386BSD
Encyclopedia
386BSD, sometimes called "Jolix", was a free
Unix-like
operating system
based on BSD
, first released in 1992. It ran on PC compatible computer systems based on the Intel 80386
microprocessor
. 386BSD innovations include role-based security, ring buffers, self-ordered configuration and modular kernel
design.
and William Jolitz
. William Jolitz had considerable experience with prior BSD releases while at the University of California at Berkeley (2.8 and 2.9BSD) and both contributed code to Berkeley developed at Symmetric Computer Systems during the 1980s. Work on porting 4.3BSD-Reno and later 4.3BSD Net/2 to the Intel 80386 was done for the University of California by William Jolitz at Berkeley. 4.3BSD Net/2 was an incomplete non-operational release, with portions withheld by the University of California as encumbered (i.e. subject to an AT&T UNIX source code
license). The 386BSD releases made to the public beginning in 1992 were based on portions of the 4.3BSD Net/2 release coupled with additional code (see Missing Pieces I and II, Dr. Dobb's Journal
, May–June 1992) written by William and Lynne Jolitz to make a complete operational release.
The port began in 1989 and the first, incomplete traces of the port can be found in 4.3BSD Net/2 of 1991. It was first released in March 1992 (version 0.0) and in a much more usable version on July 14, 1992 (version 0.1). The porting process with code was extensively documented in an 18-part series written by Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz in Dr. Dobbs Journal beginning in January 1991.
. Due to differences of opinion between the Jolitzes and the patchkit maintainers over the future direction and release schedule of 386BSD, the maintainers of the patchkit founded the FreeBSD
project in 1993 to continue their work. Around the same time, the NetBSD
project was founded by a different group of 386BSD users, with the aim of unifying 386BSD with other strands of BSD development into one multi-platform system. Both projects continue to this day.
v. Regents of the University of California), some potentially so-called encumbered source was agreed to have been distributed within the Berkeley Software Distribution
from the University of California, and a subsequent release (1993, 4.4BSD-Lite) was made by the University to correct this issue. However, 386BSD, Dr. Dobbs Journal, and William Jolitz and Lynne Jolitz were never parties to these or subsequent lawsuits or settlements arising from this dispute with the University of California, and continued to publish and work on the 386BSD code base before, during, and after these lawsuits without limitation. There has never been any legal filings or claims from the University, USL, or other responsible parties with respect to 386BSD. Finally, no code developed for 386BSD done by William Jolitz and Lynne Jolitz was at issue in any of these lawsuits.
) of the release (the "386BSD Reference CD-ROM") and was a best-selling CDROM for three years (1994–1997). 386BSD Release 1.0 contained a completely new kernel design and implementation, and began the process to incorporate recommendations made by earlier Berkeley designers that had never been attempted in BSD.
, a Berkeley spinout, starting in 1991. BSD/386 used the same 386BSD code contributed to the University of California on 4.3BSD NET/2. Although Jolitz worked briefly for UUNET
(which later spun out BSDi) in 1991, the work he did for them diverged from that contributed to the University of California and did not appear in 386BSD. Instead, William Jolitz gave regular code updates to Donn Seeley of BSDi for packaging and testing, and returned all materials when William Jolitz left that company following fundamental disagreements on company direction and goals.
s today, along with several derivatives thereof (such as Apple
's Darwin
and OpenBSD
). Portions of 386BSD may be found in other open systems such as OpenSolaris
.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
based on BSD
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
, first released in 1992. It ran on PC compatible computer systems based on the Intel 80386
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...
microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
. 386BSD innovations include role-based security, ring buffers, self-ordered configuration and modular kernel
Loadable Kernel Module
In computing, a loadable kernel module is an object file that contains code to extend the running kernel, or so-called base kernel, of an operating system...
design.
History
386BSD was written mainly by Berkeley alumni Lynne JolitzLynne Jolitz
Lynne Greer Jolitz is a figure in free software and founded many startups in Silicon Valley with her husband William.Lynne Jolitz is probably most famous for her work in pioneering open source operating systems with 386BSD with her husband...
and William Jolitz
William Jolitz
William Frederick Jolitz , commonly known as Bill Jolitz, is best known for developing the 386BSD operating system from 1989 to 1994 along with his wife Lynne Jolitz.Jolitz received his BA in Computer Science from UC Berkeley....
. William Jolitz had considerable experience with prior BSD releases while at the University of California at Berkeley (2.8 and 2.9BSD) and both contributed code to Berkeley developed at Symmetric Computer Systems during the 1980s. Work on porting 4.3BSD-Reno and later 4.3BSD Net/2 to the Intel 80386 was done for the University of California by William Jolitz at Berkeley. 4.3BSD Net/2 was an incomplete non-operational release, with portions withheld by the University of California as encumbered (i.e. subject to an AT&T UNIX source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
license). The 386BSD releases made to the public beginning in 1992 were based on portions of the 4.3BSD Net/2 release coupled with additional code (see Missing Pieces I and II, Dr. Dobb's Journal
Dr. Dobb's Journal
Dr. Dobb's Journal was a monthly journal published in the United States by CMP Technology. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. It later became a monthly section within the periodical...
