3 Feb
2004
3 Feb
'04
7:53 a.m.
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, der Mouse wrote:
> It may help to realise that "net" is
Russian for "no", so NetBSD
> really means "not BSD".
Although I disagree with Mike's
explanation, he is right in the
sense that netBSD (like openBSD, freeBSD et al) is "not really
UNIX". They are not.
BSD (as in, BSD 2.X, 3.X, 4.X UNIX) and its specialty trees (Reno,
Tahoe, Net/1 and Net/2) are "real UNIX" code systems, which required
a full AT&T/Western Electric source code license, and which were
derived directly from V7 by the folks of CSRG at UC Berkeley.
BSD/386, BSDI, {net|free|open}BSD all are BSD 4.X code derivatives
which had been rewritten in such a way (see the whole BSD 4.4 UNIX
vs. AT&T lawsuit minutes) that allowed them to be freely distributed
to people without a written license from AT&T (the famous "seven files"
were re-implemented.)
As such, these systems are no longer considered "real UNIX", but,
rather, "free UNIX-like" systems.
License-technically speaking, one needs their code to pass a full
suite of qualification tests ran by X/Open (formerly OSF, USL et al)
before one can call that code "UNIX".
NetBSD is not BSD in the strict sense of having come
from the CSRG at
Berkeley - but then, nothing is that is today simultaneously (a)
bootable, (b) open source, and (c) legal to run for those without
licenses that are expensive (if obtainable at all).
Almost correct. It is not BSD
(obviously, as they were never released
by CSRG) but not even UNIX. It being freely available, expensive and
whatnot is totally irrelevant.
--f