1.3. The Transition of BSD to Open Source Up through the release of 4.3BSD Tahoe, all recipients of BSD had to first get an AT&T source license. That was because the BSD systems were never released by Berkeley in a binary-only format; the distributions always contained the complete source to every part of the system. The history of the UNIX system, and the BSD system in particular, had shown the power of making the source available to the users. Instead of passively using the system, they actively worked to fix bugs, improve performance and functionality, and even add completely new features. With the increasing cost of the AT&T source licenses, vendors that wanted to build stand-alone TCP/IP-based networking products for the PC market using the BSD code found the per-binary costs prohibitive. So they requested that Berkeley break out the networking code and utilities and provide them under licensing terms that did not require an AT&T source license. The TCP/IP networking code clearly did not exist in 32/V and thus had been developed entirely by Berkeley and its contributors. The BSD-originated networking code and supporting utilities were released in June 1989 as Networking Release 1, the first freely redistributable code from Berkeley. The licensing terms were liberal. A licensee could release the code modified or unmodified in source or binary form with no accounting or royalties to Berkeley. The only requirements were that the copyright notices in the source file be left intact and that products that incorporated the code include in their documentation that the product contained code from the University of California and its contributors. Although Berkeley charged a $1000 fee to get a tape, anyone was free to get a copy from somebody who already had it. Indeed, several large sites put it up for anonymous FTP shortly after it was released. Though the code was freely available, several hundred organizations purchased tapes, which helped to fund the CSRG and encouraged further development. Networking Release 2 With the success of the first open-source release, the CSRG decided to see how much more of BSD they could spring free. Keith Bostic led the charge by soliciting people to rewrite the UNIX utilities from scratch based solely on their published descriptions. Their only compensation would be to have their name listed among the Berkeley contributors next to the name of the utility that they rewrote. The contributions started slowly and were mostly for the trivial utilities. But as the list of completed utilities grew, and Bostic continued to hold forth for contributions at public events such as Usenix, the rate of contributions continued to grow. Soon the list crossed 100 utilities, and within 18 months nearly all the important utilities and libraries had been rewritten. The kernel proved to be a bigger task because it could not easily be rewritten from scratch. The entire kernel was reviewed, file by file, removing code that had originated in the 32/V release. When the review was completed, there were only six remaining kernel files that were still contaminated and that could not be trivially rewritten. While consideration was given to rewriting those six files so that a complete kernel could be released, the CSRG decided to release just the less controversial set. The CSRG sought permission for the expanded release from folks higher up in the university administration. After much internal debate and verification of the methods used for detecting proprietary code, the CSRG was given permission to do the release. The initial thought was to come up with a new name for the second freely redistributable release. However, getting a new license written and approved by the university lawyers would have taken many months. So, the new release was named Networking Release 2, since that could be done with just a revision of the approved Networking Release 1 license agreement. This second greatly expanded freely redistributable release began shipping in June 1991. The redistribution terms and cost were the same as the terms and cost of the first networking release. As before, several hundred individuals and organizations paid the $1000 fee to get the distribution from Berkeley. Closing the gap from the Networking Release 2 distribution to a fully functioning system did not take long. Within six months of the release, Bill Jolitz had written replacements for the six missing files. He promptly released a fully compiled and bootable system for the 386-based PC architecture in January 1992, which he called 386/BSD. Jolitz's 386/BSD distribution was done almost entirely on the net. He simply put it up for anonymous FTP and let anyone who wanted it download it for free. Within weeks he had a huge following. Unfortunately, the demands of keeping a full-time job meant that Jolitz could not devote the time needed to keep up with the flood of incoming bug fixes and enhancements to 386/BSD. So within a few months of the release of 386/BSD, a group of avid 386/BSD users formed the NetBSD group to pool their collective resources to help maintain and later enhance the system. By early 1993 they were doing releases that became known as the NetBSD distribution. The NetBSD group chose to emphasize the support of as many platforms as possible and continued the research-style development done by the CSRG. Until 1998, their distribution was done solely over the net with no distribution media available. Their group continues to target primarily the hard-core technical users. The FreeBSD group was formed a few months after the NetBSD group with a charter to support just the PC architecture and to go after a larger and less technically advanced audience, much as Linux had done. They built elaborate installation scripts and began shipping their system on a low-cost CD-ROM in December 1993. The combination of ease of installation and heavy promotion on the net and at major trade shows, such as Comdex, led to a large, rapid growth curve. FreeBSD quickly rose to have the largest installed base of all the Networking Release 2-derived systems. FreeBSD also rode the wave of Linux popularity by adding a Linux emulation mode that allows Linux binaries to run on the FreeBSD platform. This feature allows FreeBSD users to use the ever growing set of applications available for Linux while getting the robustness, reliability, and performance of the FreeBSD system. In 1995, OpenBSD spun off from the NetBSD group. Their technical focus was aimed at improving the security of the system. Their marketing focus was to make the system easier to use and more widely available. Thus, they began producing and selling CD-ROMs, with many of the ease of installation ideas from the FreeBSD distribution. The Lawsuit In addition to the groups organized to freely redistribute systems originating from the Networking Release 2 tape, a company, Berkeley Software