• In 1973, Thompson and Ritchie from AT&T’s Bell Labs presented the first Unix paper at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles at Purdue University. At the Symposium, Bob Fabry, a professor from the University of California at Berkeley, became interested in Unix. So, he requested to obtain a copy to experiment in Berkeley
• In January 1974, the first Unix installation done at Berkeley was on PDP-11/45 machine with Version 4 of Unix.
• In early 1977, Bill Joy put together the first "Berkeley Software Distribution" (BSD), and this distribution included the Pascal system and “ex” editor.
• By mid-1978, the “Second Berkeley Software Distribution” (2BSD) was out, and it included the enhanced Pascal System, “vi” edtor, and termcap. Termcap was a function allowed to consolidate the screen management by using a small interpreter to redraw the screen.
• In early 1978, Berkeley purchased a VAX machine, obtained Ver. 7 Unix from the Bell Labs, and installed Ver. 7 Unix in VAX machine. However, Ver. 7 Unix did not take advantage of VAX’s virtual memory capability.
• By January 1979, 32/V was written with virtual memory functionality and replaced Ver. 7 Unix installed on VAX. Thus, Ozalp Babaoglu wrote the virtual memory functionality was written to support Ver. 7 Unix
• By the end of 1979, software such as the Pascal, vi editor, the C shell, and the smaller programs from the 2BSD distribution were ported to VAX, and this combination resulted the “Third Berkeley Software Distribution” (3BSD). Basically, 3BSD is 2BSD with virtual memory function. Noted that, Bell Labs decided to commercialize the future Unix versions and could no longer support Unix research within the Unix community. So, Berkeley quickly stepped into the role to support the Unix community’s further research.
• In the fall of 1979, Fabry made a proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) about writing an enhanced version of 3BSD for the use of DARPA community
• By April 1980, Fabry began to lead CSRG to work on the DARPA’s project.
• By October 1980, 4BSD was produced. 4BSD included Pascal compiler, the Franz Lisp system, and an enhanced mail handling system, and it supported auto reboot, a 1K block file system.
• By June 1981, 4.1BSD was released. 4.1BSD was the tuned-up version of 4BSD with addition of auto configuration code. Noted that CSRG’s original intent was to call 4.1BSD the “5BSD”, but it was refused by AT&T due to customer confusion between their commercial Unix release "System V" and "5BSD".
• In April 1982, 4.1aBSD was released for internal use only. 4.1aBSD was integrated with TCP/IP protocols. There were several new applications allowing the local users to access to remote resources over the network.
• In June 1982, 4.1bBSD was produced by the implementation of the new file system fully integrated into the 4.1a kernel.
• In April 1983, 4.1cBSD was released.
• In August 1983, 4.2BSD was released. The 4.2BSD was improved from 4.1cBSD with the following modification:
- The new signal facilities
- Networking support
- Standalone I/O system to simplify the installation process
- Integrating the disc quota facilities
- Documentation updated
- Tracking the bugs from the 4.1c release
• In June 1985, 4.3BSD release was announced at the Usenix conference. The 4.3BSD distribution was a tuned version of 4.2cBSD. However, the release plans were halt by BBN, because BBN was complaining that Berkeley never updated 4.2BSD with the final version of their networking code. BBN claimed that Berkeley should replace the TCP/IP in 4.3BSD with BBN implementation. (NOTE: don’t really understand the relationship between BBN and Unix). As a result, the 4.3BSD distribution included both Berkeley and BBN implementations. DARPA decided to continue to use Berkeley implementation install of BBN implementation, because research showed that Berkeley implementation worked more efficiently. 4.3BSD was finally released in June 1986.
