Re: Re: Viability of Linux companies

[Arun <am_in_00@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2001 at 09:54:00AM -0700, Arun Sharma wrote:
> > 
> > 	Well, I don't think so. IMHO the source code was available only
> > for a price. Maybe free for some universities but not for all.
> > 
> 
> And where did you learn that from ? Some linux tabloid ? :) (g, d & r)
> 
> http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html

	Didnt you see this ?

<snip>
Networking, Release 1

     Up through the release of 4.3BSD-Tahoe, all recipients of BSD had
     to first get an AT&T source license. That was because the BSD
     systems were never released by Berkeley in a binary-only format;
     the distributions always contained the complete source to every
     part of the system. The history of the Unix system and the BSD
     system in particular had shown the power of making the source
     available to the users. Instead of passively using the system, they
     actively worked to fix bugs, improve performance and functionality,
     and even add completely new features.
     
     With the increasing cost of the AT&T source licenses, vendors that
     wanted to build standalone TCP/IP-based networking products for the
     PC market using the BSD code found the per-binary costs
     prohibitive. So, they requested that Berkeley break out the
     networking code and utilities and provide them under licensing
     terms that did not require an AT&T source license. The TCP/IP
     networking code clearly did not exist in 32/V and thus had been
     developed entirely by Berkeley and its contributors. The BSD
     originated networking code and supporting utilities were released
     in June 1989 as Networking Release 1, the first
     freely-redistributable code from Berkeley.
</snip> 

	
Could you pls tell when the first free version of *BSD came ? 1989 or 1994 ? 
ie with out the problem of AT&T source licenses.


Arun.