Re: Chronological order of BSD, SV, and POSIX.1

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2799 bytes --]

Hi Branden,

On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 08:33:23PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> At 2026-01-18T02:51:55+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > 	V1
> > 	V2
> > 	V3
> > 	V4
> > 	V5-- 1BSD					  /--- OpenBSD	
> > 	V6-----\ 2BSD				 /------ NetBSD
> > 	V7---------\ 3BSD - 4BSD - 4.3BSD Lite --
> 
> Let me offer some corrections here, drawn partially from McKusick's
> article "20 Years of Berkeley Unix".[1]  Sorry it's gonna make the lines
> longer.
> 
> 	V5-- 1BSD
> 	V6-----\ 2BSD ---- 2.8BSD ------ 2.11BSD		/--- OpenBSD
> 	V7	    \	  /		/		    /------ NetBSD
> 	32/V---------\ 3BSD - 4BSD - 4.3BSD - 4.4BSD-Lite --
> 	|						    \------ FreeBSD
> 	SysIII
> 	Unix/TS 4

Thanks!!

> The salient points being:
> 
> * Unix 32/V, being the port to the DEC VAX, was a huge deal and
>   ultimately the common ancestor of _all_ AT&T and BSD Unices.  I won't
>   say nobody ever developed Unix on any 16-bit platform besides the
>   PDP-11 ever again, but I venture that any such efforts are now mostly
>   obscure, and not impactful on the C or POSIX standards.  ("near" and
>   "far" did not make it into ANSI C, for example, and if the x86
>   couldn't manage that, no other chip was going to.)
> 
> * 2BSD, being a PDP-11-only product, kept the PDP-11 Unix kernel but
>   refreshed its userspace from the {3,4}BSD mothership on an ongoing
>   basis, where memory constraints permitted, and indeed 2.11BSD
>   continues to be developed as of 2025^Wwhoops, scratch that, patch #499
>   came out 3 days ago.[1]
> 
> * There was no 4.3BSD-Lite.  4.4BSD-Lite is what you mean.

Yup; accident.

>   Strictly,
>   "4.4BSD-Lite Release 2" was the end of the road, after which the CSRG
>   disbanded and several of its principals departed to BSDI where
>   unimaginable riches awaited them.  Surely.
> 
> * Despite the previous, it's good to have 4.3BSD on the chart because it
>   endured a very long time.  (To some frustration at the CSRG, but as I
>   understand it, AT&T Corporate spent years making ever louder threats
>   that they were going to sue the bejeezus out of Berkeley so that BSD
>   Unix, which was so aggravatingly popular with all the cheap computer
>   science labor spewing from the universities, quit creating headaches
>   for its marketers and price-fixers.)  4.3BSD was so influential that
>   much of it got folded back into SVr4, around the same time Sun
>   Microsystems sold its soul (and a major stake of equity) to AT&T.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
> 
> [1] https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
> [2] https://minnie.tuhs.org/TUHS/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.11BSD/Patches/

Very interesting; thanks!


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]