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Comment by hollerith | Hacker News Reader

The BSD releases did not form a complete OS and were not runnable except in combination with source code from ATT Unix, which was emphatically proprietary software. The first release of BSD that was unequivocally legal for anyone to acquire and run without getting ATT's permission was 4.4BSD-Lite in June 1994. (Yes, organizations did create OSes from BSD Networking Release 2 (Net/2) released in June 1991, but legal uncertainty hung around them for years.)

In contrast, by 1984, Stallman had already formed a close working relationship with a competent lawyer (Eben Moglen) to devise a legal strategy to maximize the probability that everyone will continue to enjoy a list of freedoms (chosen by Stallman) around any software put under the GPL.

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> The BSD releases did not form a complete OS and were not runnable except in combination with source code from ATT Unix, which was emphatically proprietary software.

Is that the measure: a complete OS? When exactly did GNU ship a complete OS?

IMHO none of the above is relevant to the question which was first. IMHO both were not first. IBM, among others, were shipping source code with their product, until they didn't. OSS is and was a reaction to an only object model. And there were seeds at Berkeley and MIT.

And Stallman isn't strictly responsible for the MIT strain. As Keith Packard said in his "A Political History of X", the X11 project chose not use the GPL license, because Stallman was simply too annoying.

GNU+Linux was good enough. Meanwhilke, BSD in early 90's was rotting until the BSD 4.4 forks arise.

> GNU+Linux was good enough. Meanwhilke, BSD in early 90's was rotting until the BSD 4.4 forks arise.

Was this necessary? What exactly are we arguing about again?

>Is that the measure: a complete OS?

The fact that BSD was incomplete is relevant because it illustrates the fact that the only people who could run BSD were shops that had a source-code license for the proprietary AT&T Unix.

So... >> When exactly did GNU ship a complete OS?

> the only people who could run BSD were shops that had a source-code license for the proprietary AT&T Unix.

So -- finally! -- that's the measure of OSS? It must run on non-proprietary systems? Not simply the source code? OSS that runs on Windows or MacOS or VMS is not actually OSS?

You figure that Linux is the first non-proprietary system in 1991? Not 4.3BSD released in 1989?

I think you can understand my and others reluctance to state definitively Stallman was first, when by a dozen different metrics he wasn't. I'm still trying to understand what he was supposedly first at? First to find a lawyer?

Linux is important. GNU is important. BSD is important. And they remain important. I don't think any of them are made more important by distinguishing only one and not the others. Like -- as much as it pains me to say it, because of how I loath Stallman and the FSF, GCC was more than important to the entire ecosystem for years. Until LLVM, it was required. Etc, etc.

>> When exactly did GNU ship a complete OS?

I want to say around 2006 or 2007 was the first time a 'normal' *nix hacker could install and boot[0] a complete GNU OS[1] and get something resembling work done (ie edit and compile C code in vi or emacs). (yes I know the question was rhetorical)

[0] without having to to a bunch of bootstrapping steps and other hackery

[1] Technically 'shipped' by Debian rather than GNU/FSF

> but legal uncertainty hung around them for years.

I mean if we're going to split hairs and play this game, SCO claimed ownership to alleged Unix code in Linux which wasn't initially resolved until 2008 or so (and further continued for another decade). That never stopped anybody.

Yes, but not having a copy of the source code for ATT Unix stopped everyone from using BSD or any system based on BSD till 1991. Again, before then BSD was very far from being a complete OS.

So BSD has severe shortcomings as an answer to the question that started this thread, namely, "Can you show examples of impactful open software that predates fsf and stallman?"

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