Berkeley Software Design

Not to be confused with Berkeley Software Distribution.
Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
IndustryComputer software
GenreOperating system software
Founded1991
FounderRick Adams, Keith Bostic, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz
Defunct2001/2002
FateAcquired
SuccessorWind River Systems, iXsystems
Headquarters
U.S.
ProductsBSD/OS

Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi), was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PC compatible (and later, other) computer systems. The name was chosen for its similarity to "Berkeley Software Distribution" the source of its primary product (specifically 4.3BSD Networking Release 2).

BSDI was founded by Rick Adams and members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, including Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz and Donn Seeley.[1] Jolitz, Seeley and Trent Hein were working for Rick Adams' UUNET at the time and became BSDI's first employees when the company began operations in 1991.[1] In December 1991, USENIX Secretary and Former Head of Software at Convex Computer, Rob Kolstad from University of Illinois, was hired and would take over company operations just two years later.[2]

BSD/386 was released in January 1992. The full system, including source code retailed at $995, which was more affordable than the equivalent source code license for the rival UNIX System V from AT&T (which cost more than $20,000 in the late 1980s.)[3] Under Rob Kolstad's direction, the company decided to pursue internet infrastructure as their primary customer audience. In the mid 1990s the top-10 websites in the world were almost all using BSD/386 as their BSD source codebase.[4]

  1. ^ a b Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov (2006). "AT&T Lawsuit Helps to Launch Linux Into Mainstream". Archived from the original on 2018-10-29. Retrieved 2018-10-29.
  2. ^ Dr. Peter Salus (November 2005). "The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin - Ch. 16, by Dr. Peter Salus". Archived from the original on 2010-06-12. Retrieved 2009-11-17.
  3. ^ McKusick, Marshall Kirk (January 1999). "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable". Archived from the original on 2009-10-01. Retrieved 2009-11-17.
  4. ^ personal communications (Robert Kolstad to Donald W . Gillies), November, 1995.