[svlug] Why Linux?

[Joe Buck]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 11:44:45AM -0800, Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> Solaris was originally a fork of BSD source code.

You're thinking of SunOS, which started out as 4.2bsd.

Solaris derived mostly from the USL code base; it was an attempt to
re-unify the Unix world by pulling together the BSD and USG forks.

> VxWorks from Wind River was originally a fork of BSD source code.

That's not true.  It is true that they obtained TCP/IP networking
support from BSD, but that came later (not "originally").  Use of
BSD networking software does not suffice to call something "a fork
of the BSD source code".

> LynxOS was originally a fork of BSD source code.

That's also not true.

> Basically, any UNIX like OS that is proprietary to a corporation
> is likely to be a BSD fork.

But VxWorks, LynxOS, and other RTOSes are not UNIX-like.  They often
contain compatibility layers to provide POSIX support, but the underlying
implementation is quite different.