Talk:Berkeley Software Distribution

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Contents

[edit] Older discussion

Am not sure why this was entered under "Berkeley_System_Distribution" but the NetBSD documentation 1 has the S standing for Software, and that seems to be the predominate usage (even in the article itself, leading to the odd situation in which the article and article title don't match). --JoeAnderson

In the early days it was called "Berkeley Source Distribution". This was certainly the case still in 1984. It has changed at some stage since then, but i don't know why or when.

the /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/bsdl-gpl/unix-license.html file ("Unix from a BSD Licensing Perspective") on FreeBSD 6.3 (on the 6.3-RELEASE-i386-docs.iso ISO at [1]) says "Berkeley Standard Distribution":

Unix author Ken Thompson returned to his alma mater, University of California Berkeley (UCB), in 1975 and taught the kernel line-by-line. This ultimately resulted in an evolving system known as BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution).

It goes on to mention enhancements such as the TCP/IP stack and then licensing issues with AT&T. The file is also available under ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/

This book and this book both have it as "Berkeley Software Distribution" and don't mention other variations. Letdorf (talk) 12:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC).
Well, I'd always heard/said Software, but I think it's worth mentioning variations in the article. Ramorum (talk) 17:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ramorum (talk • contribs) 06:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Trivial BSD's shouldn't be listed at the same precedence as the 3 major ones. Relevance. I'd be suprised if more than a few hundred (or in some cases, dozen) people run the smaller ones.

I've changed to the structure used at Unix-like - better? DragonFly is still a bit minor to get its own listing IMO - David Gerard 13:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't mind how they are listed (though I would prefer more information over less), but the last revert removed TrustedBSD. Should it be put back?
Tim Ivorson 06:54, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I suspect Darrien was reverting blindly. I've directed him to this talk page - David Gerard 11:51, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Although his new layout does work well enough :-) - David Gerard 22:47, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
DragonFly is still a "bit player" to be sure, but unlike the other trivial BSDs, it is backed by longtime BSD developers who are doing significant, low-level work, and it seems fitting that they have a place with the big three. 24.226.125.40 22:49, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "BSD"

I've changed the BSD page from a redirect to a disambig, including the Birsa Seva Dal expansion recently mistakenly added to this page. yes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.149.93.122 (talk) 07:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FOSS licenses

Isn't there a FOSS Licenses called BSD?

Of course. There is a link to in this article even, but it is a bit buried in the history section. See BSD license. - Taxman 09:30, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History

The current history section is extremely skimpy and mostly ignores the actual historic bits (1BSD, 2BSD, 3BSD, 4BSD, 4.1BSD, 4.2BSD, and 4.3BSD). A capsule summary of the history is available in the intro to McKusick et al, The Design and Implementation of (insert flavor here). I may write this some day, but anyone else out there should feel free to preempt me. 18.26.0.18 03:44, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] standards compliance is untruthful

User:Taxman writes, "if you have something that shows standards compliance is untruthful bring it to talk", so...

Just how many years have BSD systems been intentionally failing to support the "ps -ef" command? This is not merely a bug. This is willful violation of the POSIX and UNIX standards.

Fair enough. I don't have any knowledge to agree or disagree. Do you have a reference to back up that it is "willful violation of POSIX and UNIX standards"? - Taxman 18:52, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • That it is standard: just read the UNIX standard
  • That is is willful: well, just send in a patch to fix the behavior and you'll see. (this flaw is very well known)
AlbertCahalan 02:26, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There's also "ls -lg" and "ls -lo" not working right.
Is that a standard? Again references. - Taxman 18:52, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
Same place, same standard AlbertCahalan 02:26, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yet another willful violation: "ps -u root"

There are many more... those are just the most glaring ones.

It's not right to claim that "the BSD operating systems are notable for their standards conformance" when they are notable for their lack of standards conformance.

