# BSD/OS > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/BSD/OS > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/BSD/OS.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD%2FOS > Source revision: 1351820633 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) This article is about the proprietary Unix sold by BSDi. For the open source Unix released by Bill Jolitz, see [386BSD](/source/386BSD). **BSD/OS** is a [proprietary](/source/Proprietary_software) [Unix](/source/Unix) [operating system](/source/Operating_system) first released in 1993 as **BSD/386**. It was originally developed and sold by [Berkeley Software Design](/source/Berkeley_Software_Design), Inc. (BSDi) and designed to be a [Unix](/source/Unix) for [386](/source/Intel_386)-based [PCs](/source/IBM_PC%E2%80%93compatible). It was built off the Net/2 distribution of [BSD](/source/Berkeley_Software_Distribution), to which the developers had previously contributed.[1] Eventually the operating system was also ported to support [PowerPC](/source/PowerPC) and [SPARC](/source/SPARC) architectures, and consequently was retitled to BSD/OS as of version 2.0 (1995). In 2001, BSDi sold the rights of the OS to [Wind River Systems](/source/Wind_River_Systems) who developed and released version 5.0 in 2003 before discontinuing the product. ## History BSDi was formed in 1991 by members of the [Computer Systems Research Group](/source/Computer_Systems_Research_Group) (CSRG) at [UC Berkeley](/source/University_of_California,_Berkeley) to develop and sell a proprietary version of BSD Unix for [PC compatible](/source/PC_compatible) systems with [Intel 386](/source/Intel_386) (or later) processors. This made use of work previously done by [Bill Jolitz](/source/Bill_Jolitz) to port BSD to the PC platform. BSDi had distributed over 300 copies of the beta version of BSD/386 by August 1992.[2] BSD/386 1.0 was released in March 1993. The company sold licenses and support for it, taking advantage of terms in the [BSD License](/source/BSD_License) which permit use of the BSD software in proprietary systems, as long the author is credited. The company in turn contributed code and resources to the development of non-proprietary BSD operating systems. In the meantime, Jolitz had left BSDi and independently released a [free software](/source/Free_software) BSD for PCs, called [386BSD](/source/386BSD). The BSDi system features complete and thorough [manpage](/source/Man_page) documentation for the entire system, including complete syntax and argument explanations, examples, file usage, authors, and cross-references to other commands. BSD/386 licenses (including [source code](/source/Source_code)) were priced at $995, lower than [AT&T](/source/AT%26T_Corporation) [UNIX System V](/source/UNIX_System_V) source licenses, a fact highlighted in their advertisements.[3] As part of the settlement of *[USL v. BSDi](/source/USL_v._BSDi)*, BSDI substituted code that had been written for the university's 4.4 BSD-Lite release for disputed code in their OS, effective with release 2.0. By the time of this release, the "386" designation had become dated, and BSD/386 was renamed "BSD/OS". Later releases of BSD/OS also support [Sun](/source/Sun_Microsystems) [SPARC](/source/SPARC)-based systems. BSD/OS 5.x versions are available for PowerPC too.[4] The marketing of BSD/OS became increasingly focused on [Internet](/source/Internet) server applications. However, the increasingly tight market for [Unix-compatible software](/source/Unix-like_operating_system) in the late 1990s and early 2000s hurt sales of BSD/OS. On one end of the market, it lacked the certification of [the Open Group](/source/The_Open_Group) to bear the UNIX trademark, and the sales force and hardware support of the larger Unix vendors. Simultaneously, it lacked the negligible acquisition cost of the open source BSDs and [Linux](/source/Linux). BSD/OS was acquired by [Wind River Systems](/source/Wind_River_Systems) in April 2001.[5] Wind River discontinued sales of BSD/OS at the end of 2003, with support terminated at the end of 2004. ## Releases Version Release date BSD/386 (BSDi) 0.3.1 1992, April BSD/386 (BSDi) 0.3.2 1992, June BSD/386 (BSDi) 1.0 1993, March BSD/386 (BSDi) 1.1 1994, February BSD/OS (BSDi) 2.0 1995, January BSD/OS (BSDi) 2.0.1 1995, June BSD/OS (BSDi) 2.1 1996, January BSD/OS (BSDi) 3.0 1997, February BSD/OS (BSDi) 3.1 1998, March BSD/OS (BSDi) 4.0 1998, August BSD/OS (BSDi) 4.0.1 1999, March BSD/OS (BSDi) 4.1 1999, December BSD/OS (BSDi) 4.2 2000, November BSD/OS (Wind River) 4.3 2002, March BSD/OS (Wind River) 5.0 2003, May BSD/OS (Wind River) 5.1 2003, October ## References 1. Levitt, Jason & Schuman, Evan (June 22, 1992). ["For BSD Unix, It's Sayonara"](https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1992/0622.html). *Open Systems Today* 1. ["Unix Labs' Berkeley Software Design Suit Finds Berkeley University in Disarray"](https://www.tech-insider.org/usl-v-bsdi-ucb/research/1992/0806.html). *www.tech-insider.org*. Retrieved 2024-12-06. 1. McKusick, M. K. (1999). Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix - From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable. Retrieved July 27, 2006, from [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html](http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html) 1. ["Wind River Announces Product Rollout for Its BSD/OS UNIX-based Operating System"](https://www.windriver.com/news/press/news-386) 1. ["Press release: *Wind River to Acquire BSDi Software Assets, Extending Development Platforms to Include Robust UNIX-based Operating Systems for Embedded Devices*"](https://web.archive.org/web/20200919224218/https://www.windriver.com/news/press/pr.html?ID=436). Archived from [the original](http://www.windriver.com/news/press/pr.html?ID=436) on 2020-09-19. Retrieved 2007-02-02. ## External links - ["BSD/OS 2.0"](https://archive.org/details/BSDOS2.0). *[Internet Archive](/source/Internet_Archive)* --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [BSD/OS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD%2FOS) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD%2FOS?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.