On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 3:21 PM Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
wrote:

> Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> writes:
>
> > Some of us on this list remember the original BDSi fight, the 386BSD
> > to FreeBSD, then NetBSD and OpenBSD (I was friends with both sides of
> > many of these wars).
>
> Irrelevant to the topic, I know, but I'd just like to point out, since
> you call these things "wars", that NetBSD grew out of 386bsd in a quiet,
> friendly fashion, and then FreeBSD out of NetBSD just as quietly.  (BSDi
> growing out of 386bsd was a completely separate affair that I know very
> little about, and the OpenBSD fork from NetBSD was mostly just a
> personal animosity thing, Theo de Raadt having made enemies in both the
> NetBSD and FreeBSD camps -- but it has left no bad blood behind it.)
>

My recollection was that FreeBSD grew out of the patch kits in parallel to
NetBSD
growing out of the patch kits, but with the CVS repos hosted on the same
host
before each project got their own hosting...  The CVS history shows FreeBSD
started with NET/2 and then added in the patchkit changes added to it. I
know that
the family tree file says otherwise, but I've not seen convincing evidence
that is
really how things happened (either as an outsider observing at the time, nor
via extant artifacts that would show such a relationship). NetBSD did ship
their
first release before FreeBSD, however.

My recollection from the time of the collegiality of the split differs
somewhat
from yours, however.


> In other words, no wars that I know of.
>

There were a number of shenanigans (like moving the license text to the
end of files) at the time. And you never got a call at 4am from Theo
demanding
that you stop a FreeBSD user from saying bad things about OpenBSD... So
maybe
not "wars," as such, but it wasn't all sweetness and light...


> That being said, I sincerely wish you all the best working out a
> solution that can allow the amazingly good simh project to continue!
>

Yes. This looks nothing at all like the early BSD days. this looks to be a
proactive
attempt to take the sprawling number of forks that have happened and bring
some
order to it so that they don't proliferate too much. As a long-time open
source
governance wonk in the FreeBSD project, I like what I see.

Warner


> -tih
> --
> Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
> of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay
>