[TUHS] BSD 4.1, 4.1x, Quasijarus, and 4.3x

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday,  1 February 2022 at 15:34:53 -0600, Will Senn wrote:
> All,
>
> I did my research on this, but it's still a bit fuzzy (why is it that
> people's memories from 40 years ago are so malleable?).
>
> 1. What are y'all's recollections regarding BSD 4.1's releases, vis a
> vis the VAX. In McKusick's piece, Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix, I get
> one perspective, and from Sokolov's Quasijarus project, I get quite
> another.

Kirk was there the whole time, from far earlier until the end of the
CSRG.  Sokolov came later, and to my recollection he wasn't involved
in core BSD at all.  I don't have any personal recollections of the
time, but it seems clear who is more plausible.

> 5. Has anyone unearthed an original 4.1 tape, or is Haertel's
> reconstruction of the 1981 tape 1 release as close as it gets?

Clearly this is beyond what is on the 4 CD set, right?  That tree
contains a file TAPE with the comments (inter alia)

  Extracted from two 4.1BSD distribution tapes dated 7/10/81.

  First label on the tape:

	4.1bsd VAX UNIX System 7/10/81

	5 files on tape:
	1 (boot stuff) 2 (root dump)
	3 (/usr) 4 (/usr/src) 5(4.0/4.1)
	last three are tar; 1600 bpi

But presumably you know that.  Was this the Haertel reconstruction you
mention?

On Tuesday,  1 February 2022 at 13:47:53 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 01, 2022 at 03:34:53PM -0600, Will Senn wrote:
>> 2. Sokolov implies that the CSRG mission started going off the rails with
>> the 4.3/4.3BSD-Tahoe and it all went pear shaped with the 4.3-Reno release,
>> and that Quasijarus puts the mission back on track, is that so?
>
> I think the issue was that some of the core CSRG people went off to
> form BSDi to try and sell BSD on PCs.

BSDI came later, and the founders weren't CSRG people, though some
CSRG people did join the company.  I think the real issue was that
CSRG no longer had a purpose: the research aspect was over and done
with, and the funding dried up.

Greg
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