Jolitz Heritage

Jolitz Heritage Site - Chronicling the Legacies of the Jolitz Family of Silicon Valley, including the accomplishments of William Jolitz, Lynne Jolitz, Rebecca Jolitz, Ben Jolitz, and William Leonard Jolitz. [ Jolitz Heritage ]
 
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Origins of 386BSD

Origins of 386BSD

William and Lynne Jolitz were inspired to work on 386BSD by the experience with Symmetric Computer Systems (see "William Jolitz and Symmetric Computer Systems") and the uses of BSD on a ubiquitous platform it inspired. BSD needed to jump to the 386. According to the website (see the_past() - name_origin):

Origin of the 386BSD name was with the first 16Mhz release by Intel, starting the architecture family. Most software vendors call all in this family, which includes strangely enough the AMD 64-bit version, the "386" architecture.
  * There has only been one architecture, no matter how refined or redefined by others to suit peculiar needs.
  * 386BSD is BSD on the 386.

In looking for the good, the simplest spanning name to grab mindshare was chosen. Just as Windows and UNIX have been named the same all along, saw no need in any different name. Others, in attempting to look for the bad, chose to narrowly view the name as applying to a specific chip to force an unearned claim of obsolescence. Inside all of them, the machine dependant names are all "386".