[TUHS] Is there a good, even definitive, list of reimplementations of the Unix kernel? What would good cut-off criteria be?

[Steve Jenkin via TUHS]

Adam,

Great catch... 

It appears Bill Jolitz claimed he rewrote 386BSD 'from scratch' after deleting all UCB/BSD code and the final 386BSD was unencumbered, ie not from USL or UCB/BSDI.
Perhaps he wrote it in a year, unclear.

Notably, the claim 386BSD was 'not encumbered' ( a reimplementation ) wasn't refute  in the next issue by BSDi,
who claimed ownership of the 1st version of 386BSD by Jolitz, leading to his departure.

Jolitz details what code he wrote, for whom and when, creating two software artefacts designed by him & named '386BSD'.

Sorry I can't give you details on SMP...
Wasn't that done by a group at Bell Labs before V6?
Thought I read a comment on-list, perhaps in this thread.

cheers!
steve

> On 22 Apr 2026, at 03:29, Adam Koszek via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> The Wikipedia says that Jolix could be another. Looks like they had the copyright on it?
> 
> I’d be very interested in hearing more about commercial efforts - AIX, IRIX, Solaris.
> 
> The part that always felt interesting was what cool things happened behind the corporate door - which UNIX got to run on 2 CPUs first, and then how it all got scaled up, who got SMP networking first.
> 
> I also remember from MeetBSD that folks had good words about Solaris efforts to refactor things around VFS, buffer cache. Perhaps many more ideas. 
> 
> Adam

===============

Wikipedia source:

	Unix Labs' Berkeley Software Design Suit Finds Berkeley University in Disarray
	By Maureen O'Gara
	Computergram
	August 6 1992
		<https://web.archive.org/web/20210903181408/https://www.tech-insider.org/usl-v-bsdi-ucb/research/1992/0806.html>

	[  points to Unigram 'interview the previous week', text near identical to Unigram 396 below ]

===============

Unigram / X Number 396
August 3-7 1992
Page 4  

100,000 USERS HAVE YET ANOTHER BERKELEY VARIANT - 386BSD...
by Maureen O’ Gara

	<https://archive.org/details/UnigramX1992366-416/page/n213/mode/1up>

		[ selected extracts ]

	The man who says he named both pieces of software is former 386BSD project leader and principal developer of BSD 2.8 and 2.9, Bill Jolitz. 
	Jolitz reportedly mortgaged his house to start the initial 386BSD project and subsequently finished it in his own time. 

	The code and its rationale were published over the course of a year in Dr Dobb’s Journal beginning in January of 1991.
	It was also picked up by Dr Dobbs’ sister publication Unix Magazin in Germany.

	The full code has been available on InterNet for the last two months and was to go on CompuServe last week, 
		according to Dr Dobbs’ editor Jonathan Erickson. 

	Jolitz, interviewed by Unigram.X last week, says that his 386BSD, 
		at least in its initial versions, 
		was encumbered. 
		[ no interview with Jolitz is in the 1992 copies of Unigram.X that are saved. O'Gara only said 'an interview', not that it was published. ]

	He also says that 386BSD is the basis of BSDI’s BSD/386 which he worked on in 1991 at CSRG 
		initially under the financial sponsorship of UUNet Technologies.

	386BSD was Originally intended to be "a university curiosity,” Jolitz said, a non-commercial, non-industrial strength way 
		for students, facility and researchers to have access to Berkeley code on inexpensive machines. 

	Increasingly through last year it became apparent that what CSRG wanted was “basically the same thing as BSDI":
		an unencumbered commercial system. 

	He broke with BSDI in November, he says, ... 

	He subsequently received letters from CSRG and university counsel 
		claiming that all the work he had contributed to Berkeley since NET2 was “University proprietary," 
		a phrase he had never heard before.

	In November he was asked to destroy all his own work and anything in his possession having to do with Berkeley or 386.

	 He says he complied and rewrote the current 386BSD Release 0.0 from scratch. 

	He says he receives no money from BSDI for his code 
		though he alleges BSDI has told its customers that he does. 

	Jolitz does not believe NET2 is encumbered.

===============

Unigram / X Number 397
August 10-14 1992

Page 6 [ last page, unnumbered ]
<https://archive.org/details/UnigramX1992366-416/page/n223/mode/1up>

Unix System Labs is apparently looking at the Tiny 386BSD boot disk 
	(the one that’s been circulating in the academia, which derives from Bill Jolitz’s work and is not from Berkeley System Design Inc) 
checking that it doesn’t infringe their property rights. 

Meanwhile, BSDI’s only reaction so far to our story last week is to claim Bill Jolitz was a founder of BSDI.

===============
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin