Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: pa.dec.com!decwrl!mips!think.com!ames!pasteur!hermes.Berkeley.EDU!bostic
From: bostic@hermes.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Re: Jolitz: The Road Not Taken
Message-ID: <1992Mar20.234444.20892@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Keywords: 386BSD, Jolitz, motivation
Sender: nntp@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU (NNTP Poster)
Nntp-Posting-Host: hermes.berkeley.edu
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
References: <579@svcs1.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1992 23:44:44 GMT

It has become necessary for the UC Berkeley Computer Systems Research
Group (CSRG) to reply to William Jolitz's allegations since they have
been made public in this newsgroup.  Some of his statements, and more
importantly, his implications, concerning the CSRG are not true.  We
do not intend to debate each individual allegation which he has made.
There are, however, significant issues that must be clarified.

For those unfamiliar with the 4BSD distributions, the University policy
is as follows.  The 4BSD system is distributed for reproduction costs.
Each recipient is granted a non-exclusive license to use, modify and
redistribute the system as long as obligations to USL (previously AT&T)
regarding proprietary source code are met.  As the NET/1 and NET/2
distributions contained no source code proprietary to USL, they may be
used, modified, and redistributed freely.

Every line of code that Jolitz had contributed to the University at the
time of the NET/2 release was part of that release.  Every line of code
that Jolitz contributed to the University since the NET/2 release will
be part of the next 4BSD distribution.  Furthermore, no vendor has had
early or different distribution rights to University software or any
software contributed to the University by Jolitz or any other party.

The University has never stated that the work contributed by Jolitz is
proprietary to the University.  The contribution agreement which Jolitz
signed explicitly gave the University nonexclusive access to the code,
and explicitly noted that copyright was retained by Jolitz.

Finally, the CSRG has never stated that it will discontinue development
of a version of BSD for the 386 architecture.  As with many other
portions of the system, most of the development will be done by outside
contributors, or derived from systems like Jolitz's 386 release.  We have
always intended that 4.4BSD run on the 386 machines and see no reason
that this will not happen.

Kirk McKusick
Keith Bostic