1991: BSD Net/2 Release
In June 1991 developers at the University of California, Berkeley released Net/2 BSD, a freely redistributable Unix-like operating system. The BSD development effort dated to the 1970s, when it began as an effort to add functionality to AT&T Unix. After the latter became a commercial product in the early 1980s, however, the BSD team started working to free BSD of AT&T code entirely. Net/2 was the first version of BSD that essentially reached that goal. In the summer of 1991, a time before anyone had heard of Linux and the GNU developers were struggling to create a kernel, BSD seemed very promising as a free Unix-like OS. In the event, however, beset by legal troubles (and, arguably, licensing terms that were too liberal), BSD and its derivatives never gained as wide a following as GNU/Linux.
In June 1991 developers at the University of California, Berkeley released Net/2 BSD, a freely redistributable Unix-like operating system. The BSD development effort dated to the 1970s, when it began as an effort to add functionality to AT&T Unix. After the latter became a commercial product in the early 1980s, however, the BSD team started working to free BSD of AT&T code entirely. Net/2 was the first version of BSD that essentially reached that goal. In the summer of 1991, a time before anyone had heard of Linux and the GNU developers were struggling to create a kernel, BSD seemed very promising as a free Unix-like OS. In the event, however, beset by legal troubles (and, arguably, licensing terms that were too liberal), BSD and its derivatives never gained as wide a following as GNU/Linux.
