107 lines
6.1 KiB
Plaintext
107 lines
6.1 KiB
Plaintext
<!-- $Id: history.sgml,v 1.8 1995/10/24 02:23:42 jkh Exp $ -->
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<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
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<sect><heading>A brief history of FreeBSD<label id="history"></heading>
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<p><em>Contributed by &a.jkh;</em>.
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The FreeBSD project had its genesis in the early part of 1992,
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partially as an outgrowth of the "Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit" by the
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patchkit's last 3 coordinators: Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and myself.
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David Greenman and Julian Elischer were also lurking in the background
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around this time, though they didn't come fully into the project until
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a month or two after it was more or less officially launched. Our
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original goal was to produce an intermediate snapshot of 386BSD in
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order to fix a number of problems with it that the patchkit mechanism
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just wasn't capable of solving. Some of you may remember the early
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working title for the project being "386BSD 0.5" or "386BSD Interim"
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in reference to that fact.
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386BSD was Bill Jolitz's operating system, which had been up to that
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point suffering rather severely from almost a year's worth of neglect.
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As the patchkit swelled ever more uncomfortably with each passing day,
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we were in unanimous agreement that something had to be done and
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decided to try and assist Bill by providing this interim "cleanup"
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snapshot. Those plans came to a rude halt when Bill Jolitz suddenly
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decided to withdraw his sanction from the project and without any
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clear indication of what would be done instead.
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It didn't take us long to decide that the goal remained worthwhile
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even without Bill's support, and so we adopted the name "FreeBSD",
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which was coined by David Greenman. Our initial objectives were set
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after consulting with the system's current users, and once it became
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clear that the project was on the road to perhaps even becoming a
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reality, I contacted Walnut Creek CDROM with an eye towards improving
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FreeBSD's distribution channels for those many unfortunates without
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easy access to the Internet. Walnut Creek CDROM not only supported
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the idea of distributing FreeBSD on CD but went so far as to provide
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the project with a machine to work on and a fast Internet connection.
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Without Walnut Creek CDROM's almost unprecedented degree of faith in
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what was, at the time, a completely unknown project, it is quite
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unlikely that FreeBSD would have gotten as far, as fast, as it
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has today.
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The first CDROM (and general net-wide) distribution was FreeBSD 1.0,
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released in December of 1993. This was based on the 4.3 BSD Lite
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("Net/2") tape from U.C. Berkeley, with many components also provided by
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386BSD and the Free Software Foundation. It was a fairly reasonable
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success for a first offering, and we followed it with the highly successful
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FreeBSD 1.1 release in May of 1994.
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Around this time, some rather unexpected storm clouds formed on our
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horizon as Novell and U.C. Berkeley settled their long-running lawsuit
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over the legal status of the Berkeley Net/2 tape. A condition of that
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settlement was U.C. Berkeley's concession that large parts of Net/2
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were "encumbered" code and the property of Novell, who had in turn acquired
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it from AT&T some time previously. What Berkeley got in return was
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Novell's "blessing" that the 4.4 Lite release, when it was finally
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released, would be declared unencumbered and all existing Net/2 users
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would be strongly encouraged to switch. This included us, and we were
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given until the end of July 1994 to stop shipping our own Net/2 based
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product. Under the terms of that agreement, we were allowed one
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last release before the deadline and that became FreeBSD 1.1.5.1, the
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culmination of our year's work with Net/2 and generally considered by
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many to be a significant project milestone for stability and general
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performance..
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We then set about the arduous task of literally re-inventing ourselves
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with a completely new and rather incomplete set of 4.4 Lite bits. The
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"Lite" releases were light in part because Berkeley's CSRG had removed
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large chunks of code required for actually constructing a bootable running
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system (due to various legal requirements) and the fact that the Intel
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port of 4.4 was highly incomplete. It took us until December of 1994
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to make this transition, and in January of 1995 we
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released FreeBSD 2.0 to the net and on CDROM. Despite being still
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more than a little rough around the edges, the release was a
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significant success and has since been followed by the more robust and
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easier to install FreeBSD 2.0.5 release in June of 1995.
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Where to from here? Well, we intend to release FreeBSD 2.1 sometime
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in November of 1995 and have reasonable expectations that it will
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meet or exceed all of the standards for quality we set with FreeBSD
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1.1.5.1 back in July of 1994. From there, we'll probably continue our now
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two-track scheme of a "stable" branch of FreeBSD and a "current"
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branch, where development can continue at its usually rapid pace without
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penalizing those who just want a working system without too much excitement.
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We also intend to focus on any remaining areas of weakness, like documentation
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or missing drivers, and steadily increase the overall quality and feature set
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of the system well into 1996 and beyond.
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It should also be noted that the development of FreeBSD is <b>not</b> a closed
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process, despite some popular misconceptions to the contrary, and anyone
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is free to contribute code or ideas. Once a contributor has established
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a reasonable track record for reliability, we generally even give them direct
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access to the central source tree (kept under CVS) where their changes will
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propagate automatically to all users of FreeBSD. Our centralised development
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model is designed for the convenience of the <b>users</b> of FreeBSD, who
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are thus provided with an easy way of tracking one central code base, not
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to keep potential contributors out! Anyone and everyone is free to
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contribute, and people who've shown a consistent and significant dedication
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to the project are generally asked to join the FreeBSD core team to
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help in setting the project's overall directions and goals. No part of the
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project is closed to additional members, and all we ask of those wishing for
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closer ties to the project is the same dedication its current members have
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to its continued success!
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Jordan
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