*BSD News Article 36187


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
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From: sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan)
Subject: Re: BSDI/FreeBSD
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Message-ID: <CwrAzs.BGH@kithrup.com>
References: <5f4_9409260326@ima.infomail.com> <366s4l$jqa@bosnia.pop.psu.edu> <Cwr5yM.2A4@filetek.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 1994 21:43:03 GMT
Lines: 19

In article <Cwr5yM.2A4@filetek.com>, Jan Morales <jan@filetek.com> wrote:
>[So that this posting is not 100% content-free, I'll just say that
> they're not the same.  One, FreeBSD, is free, as its name implies,
> while the other, BSDI, is a commercial offering.]

FreeBSD is a freely available operating system; versions 1.x were based on
the Net/2 distribution from UC Berkeley; the currently-in-development 2.0
version is based on the 4.4-Lite UCB distribution.

BSDi (the 'i' is silent ;)) currently offers BSD/386, v1.1 I believe.  This
is also based on the Net/2 distribution, and is not free.  In addition, due
to part of their settlement with USL, as well as NDA's signed with other
companies, not all of the sources are included with their product.  (But you
get an OS that people are paid to make sure works well.  With FreeBSD, you
get an OS that some people have decided to work on, usually in their 'spare'
time, and they don't get paid for how well it works.)  BSDi will, in the
future, be offering ports to other architectures; the SPARC is the most
notable.