Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 10:19:43 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Joe.Warner@smed.com Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, magus@magus.users.xmission.com Subject: Re: BSD v. Unix Message-ID: <20000712101943.A29466@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <85256918.004F1A18.00@Deimos.smed.com> References: <85256918.004F1A18.00@Deimos.smed.com>
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On Monday, 10 July 2000 at 8:25:31 -0600, Joe.Warner@smed.com wrote: >> On Saturday, 8 July 2000 at 2:12:31 -0600, Anthony Chavez wrote: >>> Fellow advocates: >>> >>> I don't remember where exactly, but I have seen FreeBSD referred to as >>> the "last true Unix." Is this a wholly accurate description? >> >> No. I don't think it's even partially accurate for any reasonable >> definition of "partially". Recall that it shares no code with AT&T >> UNIX up to and including the Seventh Edition. >> >>> Would it be correct to refer to *BSD in such a manner? >> >> No. In fact, we don't want to refer to "*BSD" at all: it sounds >> divisive. BSD without the '*' looks a lot better. >> >> As to "the last true UNIX": that way Holy Wars lie. I've most often >> heard it applied to the Seventh Edition. >> >>> I don't remember where exactly, but I have seen FreeBSD referred to as >>> the "last true Unix." Is this a wholly accurate description? >> >> No. I don't think it's even partially accurate for any reasonable >> definition of "partially". Recall that it shares no code with AT&T >> UNIX up to and including the Seventh Edition. > > Please don't take this personally or view this as critisism but I > recently purchased your book, "The Complete FreeBSD", and what an excellent > book it is! 8^) After reading the preface, I was under the impression > that FreeBSD is a raw UNIX system and has greater rights to call itself > UNIX than OS's like Linux because it's not a UNIX clone. Agreed. > I will quote from the preface: "FreeBSD is a high-performance > operating system derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution, or > BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California > at Berkeley between 1975 and 1993. FreeBSD is not a UNIX clone. > Historically and technically, it has greater rights than UNIX System > V to be called UNIX. Legally, it may not be called UNIX, since UNIX > is now a registered trade mark of The Open Group. > Can you expand on this? Am I missing the mark on this? Were you > saying that FreeBSD can still be called UNIX but not the "last true > UNIX"? Well, there's a difference between saying "it has greater rights than UNIX System V to be called UNIX" and saying "it's the last true UNIX". In the context of my message that you quoted above, I was talking about all UNIX releases, and the Seventh Edition is the (a) common ancestor of just about all of them, including both System III/System V and the BSDs since 3BSD. FreeBSD is also no more of a descendent of 4BSD than BSD/OS, NetBSD or OpenBSD. In general, though, I think we've done this one to death. It's not a very useful metric in the first place. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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