On Wed, 2016/01/13 12:23:52AM -0500, Alvin Starr <alvin@netvel.net> wrote: | The problem that the early BSD variants faced was AT&T licensing. | If there was only BSD around it may have stayed closed for a long time | even to today. | | Eventually linux developed enough of a following that the value for | AT&T,SCO,Microsoft et al had no real value in trying to hold on to the | rights. I don't think that's a reasonable interpreation of the history. BSDI and AT&T settled in 1994, at which point I think it was fair to say that proprietary UNIX still had significant value. (Sun machines with Solaris were a huge part of the internet insfrastructure until the early 2000's - or later.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Design My personal opinion is that if linux didn't exist, FreeBSD would likely be dominant, and that things would be very similar to what we currently have. Cheers! John