From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lm@mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2017 19:13:29 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] the guy who brought up SVr4 on Sun machines In-Reply-To: <1483585206.586db6b64f706@www.paradise.net.nz> References: <20170104024127.GN12264@mcvoy.com> <20170104033512.GA22116@mcvoy.com> <20170105004353.GB6931@mcvoy.com> <4c14e37a-f959-d625-b877-f498a644415c@gmail.com> <20170105010148.GC6931@mcvoy.com> <1483585206.586db6b64f706@www.paradise.net.nz> Message-ID: <20170105031329.GB32104@mcvoy.com> On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 04:00:06PM +1300, Wesley Parish wrote: > My understanding which was that of an interested layman in 1991 and just > bitten by the bug, and based upon the comments of some of the computer > science staff of the U of Canterbury, NZ, at that time, is that 386BSD > held everybody's attention. (I mentioned in 1992 reading about Linux in > a computer mag to one of them and he told me 386BSD was where the action > was.) i80386 PCs were relatively cheap, BSD was (relatively) free from > AT&T's legal claims, and 386BSD was even freer and targeted that cheap > powerhorse. My guess is that if Sun had spun off a Free SunOS, it would've > been ported to the 386. What would've happened then is anyone's guess. So I know the 386BSD guy, Bill Jolitz. He worked for me at Sun, I hired him because of, well some Usenix details that are best left untold. He was unfairly hurt by Usenix, that's as much as I'll say. He's a good guy, a little weird, but so am I. He did some great work in 386BSD, it was ahead of Linux. I remember going into Fry's and sticking a 386BSD floppy in to see if it would boot. It usually did.