Berkeley Software Design

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For Berkeley Software Distribution, see Berkeley Software Distribution.

Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi) was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PC compatible (and later, other) computer systems. The name was chosen for its similarity to "Berkeley Software Distribution" the source of its primary product (specifically 4.3BSD Networking Release 2).

BSDI was founded by Rick Adams and members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, including Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz and Donn Seeley.[1] Jolitz, Seeley and Trent Hein were the company's first employees, temporarily working for Rick Adam's UUNET until BSDI started operations in 1991.[1]

BSD/386 was released in January 1992. The full system, including source code retailed at $995, which was much cheaper than the equivalent source code license for the rival UNIX System V from AT&T.[2]

Later the same year, AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) brought a lawsuit against BSDI, alleging that BSD/386 contained their proprietary trade secrets and code. After USL were acquired by Novell, a settlement was reached in January 1994. This resulted in future releases, of what was now called BSD/OS, being based on CSRG's 4.4BSD-Lite release, which was declared free of any USL intellectual property.[2]

In 2000, the company merged with Walnut Creek CDROM, a distributor of freeware and open source software on CD-ROM. Soon after it acquired Telenet System Solutions, Inc., an Internet infrastructure server supplier.[3]

In 2001, it sold its software business unit (comprising BSD/OS, plus the former Walnut Creek involvement in the FreeBSD and Slackware Linux open-source projects) to Wind River Systems and renamed the remainder iXsystems, with plans to specialize in hardware.[4] Wind River dropped sponsorship of Slackware soon afterwards,[5] while the FreeBSD unit was divested as a separate entity in 2002 as FreeBSD Mall, Inc.[6]

Faced with competition from FreeBSD and Linux-based operating systems, Wind River discontinued BSD/OS in December 2003. However, by this time some technology from BSD/OS had been contributed to the open source BSD community.[7]

iXsystems' server business was acquired in 2002 by Offmyserver, which reverted to the iXsystems name in 2005.[8]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov (2006). "AT&T Lawsuit Helps to Launch Linux Into Mainstream". http://www.atrust.com/articles/at-t-lawsuit-helps-to-launch-linux-into-mainstream. Retrieved on 2009-04-05. 
  2. ^ a b McKusick, Marshall Kirk (January 1999). ""Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable"". http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html. 
  3. ^ BSDi Acquires Telenet System Solutions, Inc.; The New BSDi to Deliver Internet Infrastructure-Grade Software, Systems and Solutions, Business Wire
  4. ^ Wind River to Acquire BSDi Software Assets, Extending Development Platforms to Include Robust UNIX-based Operating Systems for Embedded Devices, Business Wire
  5. ^ Slackware Commercial Distribution Left in Doubt as Developers Are Laid Off, Linux Today
  6. ^ FreeBSD Mall: Company History
  7. ^ Wind River terminating BSD/OS
  8. ^ OffMyServer Renames Company iXsystems
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