, May–June 1992) written by William and Lynne Jolitz to make a complete operational release.
The port began in 1989 and the first, incomplete traces of the port can be found in 4.3BSD Net/2 of 1991. It was first released in March 1992 (version 0.0) and in a much more usable version on July 14, 1992 (version 0.1). The porting process with code was extensively documented in an 18-part series written by Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz in Dr. Dobbs Journal beginning in January 1991.
FreeBSD and NetBSD
After the release of 386BSD 0.1, a group of users began collecting bug fixes and enhancements, releasing them as an unofficial patchkitPatch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
. Due to differences of opinion between the Jolitzes and the patchkit maintainers over the future direction and release schedule of 386BSD, the maintainers of the patchkit founded the FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
project in 1993 to continue their work. Around the same time, the NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...
project was founded by a different group of 386BSD users, with the aim of unifying 386BSD with other strands of BSD development into one multi-platform system. Both projects continue to this day.
Lawsuit
Due to a lawsuit (USLUnix System Laboratories
Unix System Laboratories was originally organized as part of Bell Labs in 1989. USL joined with the UNIX Software Operation, also a Bell Laboratories division, in 1990. It assumed responsibility for Unix development and licensing activities...
v. Regents of the University of California), some potentially so-called encumbered source was agreed to have been distributed within the Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
from the University of California, and a subsequent release (1993, 4.4BSD-Lite) was made by the University to correct this issue. However, 386BSD, Dr. Dobbs Journal, and William Jolitz and Lynne Jolitz were never parties to these or subsequent lawsuits or settlements arising from this dispute with the University of California, and continued to publish and work on the 386BSD code base before, during, and after these lawsuits without limitation. There has never been any legal filings or claims from the University, USL, or other responsible parties with respect to 386BSD. Finally, no code developed for 386BSD done by William Jolitz and Lynne Jolitz was at issue in any of these lawsuits.
Release 1.0
In late 1994, a finished version 386BSD Release 1.0 was distributed by Dr. Dobb's Journal on CDROM only due to the immense size (600 MBMegabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
) of the release (the "386BSD Reference CD-ROM") and was a best-selling CDROM for three years (1994–1997). 386BSD Release 1.0 contained a completely new kernel design and implementation, and began the process to incorporate recommendations made by earlier Berkeley designers that had never been attempted in BSD.
Relationship with BSD/386
386BSD is often confused with BSD/386 which was developed by BSDiBerkeley Software Design
Berkeley Software Design Inc. was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS , a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PC compatible computer systems...
, a Berkeley spinout, starting in 1991. BSD/386 used the same 386BSD code contributed to the University of California on 4.3BSD NET/2. Although Jolitz worked briefly for UUNET
UUNET
UUNET founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the nine Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was the first commercial Internet service provider...
(which later spun out BSDi) in 1991, the work he did for them diverged from that contributed to the University of California and did not appear in 386BSD. Instead, William Jolitz gave regular code updates to Donn Seeley of BSDi for packaging and testing, and returned all materials when William Jolitz left that company following fundamental disagreements on company direction and goals.
Copyright and use of the code
All rights with respect to 386BSD and JOLIX are now held exclusively by William Jolitz and Lynne Jolitz. 386BSD public releases ended in 1997 since code is now available from the many 386BSD-derived operating systemOperating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s today, along with several derivatives thereof (such as Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's Darwin
Darwin (operating system)
Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....
and OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
). Portions of 386BSD may be found in other open systems such as OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...
.
Further reading
- Jolitz, William F. and Jolitz, Lynne Greer: Porting UNIX to the 386: A Practical Approach, 18-part series in Dr. Dobbs Journal, January 1991 - July 1992.
- Jolitz, William F. and Jolitz, Lynne Greer: Operating System Source Code Secrets Vol 1 The Basic Kernel, 1996, ISBN 1-57398-026-9
- Jolitz, William F. and Jolitz, Lynne Greer: Operating System Source Code Secrets Vol 2 Virtual Memory, 2000, ISBN 1-57398-027-7
External links
- www.386bsd.org : Information by William and Lynne Jolitz
- Porting UNIX to the 386: A Practical Approach
- Designing the Software Specification
- Three Initial PC Utilities
- William Jolitz
- Lynne Jolitz
- Memories of 386BSD releases by Lynne Jolitz
- The unknown hackers - Salon.com
- 386BSD Design Notes Professional Video Series
- Frequently asked questions of 386BSD - active Q/A by authors
- www.jolix.com
- Remarks and papers on USL v UC Berkeley by Dennis M. Ritchie.
- Remarks on the history of 386BSD by Lynne Jolitz
- Remarks on the history of 386BSD by Greg Lehey
- A version of 386BSD 0.1 & Qemu pre-configured for Windows Users
- More information on the various releases of 386BSD
- Browsable 386BSD kernel sources