Ken