BSD Family Tree Reposted

Thursday September 24, 2015

•  computer science •  digital culture •  information technology •  operating systems •  software engineering •  software studies •  systems science • 

I needed to cite (informally, in a Facebook conversation) a footnote I had written 15-16 years ago in DaemonNews, an old publication dedicated to the BSD family of operating systems. DN is no longer available, it seems. And that’s frustrating, because the article I had written, “The BSD Family Tree” is actually a pretty good resource on how the BSD-derived systems were interrelated. So I have put a copy up for anyone interested.

Also, it turns out the footnote didn’t say what I remembered it saying. So what I needed it to say was,

NeXTSTEP is capitalized, variably, as NeXTstep, NeXTStep, NEXTSTEP, and even OpenStep.

Well, I am sure I told that joke somewhere before.

Image by Eraserhead1, Infinity0, and Sav__vas / Mediawiki.