Berkeley Software Design

Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi) was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PC compatible (and later, other) computer systems. The name was chosen for its similarity to "Berkeley Software Distribution" the source of its primary product (specifically 4.3BSD Networking Release).BSDI was founded by Rick Adams and members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, including Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz and Donn Seeley. Jolitz, Seeley and Trent Hein were the company's first employees, temporarily working for Rick Adam's UUNET until BSDI started operations in 1991. In December 1991, Rob Kolstad was hired (at the time he was secretary of USENIX), and he would take over company operations just two years later.BSD/386 was released in January 1992. The full system, including source code retailed at $995, which was much cheaper than the equivalent source code license for the rival UNIX System V from AT&T (which cost more than $20,000 in the late 1980s.)