Why did BSD lose in the battle with GNU / Linux?

There are many different open source operating systems, and if you use one of them, it will almost certainly be based on the Linux kernel and the GNU software suite. Many people think that the GNU / Linux distribution was the first open source operating system. But it is not. He was ahead of the project Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD. And it would be fair to say that he was also more professional and market oriented. But why then is BSD now in the backyard of the open source ecosystem, while GNU / Linux plays one of the central roles? Let's look at it from a historical perspective.

The story of BSD is closely related to Unix, the operating system that was released by AT & T Bell Labs in 1969. In the late 1970s, a group of specialists at the University of California at Berkeley led by Bill Joy began developing the BSD project as one of the Unix distributions. There was no significant difference between them at that time. They just added a few extra utilities that included AT & T’s source code.

However, things began to change in the early 80s, when AT & T’s decision to sell Unix led to a demand for a free Unix clone, but without an expensive license. For several years, BSD developers worked to separate their code from AT & T code. They slowly but surely went to create their own full-fledged Unix-like operating system.

Their goal was achieved in June 1991, with the release of BSD Net 2. Unlike the previous release of Net 1, which consisted mostly of code for working with networks and was not a standalone operating system, Net 2 was a fully-fledged Unix-like system .

And since BSD Net 2 came with a license that gave access to the source code and the right to freely distribute both its own and any of its derivatives, it was essentially the first open source operating system in history. Although the concept of "open source" did not yet exist, and the BSD license did not meet the requirements of the Free Software Foundation Richard Stallman, nevertheless, Net 2 was a big step forward for the entire free software community. This proved that writing a free Unix clone is real.

The release of Net 2 was also important because at that time it was the only free Unix clone that actually worked. Linus Torvalds released the first version of the Linux kernel only a few months later, more than two years later, before it became sufficiently applicable. Whereas the project of the GNU operating system, which Richard Stallman and his supporters have been developing since 1984, has not yet had its own working core.

And if BSD Net 2 was the first free Unix-like operating system of its kind, then why couldn't it “shoot” and become what GNU / Linux became - the main platform of the open source ecosystem?

Lawyers enter the fray

One reason was litigation between Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI) and Unix Systems Labs (USL). In the early 90s, USL became the owner of the AT & T Unix operating system and sued BSDI for violating its copyright. No wonder, because they were developing a free alternative to their product. In March 1993, the court rejected most of their claims, but legal battles continued along with the counter-claim of the University of California. And only at the beginning of 94, when Novell became the owner of Unix, all legal disputes were finally settled.

Viewed as a whole, all these legal problems did not in fact prevent the distribution and use of the BSD operating system. But doubts about the security of her legal position clearly slowed it down. In all likelihood, this is precisely why the very historical chance arose for the Linux kernel, which allowed it to unexpectedly “shoot”. But it was just a hobby project of a Finnish student, in contrast to the professional development of a group of leading American university scientists.

Two different licenses

The slow growth of BSD cannot be explained only by legal issues. In the end, GNU / Linux also had similar serious problems in the early 2000s, when the SCO Group sued several major Linux vendors and corporate users. These litigation generally ended only in 2007 in favor of Linux. Nevertheless, they did not have such a negative impact, the popularity of Linux continued to grow.

One of the reasons why BSD could not gain such popularity among technically advanced programmers and admins ("hackers") is the nature of the Net 2 license, which allowed almost everything. Unlike the GNU GPL license, which obliges you to disclose the source code of all derived products, the BSD license does not commit to this. Programmers are free to borrow and modify the code for any task without making it public. This is very good for commercial projects, but bad for "hackers" who value openness and transparency.

Two different methodologies

The third important reason is that BSD was developed by a relatively small, organized group of professional Berkeley programmers. While the development of the Linux kernel was carried out by Linus Torvalds using a wide and flexible network of volunteers scattered all over the world. Using Eric Raymond's comparisons from his famous essay , the creation of BSD was similar to the construction of a magnificent "cathedral", which a small group of craftsmen carefully erected. While the development of Linux looked like a spontaneous "bazaar" in which things were resolved quickly, new versions appeared often, and the only requirement for the members of this heterogeneous team was the ability to solve pressing issues.

The "cathedral" approach was also characteristic of the GNU project itself, long before the advent of Linux, but it was Linux that showed how you could quickly become popular through frequent releases. Thus, Linus Torvalds accidentally discovered a completely new, more efficient approach to development, thanks to which Linux was able to evolve very quickly, much faster than BSD.

BSD Legacy

Of course, the BSD project could not simply disappear after the rapid take-off of Linux in the 90s. Moreover, the set of free operating systems originating from Net 2, first of all NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, continues to live and well, albeit with a small but dedicated community.

At the same time, the nature of the BSD license has led to its popularity among proprietary software developers. The most striking example is the Apple company, which used the BSD sources in their macOS and iOS operating systems. Given this, BSD - in one form or another - today has a huge army of fans, although most owners of MacBooks and iPhones do not even suspect that their devices use the "open source" code that Berkeley developed from the 80s to the early 90s .

Perhaps this is unfortunate, because Apple software solutions are closed as far as possible. This is the exact opposite of what the creators of BSD dreamed about when they released Net 2 in 1991. Anyway, the result was interesting.

Translator's notes

It was a translation of the article "Open Source History: Why BSD Beat Out GNU and Linux?", By Christopher Tozzi.

I note that the FreeBSD website contains slightly different information - that the first full-fledged operating system was not BSD Net 2, but 386BSD, released in 1992. In Russian , in English .

Another striking example of the popularity of the BSD legacy is the Sony Play Station game console — its operating system is a fork of FreeBSD.

Understanding that a sufficiently holivar topic has been raised, I ask everyone to write only weighted comments and respect another point of view. Let's also do a quick survey.