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From: michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Who owns 386BSD?
Date: 22 Mar 94 16:21:23 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <michaelv.764353283@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
References: <2m787d$dv9@crl.crl.com> <hY+vwi+.dysonj@delphi.com> <63899@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ponderous.cc.iastate.edu
In <63899@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> wa137@sdcc12.ucsd.edu (john e. clark) writes:
>In article <hY+vwi+.dysonj@delphi.com> dysonj@delphi.com (John Dyson) writes:
>+William H. Rowan <rowan@crl.com> writes:
>+>Is bsd386 available for not a lot of money? Also, does it include networking
>+>code for TCP/IP?
>+Well, your initial subject is not *exactly* the same question that
>+you ask in the body :-). First, bsd386 is *OWNED* by BSDI while 386bsd and
>+its offspring (FreeBSD and NetBSD) are freely redistributable and not really
>+owned by anybody in particular. All of the aforementioned BSD OSes have
>+*lots* of networking capability builtin including TCP/IP and NFS. FreeBSD
>+is available from freebsd.cdrom.com and *soon* will be coming out on CDROM
>+as I hear.
>The source for BSD is 'owned' by the Regents of the University of
>California(ie all californians own it), and other contributors as
>listed in the copyright notices found in the code. In the notice
>'copy' privilage is given to all provided the copyright notice is
>retained.
[...]
>When you buy BSDI's product you do not have the 'right' to freely
>copy it as you do with the BSD source derived from the various
>archives.
[...]
One also needs to point out, for the BSD-impaired, BSD/386 is BSDI's
commercial implementation that you pay money for. 386BSD is a free
version of BSD for the 386 written by Bill Jolitz that has fallen long
ago into a state of disrepair. NetBSD and FreeBSD are two different
descendants of 386BSD that are heavily enhanced over the original
386BSD. All are descended from 4.3BSD and/or BNR/2 in one way or
another, with enhancements of differing magnitude and direction.
The main differences between NetBSD and FreeBSD, at this point, are
philosophy of future direction. NetBSD runs on many different
architectures ([345]86 PC, Mac, Amiga, Sun, DEC, HP, etc.) and has
worked very hard to distance itself from the 386-only roots of 386BSD.
FreeBSD, on the other hand, is still 386-specific, but they've worked
harder on making a stable, usable release that resembles an enhanced
386BSD.
Once again, BSD/386 is commercial, costs money, and is from BSDI.
386BSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD are all free -- you do the maintenance
yourself. 386BSD is old and crusty, and nobody (in their right mind)
has used it in months (or years). NetBSD and FreeBSD are both very
active in ehancing their "products".
(Disclaimer: I use NetBSD. It is up to someone who uses the other
OS's to point out corrections to any comments I may have made that
would be incorrect.)
--
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Michael L. VanLoon Iowa State University Computation Center
michaelv@iastate.edu Project Vincent Systems Staff
Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free Un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
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