BSD

programming

Stands for: Berkeley Software Distribution

A Unix lineage; also the name of the original syslog format.

Berkeley Software Distribution is a family of Unix systems from UC Berkeley. In logging, 'BSD syslog' (RFC 3164) refers to the original, loosely specified message format that RFC 5424 later replaced.

BSD names both a family of Unix derivatives and the permissive licence style that came from them. The technical lineage runs through FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, and its code has been absorbed far beyond those systems.

The licence is the more consequential export. Permissive terms allow use in closed products without reciprocal obligations, which is why BSD-derived networking code ended up in commercial operating systems, appliances and the network stacks of devices whose vendors never contributed back. Whether that is the licence working as intended or a failure to sustain the commons is the long-running argument between permissive and copyleft camps, and it is a genuine disagreement about incentives rather than a technical one.

Also known as: bsd

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