BSD
What is BSD?
"BSD" used to stand for Berkeley Software Distribution, a version of UNIX
with significant extensions -- including very good TCP/IP support. However,
both the "Berkeley Software Distribution" and "UNIX" have fallen into disuse.
Many of the major contributors to the operating system preferred to call
it "BSD UNIX". E.g. Leffler, McKusick, Karels, and Quarterman, "The Design
and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System", c. 1989, Addison
Wesley, ISBN 0-201-06196-1.
The the company that owned UNIX at the time, AT&T, made it more
and more difficult to get this distribution, so various people replaced
the AT&T portions of BSD with rewrites from scratch that were often
superior. "BSD UNIX" became "UNIX" in name only. When AT&T, then owner
of the trademark "UNIX", complained about this, people stopped using the
name "UNIX" and called the operating system simply "BSD".
Free versions of BSD are available from these sites:
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
A commercial version of BSD is available from BSDI
Copyright 1997-1999
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