“Berkeley Unix has morphed through multiple phase shifts since
its inception some 20 years ago, from the Joy-dominated era of the
late ’70s and early ’80s to the more collaborative period that
began after Joy’s departure to Sun in 1982. But in the early ’90s,
after a bitter confrontation with AT&T, BSD finally did become
“freely redistributable,” and descendants of BSD — led by FreeBSD,
but also including OpenBSD and NetBSD — are vigorous participants
in the contemporary battle for operating-system supremacy. Yahoo,
arguably the world’s busiest Web site, runs on FreeBSD. And yet,
despite its proud heritage, BSD’s current status doesn’t quite
match up to its early fame. A victim of schisms within its own
developer community, bruised by the battle with AT&T and
wounded by the defection of Joy to Sun, BSD is currently a small
player, especially as compared with Linux. Linux-based operating
systems have seized the public imagination.”
“BSD patriots argue that the battle is far from over, that
BSD is technically superior and will therefore win in the end.
That’s for the future to determine. What’s indisputable is BSD’s
contribution in the past. Even if, by 1975, Berkeley’s Free Speech
Movement was a relic belonging to a fast-fading generation, on the
fourth floor of Evans Hall, where Joy shared an office, the
free-software movement was just beginning.“
“The connection between the two movements is clear, if not
direct. By demonstrating the power of cooperative software
development, and by strengthening the software backbone of the
Internet so it could further nurture such development, BSD helped
enable the creation of a medium that will do more to spread free
speech than anything hitherto constructed. Power to the people,
from the code.”