dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) (06/27/91)
While reading my latest UNIX World last night, I noticed a small article in the Newsbytes section that told of a company (Berkeley something or other) which is hoping to have a clone of BSD UNIX ready for shipping in September. The article claimed that the clone would not have any AT&T code in it. This would allow them to sell the system (including full source) for an introductory price of $995 (later to rise to $1,995). Their first target architecture will be the Intel 386/486 family. Does anybody know anything additional information about this product? Specifically: - what C compiler will it include? GNU? - will it include X-windows? - what might be missing? Sockets? Networking? Fortran? DBX? - how stable is the company? - how stable is the product (must be getting close if they plan to ship something in September)? - what are they going to call it (UNIX is TM by AT&T)? -Danny
rbraun@spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) (06/29/91)
dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) writes: >While reading my latest UNIX World last night, I noticed a small article >in the Newsbytes section that told of a company (Berkeley something or other) >which is hoping to have a clone of BSD UNIX ready for shipping in September. >The article claimed that the clone would not have any AT&T code in it. >This would allow them to sell the system (including full source) for an >introductory price of $995 (later to rise to $1,995). _Allow_ them to sell it at this price, notably higher than any existing 386-based Unix O/S products? And using the word Berkeley in the company name is just plain un-cool: I hope the folks at the real Berkeley cry foul. This company even ripped off the BSD acronym: it's called "Berkeley Software Design Inc.", and the article on p.16 of UnixWorld makes no mention of any affiliation or non-affiliation with BSD. The article does point out that BSD Inc.'s engineers have been "loaned" to Berkeley for the 4.4 O/S (my assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, is that BSD Inc. provided a couple of consultants to Berkeley for an hourly fee.) Sorry I'm such a cynic, but when I read that article I came away with a rather bad feeling about this. Were the list price significantly under $1995, perhaps I might not have this reaction. Are there any people from BSD Inc. or from Berkeley who are familiar with this case who can either follow up on this or send me e-mail to keep me quiet about this? -rich
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (06/29/91)
rbraun@spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) writes: > dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) writes: [news thing in _UNIX_World_ about Berkeley Software Design, etc.] > _Allow_ them to sell it at this price, notably higher than any existing > 386-based Unix O/S products?... The article announced an initial price of $995. Now, there's no real detail there, but let's consider that: - It's unlikely to contain a 1-2 user limitation! (Putting that sort of limit in a source-licensed product would be an exercise in futility.) - It's pretty likely to contain networking, since that's the first batch of code Berkeley ever cut loose on its own. - It's got to have a development system. Who knows whether it'll contain X, but even with the above, the price is better than all the SysV 386-UNIX vendors. There's 386 Mach from mt Xinu which is currently $995 for a full system (w/dev sys, networking, X), and that seems a good deal for the UNIX-knowledgable purchaser. But the main difference is that this BSD package is supposed to contain source. I shouldn't have to remind you that the source license for AT&T V.n for 386 is a tad more than a kilobuck (like about two orders of mag- nitude more). Sounds like a pretty good deal if/when it's real. >...And using the word Berkeley in the company > name is just plain un-cool: I hope the folks at the real Berkeley cry > foul. This company even ripped off the BSD acronym: it's called > "Berkeley Software Design Inc.", and the article on p.16 of UnixWorld > makes no mention of any affiliation or non-affiliation with BSD... I'll have to go along with Rich that when someone first mentioned the article to me, I was awfully skeptical. In fact, I said "frankly I don't believe it." After I got a look at the full article (such as it was), I was a lot less skeptical. The two names associated with BSD, Inc. in the article are Bill Jolitz and Donn Seeley. Bill has worked with the Berkeley CSRG folks off and on for quite a while; if you remember 2.9 BSD (?a decade ago?), a lot of the kernel work for that was his, ??I believe done while he was with USGS?? Bill did the bulk of the port to the 386. He was showing 386 BSD on a laptop at Anaheim (summer) USENIX last year. There's a series about the port and the internals of the system, by Bill and Lynne Jolitz, running in _Dr_Dobbs_ right now. It started in January of this year. Donn has also worked with the Berkeley folks for some time. I believe he did work with shared libraries and dynamic loading, although I'm not sure about that. So anyway, conjecturing wildly, I'd guess that a name like "Berkeley Soft- ware Design" and the abbreviation to BSD was probably done with the Berk- eley CSRG folks knowing all about it. It would be hard for them to have been underhanded about it, given the close association. >...article does point out that BSD Inc.'s engineers have been "loaned" to > Berkeley for the 4.4 O/S (my assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, is that > BSD Inc. provided a couple of consultants to Berkeley for an hourly fee.) See above. These folks have been associated with Berkeley CSRG for some time. I have no idea what financial arrangement exists; hard to see how/ why it matters. > Sorry I'm such a cynic, but when I read that article I came away with a > rather bad feeling about this. Were the list price significantly under > $1995, perhaps I might not have this reaction. Again, I don't see how $2k (initially $1k) for full source is anything less than an incredible bargain. Nothing in the description indicates that it's oriented to being an end-user system, and it's not set up to compete with current commercial UNIXes (yet!), but it looks like a very interesting tool for education and research as soon as it's out. That's as much as I can contribute, and a lot of it is conjecture. I'll second Rich's plea for more info; I hope someone like Bill or Lynne can give us an explanation and an update on the 386 BSD-based system. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Simpler is better.
gsteckel@vergil.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Steckel - Sun BOS Hardware CONTRACTOR) (06/29/91)
In article <8127@spdcc.SPDCC.COM> rbraun@spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) writes: >dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) writes: >>While reading my latest UNIX World last night, I noticed a small article >>in the Newsbytes section that told of a company (Berkeley something or other) >>which is hoping to have a clone of BSD UNIX ready for shipping in September. >>The article claimed that the clone would not have any AT&T code in it. >>This would allow them to sell the system (including full source) for an >>introductory price of $995 (later to rise to $1,995). > >_Allow_ them to sell it at this price, notably higher than any existing >386-based Unix O/S products? And using the word Berkeley in the company >name is just plain un-cool: I hope the folks at the real Berkeley cry Hmmm - full source included for $1000? Sounds >>GREAT<< to me. ATT/UI are up at $60000, $80000, going up... (I don't remember exactly what a Missed'em V source licence costs these days). It's not even out of range for 386 BINARY releases, if it includes full development tools, etc., etc., the whole thing that the bean counters nickel-dime-and-$500 you to death over. You can easily pay that for ISC, etc., if you want a full system. I don't think it's a bad price at all. More than I'd LIKE to pay, but for any sort of commercial work it's OK. I would assume that binary licenses would be cheaper. geoff steckel (gwes@wjh12.harvard.EDU) (...!husc6!wjh12!omnivore!gws) Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Sun Microsystems, despite the From: line. This posting is entirely the author's responsibility.
dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) (06/29/91)
In article <8127@spdcc.SPDCC.COM> rbraun@spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) writes: >dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) writes: >>While reading my latest UNIX World last night, I noticed a small article >>in the Newsbytes section that told of a company (Berkeley something or other) >>which is hoping to have a clone of BSD UNIX ready for shipping in September. >>The article claimed that the clone would not have any AT&T code in it. >>This would allow them to sell the system (including full source) for an >>introductory price of $995 (later to rise to $1,995). > >_Allow_ them to sell it at this price, notably higher than any existing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ >386-based Unix O/S products? And using the word Berkeley in the company ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I think that you missed a VERY important point in the Unix World article and in my request for information. The product that they propose to sell would include FULL SOURCE for the system. All the existing 386 UNIX products are BINARY ONLY releases. AT&T charges something on the order of US$50,000 (yes - FIFTY THOUSAND US DOLLARS) for a SOURCE license. $1,995 or $995 for a UNIX clone with full source is a VERY VERY good deal (assuming that it works and such of course). >name is just plain un-cool: I hope the folks at the real Berkeley cry >foul. This company even ripped off the BSD acronym: it's called >"Berkeley Software Design Inc.", and the article on p.16 of UnixWorld >makes no mention of any affiliation or non-affiliation with BSD. The >article does point out that BSD Inc.'s engineers have been "loaned" to >Berkeley for the 4.4 O/S (my assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, is that >BSD Inc. provided a couple of consultants to Berkeley for an hourly fee.) > >Sorry I'm such a cynic, but when I read that article I came away with a >rather bad feeling about this. Were the list price significantly under >$1995, perhaps I might not have this reaction. > >Are there any people from BSD Inc. or from Berkeley who are familiar >with this case who can either follow up on this or send me e-mail to >keep me quiet about this? > >-rich
mike@bria.UUCP (Mike Stefanik) (06/30/91)
In an article, rbraun@spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) writes: >dab@ubitrex.mb.ca (Danny Boulet) writes: >>While reading my latest UNIX World last night, I noticed a small article >>in the Newsbytes section that told of a company (Berkeley something or other) >>which is hoping to have a clone of BSD UNIX ready for shipping in September. >> >_Allow_ them to sell it at this price, notably higher than any existing >386-based Unix O/S products? I think that you're way off base here. First of all, $2K is not "notably" higher than other flavors of UNIX for the i386. Consider AIX, when all said and done, costs over $6K. Remember, this distribution is with source, so you aren't going to have any bogus multiuser limit and software security. I would think that it would include the networking goodies as well, so $2K is really not a bad deal at all! Consider also, those who line up early will be getting the same for $1K. Could it finally be here? Source once more? Oh, to dream the impossible dream ... -- Mike Stefanik, MGI Inc., Los Angeles -- Opinions stated are never realistic! "He who inspects errno before a system call returns failure shall be buried before he is dead." - Dan Bernstein