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

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

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