• In June 1998, 4.3BSD-Tahoe was released. A promising computer model of the time call the Power 6/32 was to replace the aging VAX machines. BSD kernel was splitting into machine-dependent and machine-independent parts. This resulted 4.3BSD-Tahoe distribution. Splitting the kernel into machine-dependent and machine-independent parts was an important step to allow BSD to be ported to numerous other architectures. Users of 4.3BSD-Tahoe needed to get an AT&T source license, because
• In June 1989, Networking Release 1 of BSD was out, and it was the first freely-redistributable BSD from Berkeley. Before Networking Release 1 existed, the users always have to first get an AT&T source license. BSD user requested that Berkeley break out the networking code and utilities and provide them under licensing terms that did not require an AT&T source license. Its licensing terms gave Networking Release 1 like free software:
The licensee could release the code modified or unmodified in source or binary form with no accounting or loyalties to Berkeley.
Although Berkeley charged a $1,000 fee to get a tape, anyone was free to get a copy from anyone who already had received it (that tape). Indeed, several large sites put it up for anonymous ftp shortly after it was released.”
• In early 1990, 4.3BSD-Reno was released. 4.3BSD-Reno used the virtual memory system from MACH operating system done at Carnegie-Mellon University. The other major addition to the system at the time was a Sun-compatible version of the Network Filesystem (NFS).
• In June 1991, Networking Release 2 was a freely-redistributable expansion included more BSD code which was not under AT&T source license. CSRG re-wrote the Unix utilities from scratch based solely on their published description. However, Networking Release 2 did not include 6 kernel files that cloud not be trivially rewritten.
• 6 months later after the release of Networking Release 2, Bill Jolitz improved Networking Release 2 with written replacements for the 6 missing files and called it 286/BSD. He put it up for anonymous FTP and let anyone to download it for free. However, Jolitz could not keep up the debugging of 386/BSD, and thus, the 386/BSD users formed NetBSD group to pool their collective resources to help maintain and enhance the 386/BSD. Their contribution to 386/BSD resulted the NetBSD distribution. The NetBSD group chose to emphasize the support of as many platforms as possible and continued the research style development done by the CSRG
• FreeBSD was another BSD group formed a few months after the NetBSD group, and they support just the PC architecture and to go after a larger and less technically advanced group of users. FreeBSD built elaborate installation scripts and began shipping their system on a low cost CD-ROM. In addition, FreeBSD supports Linux emulation mode that allows Linux binaries to run on FreeBSD platform.
• In the mid-90’s, OpenBSD spun off from the NetBSD group. Their technical focus was aimed at improving the security of the system. OpenBSD was selling CD-ROMs with many of the ease-of-installation ideas from the FreeBSD distribution.
• In January 1992, Berkeley Software Design Incorporated (BSDI) developed commercial version of Net Release 2 with 6 missing kernel and began selling the source code and binary file for $995. BSDI promoted the campaign with phone number, 1-800-ITS-UNIX. Short after, Unix System Laboratories (USL), a subsidiary of AT&T, sent a letter to (BSDI) and demanded that BSDI to stop promoting their product as Unix. Then BSDI stopped using the phone number and changed their advertisements explaining that BSDI’s product was not Unix. However, USL was still not satisfied and filed lawsuit to stop BSDI selling their product. At the hearing for the injunction, BSDI claimed that they should not hold responsible for files distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI’s argument and told USL to restate their complaint based solely on six kernel files or he would dismiss the lawsuit. Then, USL decided to refill the lawsuit again both BSDI and the University of California to stop the distribution of Net Release 2. The result of the lawsuit was that 3 files were removed from the 18000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continues to be freely redistributed.
• In June 1994, 4.4BSD-Lite was released under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. The term allow free redistribution in source and binary form subject only to the constraint that the university copyrights remain intact and that the University receive credit when others use the code. At the same time, 4.4BSD-Encumbered was also released which still required recipient to have USL source license.
• Since the lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system, BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite source into which they then merge their enhancements and improvements.
• In 1995, 4.4 BSD-Lite Release 2 was released. Following the release of 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2, the CSRG was disbanded.
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