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386BSD, also known as JOLIX, is a free BSD operating system for the Intel 80386. 386BSD innovations include role-based security, ring buffers, self-ordered configuration, intuitive setup and installation, peer-to-peer download, and modular kernel design. 386BSD is available for research (non-commercial) purposes from JOLIX.COM.
History
386BSD was written mainly by Berkeley alumni Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz. William Jolitz had considerable experience with prior BSD releases while at the University of California at Berkeley (2.8BSD, 2.9BSD) and both contributed code to Berkeley developed at Symmetric Computer Systems during the 1980s. 386BSD operational versions of 4.3BSD and later 4.3BSD NET/2 were created 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. 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. Dobbs 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.
After the release of 386BSD 0.1, as the Jolitzes were far more reluctant to embrace contributions from their users than the CSRG had been, a group of users began collecting patches in what was termed the patchkit. The patchkit quickly grew unmanageable, prompting its maintainers to attempt to cooperate with William Jolitz on an interim release of 386BSD which would integrate the changes from the patchkit. The attempt foundered, however, when William Jolitz abruptly withdrew his support. As a result, the maintainers of the now-orphaned patchkit founded the FreeBSD project to continue their work. Around the same time, the NetBSD project was founded by a different group of users, using the same code base, with the aim of unifying various strands of BSD development into one multi-platform system. Both projects continue to this day.
Lawsuit
Due to a lawsuit (USL 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.
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 MBytes) 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.
386BSD is often confused with BSD/386 which was developed by BSDi, 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.
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 systems 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.
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
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