First open source OS

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

I should probably get Clem Cole in on this one. The AT&T suit was not so much proprietary code 
as it was Unix itself. Had AT&T prevailed, it would have affected Linux as well. I think that Linux 
benefitted from the misconception that the AT&T suit was based on copyright violations, which it 
was not. 
I'm not sure which is a "better" system, Linux or BSD. Much depends on the distribution people 
use mostly WRT tools, utilities and applications. 
On 20 Dec 2001 at 12:15, richb at pioneer.ci.net wrote:

> GAF wrote:
> > They state thet Linux is the first completely open source operating system.
> > I think they are wrong on a couple of counts. FreeBSD predates Linux, but
> > was kind of overshadowed by the AT&T lawsuit.
> 
> I'm not too sure about that.  I brought up Linux in December 1992 and I
> don't recall FreeBSD being completely open at that point--you still had to
> use some AT&T proprietary code to get it up and running.  I chose Linux
> over FreeBSD at the time because of that, and because of the active
> newsgroups which seemed to have more momentum at the time.  FreeBSD's
> popularity surged in 1994 or thereabouts.
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org