diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'share/doc/handbook/history.sgml')
| -rw-r--r-- | share/doc/handbook/history.sgml | 91 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 91 deletions
diff --git a/share/doc/handbook/history.sgml b/share/doc/handbook/history.sgml deleted file mode 100644 index f7f9279..0000000 --- a/share/doc/handbook/history.sgml +++ /dev/null @@ -1,91 +0,0 @@ -<!-- $Id: history.sgml,v 1.21 1997/02/22 12:58:35 peter Exp $ --> -<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project --> - -<sect><heading>A brief history of FreeBSD<label id="history"></heading> - -<p><em>Contributed by &a.jkh;</em>. - -The FreeBSD project had its genesis in the early part of 1993, -partially as an outgrowth of the "Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit" by the -patchkit's last 3 coordinators: Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and myself. - -Our original goal was to produce an intermediate snapshot of 386BSD in -order to fix a number of problems with it that the patchkit mechanism -just was not capable of solving. Some of you may remember the early -working title for the project being "386BSD 0.5" or "386BSD Interim" -in reference to that fact. - -386BSD was Bill Jolitz's operating system, which had been up to that -point suffering rather severely from almost a year's worth of neglect. -As the patchkit swelled ever more uncomfortably with each passing day, -we were in unanimous agreement that something had to be done and -decided to try and assist Bill by providing this interim "cleanup" -snapshot. Those plans came to a rude halt when Bill Jolitz suddenly -decided to withdraw his sanction from the project and without any -clear indication of what would be done instead. - -It did not take us long to decide that the goal remained worthwhile, -even without Bill's support, and so we adopted the name "FreeBSD", -coined by David Greenman. Our initial objectives were set after -consulting with the system's current users and, once it became clear -that the project was on the road to perhaps even becoming a reality, -I contacted Walnut Creek CDROM with an eye towards improving -FreeBSD's distribution channels for those many unfortunates without -easy access to the Internet. Walnut Creek CDROM not only supported -the idea of distributing FreeBSD on CD but went so far as to provide -the project with a machine to work on and a fast Internet connection. -Without Walnut Creek CDROM's almost unprecedented degree of faith in -what was, at the time, a completely unknown project, it is quite -unlikely that FreeBSD would have gotten as far, as fast, as it -has today. - -The first CDROM (and general net-wide) distribution was FreeBSD 1.0, -released in December of 1993. This was based on the 4.3BSD-Lite -("Net/2") tape from U.C. Berkeley, with many components also provided by -386BSD and the Free Software Foundation. It was a fairly reasonable -success for a first offering, and we followed it with the highly successful -FreeBSD 1.1 release in May of 1994. - -Around this time, some rather unexpected storm clouds formed on the -horizon as Novell and U.C. Berkeley settled their long-running lawsuit -over the legal status of the Berkeley Net/2 tape. A condition of that -settlement was U.C. Berkeley's concession that large parts of Net/2 -were "encumbered" code and the property of Novell, who had in turn acquired -it from AT&T some time previously. What Berkeley got in return was -Novell's "blessing" that the 4.4BSD-Lite release, when it was finally -released, would be declared unencumbered and all existing Net/2 users -would be strongly encouraged to switch. This included FreeBSD, and the -project was given until the end of July 1994 to stop shipping its own -Net/2 based product. Under the terms of that agreement, the project -was allowed one last release before the deadline, that release being -FreeBSD 1.1.5.1. - -FreeBSD then set about the arduous task of literally re-inventing itself -from a completely new and rather incomplete set of 4.4BSD-Lite bits. The -"Lite" releases were light in part because Berkeley's CSRG had removed -large chunks of code required for actually constructing a bootable running -system (due to various legal requirements) and the fact that the Intel -port of 4.4 was highly incomplete. It took the project until December of 1994 -to make this transition, and in January of 1995 it released FreeBSD 2.0 to -the net and on CDROM. Despite being still more than a little rough around -the edges, the release was a significant success and was followed by the more -robust and easier to install FreeBSD 2.0.5 release in June of 1995. - -<em>Where to from here?</em> - -We released FreeBSD 2.1.5 in August of 1996, and it appeared to be -popular enough among the ISP and commercial communities that another -release along the 2.1-stable branch was merited. This was FreeBSD 2.1.7.1, -released in February 1997 and capping the end of mainstream development -on 2.1-stable. Now in maintenance mode, only security enhancements and other -critical bug fixes will be done on this branch (RELENG_2_1_0). - -FreeBSD 2.2 was branched from the development mainline ("-current") in -November 1996 as the RELENG_2_2 branch, and the first full release -(2.2.1) was released in April, 1997. Further releases along the 2.2 branch -are planned throughout the Summer and Fall of '97 and into early -Winter, at which point the first 3.0 release will appear. - -Long term development projects for everything from SMP to DEC ALPHA support -will continue to take place in the 3.0-current branch and SNAPshot releases -of 3.0 on CDROM (and, of course, on the net) will begin to appear in May, 1997. |
