A bit of BSD history question

[W B Hacker]

Sascha Wildner wrote:
elekktretterr at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I know a bit about the BSD OS history, however Ive been wondering lately,
what or who had made the initiative in the BSD community of developers to
free and open the source? Any influences from GNU and R. Stallman or
something like that?


BSD is older than GNU and R. Stallman's misconception of "free".
*snip*

Definitely so.

IIRC, the BSD license is derived in part from the earlier MIT 
license.

The sharing environment that gave rise to these predates 
Stallman's birth, let alone his GNU project.

For most of their first 20 years of life, computers and software 
were largely defense-related animals, often secret, just as 
their analog predecessors had been. No one else had the money, 
or saw much need for 'puters that needed their own adjacent lake 
for cooling!

Accordingly, many of the software pioneers worked at one time or 
another for both Bell Labs and one or more of the major 
universities, Berkeley included - often on US Government funded 
projects or research grants.

Those of us who used light guns on AN/FSQ-7 (1950's technology) 
or light pens on AN/GSA-51 (1960's technology) tend to smile 
when the Xerox PARC/ Apple argument resurfaces over where the 
'mouse' came from. Both had been derived from WWII-vintage 
technology.

Bill Hacker