Facts please

[Nick Moffitt]

begin  Chuck Swiger  quotation:
> Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
> >Does anyone know the year that the University of California first
> >released software under the BSD?
> 
> The /COPYRIGHT document on a BSD system states:
> 
> Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
>         The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
> 
> I haven't been able to find an earlier copyright date for BSD
> software than 1979.

[assuming "the BSD" refers to the original BSD License complete with
advertising clause]

	Of course, these dates are authorship, and not release dates.
UC Berkeley could have released the same code in 1982 under a
proprietary license, and then again in 1984 under a free one.  They
own copyright, so they get to say what you can do with it.  As
mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it looks like 1989 is the first
recorded BSD-licensed release.

> >Does anyone know the year in which Richard Stallman first released
> >the GNU system under the GPL?
> 
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "GNU system": I don't
> believe once-planned GNU operating system on top of the HURD kernel
> was ever completed to the point of being released, and eventually
> they adopted Debian Linux, (or Debian/GNU Linux, if you please),
> instead.  

	Off-topic point of clarification: The HURD project is still
going, and Debian is no longer an official GNU project.  I leave the
rest of the story as an interesting research project for the reader,
to be discussed elsewhere.

-- 
Support your droogs!

end
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3