Design Incorporated (BSDI), was formed to develop and distribute a commercially supported version of the code. Like the other groups, it started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release. BSDI began selling its system, including both source and binaries, in January 1992 for $995. It began running advertisements touting its 99 percent discount over the price charged for System V source plus binary systems. Interested readers were told to call 1-800-ITS-UNIX. Shortly after BSDI began its sales campaign, it received a letter from UNIX System Laboratory (USL) (a mostly owned subsidiary of AT&T spun off to develop and sell UNIX) [Ritchie, 2004]. The letter demanded that BSDI stop promoting its product as UNIX and in particular that it stop using the deceptive phone number. Although the phone number was promptly dropped and the advertisements changed to explain that the product was not UNIX, USL was still unhappy and filed suit to enjoin BSDI from selling its product. The suit alleged that the BSDI product contained USL proprietary code and trade secrets. USL sought to get an injunction to halt BSDI's sales until the lawsuit was resolved claiming that it would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of its trade secrets if the BSDI distributions continued. At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that it was simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. BSDI was willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files but did not believe it should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that it would have to restate its complaint based solely on the six files or the case would be dismissed. Recognizing that it would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the university and of the BSDI products. With the impending injunction hearing just a few short weeks away, preparation began in earnest. All the members of the CSRG were deposed, as was nearly everyone employed by BSDI. Briefs, counterbriefs, and counter-counterbriefs flew back and forth between the lawyers. The staff of the CSRG turned from writing code to writing several hundred pages of material that found its way into various briefs. In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a 40-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints [Debevoise, 1993]. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in federal court. The University of California took the hint and rushed to California state court the following Monday morning with a countersuit against USL. By filing first in California, the university had established the locale of any further state court action. Constitutional law requires all state filing to be done in a single state to prevent a litigant with deep pockets from bleeding an opponent dry by filing 50 cases against them, one in each state. The result was that if USL wanted to take any action against the university in state courts, it would be forced to do so in California rather than in its home state of New Jersey. The university's suit claimed that USL had failed in its obligation to provide due credit to the university for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that it had signed with the university [Linzner & MacDonald, 1993]. If the claim were found to be valid, the university asked that USL be forced to reprint all its documentation with the appropriate due credit added, to notify all its licensees of its oversight, and to run full-page advertisements in major publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine, notifying the business world of its inadvertent oversight. Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993 settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceeded very slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed, and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a few minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the university agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed. 4.4BSD The newly blessed release was called 4.4BSD-Lite and was released in June 1994 under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. Specifically, the terms allow free redistribution in source and binary form, subject only to the constraint that the university copyrights remain intact and that the university receive credit when others use the code. Simultaneously, the complete system was released as 4.4BSD-Encumbered, which still required recipients to have a USL source license. The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for its system. So all the extant BSD groups BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite sources into which they then merged their enhancements and improvements. While this reintegration caused a short-term delay in the development of the various BSD systems, it was a blessing in disguise, since it forced all the divergent groups to resynchronize with the three years of development that had occurred at the CSRG since the release of Networking Release 2. 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2 The money received from the 4.4BSD-Encumbered and 4.4BSD-Lite releases was used to fund a part-time effort to integrate bug fixes and enhancements. These changes continued for two years until the rate of bug reports and feature enhancements had died down to a trickle. The final set of changes was released as 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2 in June 1995. Most of the changes incorporated into 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2 eventually made it into the other systems' source bases. Though the license term requiring that due credit be given to the university had been extremely helpful in the lawsuit, the university agreed to drop it following the final release. As many people began using the BSD-style copyrights for their own code, the proliferation of due-credit clauses in open-source software became difficult to determine and unmanageably large. By agreeing to drop the due-credit clause, the university hoped to set an example for others using its license. Over time, and with a lot of effort from the BSD community, the due-credit clause has been dropped from many of the open-source programs that use the BSD-style license. Following the release of 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2, the CSRG was disbanded. After 15 years of piloting the BSD ship, it was time to let others with fresh ideas and boundless enthusiasm take over. While it might seem best to have a single centralized authority overseeing the system development, the idea of having several groups with different charters ensures that many different approaches will be tried and that there is no single point of failure. Because the system is released in source form, the best ideas can easily be picked up by other groups. Indeed, cross-pollination of ideas between open-source projects is common. | 
