[TUHS] Re: UNIX/TS 4.x Findings

[Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au>]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 02:22:01PM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 09, 2023 at 08:07:45PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 9, 2023 at 6:30 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > The more I look at things, the more 5.0 appears to actually be a minor
> > > release compared to what all was going on in the 4.x era.  From 4.1 to 5.0
> > >
> > 
> > So let's look at release dates:
> > 
> > 4.2BSD released August 1983
> > 4.3BSD released May 1986
> > 
> > System V released sometime in 1983 (so TS 5.0 was 1982 by convention?)
> > 
> > 5.0 felt like a minor release... (even after TS 4.2) Sure sounds like it
> > was rebranded to 5.0 to avoid confusion with 4.2BSD which was released
> > around... as well as to have a '.0' zero feel to it but neatly avoiding
> > that by calling it V...
> > 
> > Anybody here know for sure? I have a vague memory of Dr McKusick mentioning
> > this off hand in one of his informal talks or maybe it was over dinner at a
> > conference...
> 
> It was the other way around.
> 
> "The original intent had been to call it the 5BSD release; however,
> there were objections from AT&T that there would be customer confusion
> between their commercial Unix release, System V, and a Berkeley release
> named 5BSD. So, to resolve the issue, Berkeley agreed to change the
> naming scheme for future releases to stay at 4BSD and just increment the
> minor number."
> https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.html

"we started referring to this stuff as 5BSD, because we were sure that
the next release would be 5BSD.  We made a dump tape and Bill packed up
and went back to California. Shannon and I took the disk pack and copied
it and brought it up on decvax—a 780, our main system. Bill Joy called a
couple of days later and said, "Hey, there's going to be a lot of hassle
with the license if we do another release. So why don't we call it
4.1BSD?"
Armando Stettner in QCU, pg 182

'Releases of Berkeley software remain labeled as "4.X BSD" even though
the differences between them are dramatic. Berkeley wanted to relabel
4.2 as "5.0" except that university regulations would have forced it to
relicense all of its "customers." As it turned out, Berkeley had to do
it anyway because of code that was included from a new release of the
AT&T software.'
Life with UNIX, pg 18
tuhs/Documentation/Books/Life_with_Unix_v2.pdf