On Monday, 16 December 2002 at  7:32:56 -0800, Jason R Thorpe wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 04:36:00PM +0530, Ram Chandar wrote:
>
>> .....
>> explaining how  UNIX began,  how Net/2 tapes  helped see the  birth of
>> 386BSD, what BSD was and how BSD was exploited by Proprietary Software
>> companies like Sun  Microsystems, how GNU was born  and the concept of
>> .....
>>
>> Well, I know that the word "exploitation" is illegal, as use, if any,
>> is completely valid as per the BSD license.
>>
>> But did they use any code from any (Free,Net,Open)BSDs at all?
>
> Well, Sun's BSD-based OS existed long before any of the free BSD
> projects did.  And back then, BSD wasn't "open source" in the sense
> that it is today -- it required a license from AT&T, since it still
> had AT&T code in it.

More to the point, Sun did BSD a great service.  It's completely
inappropriate to call it "exploitation".  If Sun hadn't based its
operating system on 4.2BSD back in the early 80s, BSD may never have
become as well known as it is.  Yes, others, notably DEC, also used
BSD, but they were copying Sun.

Greg
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