Again, have a source to support that? - Taxman 18:52, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
The above qualifies I believe. AlbertCahalan 02:26, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
-e and -f are clearly marked as XSI in the 1003.1-2001. These options did not come from POSIX, they came from XPG3, and in any case I don't believe any of the BSD's have ever made it a goal to implement the XSI option (which mostly memorializes mistakes from System V that Berkeley had the good sense not to copy). These options were not included in the mandatory part of the standard specifically because there was and is no consensus on making them mandatory. All of the command-line options about which you complain are part of XSI, except for "-o" which is implemented to specification.
In any case, the 4.4BSD library and most of the userland tools were quite definitely written to the 1003.1-1990 standard and to drafts of the (then still in development) 1003.2 effort. 18.26.0.18 06:33, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article could say "the BSD operating systems might someday be notable for their standards conformance", but it seemed more polite to just quietly delete that section. If you want to air the dirty laundry though, be my guest.

who wrote this???

[edit] Ports

I wanted to read about tha famous BSD-style ports and was amazed that I haven't found any, only a short paragraph under FreeBSD. Would someone please create an article? Helix84 18:20, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, they seem notable enough for their own article. The trick is to pick the right article name. ports (BSD) perhaps? - Taxman 18:52, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] history confusion about 4.1BSD

"(The release was not called 5BSD to avoid confusion with AT&T's UNIX System V release.)"

This is bunk. SysV wasn't on the roadmap in 1981. Who is claiming this?

I've never heard that about 4.1, but I have heard that was a reason with 4.2 (however, I can't track down a solid ref). However, Don Libes' "Life with UNIX" says on pg. 18 says 4.2 was originally slated to be 5 BSD, but they would have had to relicense it with AT&T according to university rules.--Agarvin 23:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Linux comparison section should be reworked"

The prose is awful and I feel the content favors a loyalty perspective to informative facts. Furthermore, it completely re-lists the bulleted summaries of the major goals of each distro.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.136.239.88 (talk • contribs) 13:05, Jun 20, 2005.

I agree, the summaries are redundant and should probably just be removed. As for the rest, why not just fix what you see? The article FreeBSD and Linux has some more material, but it's not that well written either. I gave up because I couldn't think of a way to write it NPOV enough. - Taxman Talk 17:22, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
I feel we should just link to FreeBSD and Linux instead. Huge parts of the section are completely laughable. Ninuor 00:49, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I tried rewriting it. It was still shit. Replaced it with a link to the above-mentioned article.Ninuor 01:00, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline mistake?

There is a mistake in timeline. FreeBSD was forked after NetBSD. First NetBSD release was in 1993 April, FreeBSD was in 1993 December. Probably need to fix it?

And why does BSD1 appear on the chart? IIRC, wasn't BSD1 just a tape containing Berkely's Pascal compiler and ex? (72.128.80.243 00:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC))

Why is Mac OS X not included in the timeline? It definitely is a Unix system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mijter (talk • contribs) 20:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Devilettes

Devilette is a keen glance brunette woman dressed like BSD Daemon:

Somebody please contact copyright owners and upload these pictures to WikiCommons :-) Vugluskr 15:23, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

We only need one of these linked from the article, surely. I've cut it down to Ceren since she was the original, as far as I am aware. NicM 14:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC).
AFAIK all'em were made in one exhibition by different people. I'll not upload them to WikiCommons, I just want to inform you that I've found four pictures. They're beautyful. Much better than penguins, flags or rhombs. Upload them to WikiCommons and put a square like "Wikimedia has pictures about devilettes". Vugluskr 15:23, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On Portal:Free software, BSD is currently the featured article

Just to let you know. The purpose of featuring an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain the feature for a week or so. The previous feature was MySQL. Gronky 10:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unix_history-simple.png

it goes

1986

1988

1987


This error is now corrected. Jean-Baptiste CAMPESATO / camje_lemon 15:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC).

[edit] EuroBSDCon is not mentioned

This conference seems worth mentioning, but I don't know much about it. Gronky 13:10, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] add Prof. Bob Fabry to BSD History

Prof. Bob Fabry should be added to the BSD history on this page. Peter Salus has some info on him in A Quarter Century of UNIX. Fabry secured the grants that allowed Unix development to occur at Berkeley, and supervised it. He had the vision that UCB could make a big difference in Unix. He was responsible for getting Bill Joy involved. Bill Joy lucked into the environment that Prof. Fabry set up. Without Fabry therw ould have been no BSD Unix. - Lentower 21:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)