Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question")

["Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 07:32:57PM -0800, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, did the articles contain download information for a
> > bootable copy of 386BSD?
> 
> Yes, they did:
> 
>      https://www.drdobbs.com/porting-unix-to-the-386-the-final-step/184408800

.... which is dated July 1992, and describes a "launch" of 386BSD
Release 0.0 in March 17, 1992.  This is contemporaneous with Linux
0.95a (which by coincidence was also released on March 17th, 1992.)

The first "real" distribution, the Soft Landing System, was released
in May 1992.  (The Manchester Computer Centre distribution in November
1991 was a floppy-based distro containing command-line and development
utilities, but not X Windows, so some people don't feel it counts as a
full-featured distribution.)

> Also keep in mind that NetBSD started as a set of "net" (as in usenet)
> patch kits for 386BSD.

It looks like NetBSD's source code repository was established on March
21, 1993.  Patchkit 0.2.2 was apparently also released on the same
date.  NetBSD's first release, 0.8, was released on April 19, 1993.

The FreeBSD project was named in June 19, 1993, with its first release
in November 1993.

So it's easy to use the lawsuit as the scapegoat for why the BSD's
failed to take off, but at best it's only one of many factors.  The
Jolitzs' refusal to accept many patches, forcing a delay of a year
before spawning two project forks, was one.  The dispersal of effort
as a side effect of various people trying to start companies around
BSD code (SunOS, NetApp, BSDI, Wasabi Systems, etc.)  was another.
BSD-licensed code seems to thrive best when there are grants or
non-profit institutions funding its work; but attempts to support BSD
code from as part of commercial work doesn't seem to have worked out
as well.

As dwheeler (I think Dave Wheeler, but I'm not certain) astutely
observed in 2006:

   I think the BSD license has been a lot of trouble to the
   *BSDs. Every few years, someone says, "hey, let's start a company
   based on this BSD code!" (BSD/OS in particular comes to mind, but
   SunOS and others did the same). They pull the *BSD code in, and
   some of the best BSD developers, and write a proprietary
   derivative. But as a proprietary vendor, their fork becomes
   expensive to self-maintain, and eventually the company
   founders. All that company work is lost forever, and good
   developers were sucked away during that period. Repeat, repeat,
   repeat. That's more than enough to explain why the BSDs manage to
   make steps forward, but just don't manage to maintain the pace of
   Linux kernel development.

   Meanwhile, the GPL has legally enforced a consortia on major
   commercial companies. Red Hat, Novell, IBM, and many others are all
   contributing, and feel safe in doing so because the others are
   legally required to do the same. It's basically created a "safe"
   zone of cooperation, without anyone having to sign complicated
   legal documents. A company can't feel safe contributing code to the
   BSDs, because its competitors might simply copy it without
   reciprocating. There's much more corporate cooperation in the
   GPL'ed kernel code than with the BSD'd kernel code. Which means
   that in practice, it's actually been the GPL that's most
   "business-friendly". So while the BSDs have lost energy every time
   a company gets involved, the GPL'ed programs gain almost every time
   a company gets involved. And that explains it all.

   - https://lwn.net/Articles/197875/

I'll also note that the GPL licensing means that I've been able to
carry my expertise in the code base across 4 job changes (MIT, VA
Linux Systems, IBM, Google).  In effect, this arrangement and the
business models forced by the GPL allocates more value to the
community at large and to the engineers working at those companies, at
the expense of value that can be extracted to the corporate
shareholders --- for better or for worse.

And so while I don't have a private jet like some of the early
founders of Sun, NetApp, et. al., and I'm still a working stiff, I
lead a comfortable life, and it seems like a good tradeoff to me.  :-)

In the long run, it might be interesting to see how the Illumos (Open
Solaris) derivatives fare compared to Free/Net/Open/Dragon BSD's.
There seem to be some interesting cooperation from the set of
companies that use Illumos, which is encouraged by the CDDL's weak
provisions.  So if Illumos and its derivatives are able to overtake
*BSD's despite the *BSD's having an earlier start, that might be an
interesting confirmation of dwheeler's point above.

					- Ted