Berkeley Software Design Inc is converting its Unix-like BSD operating system to run on Sparc processors and, as we know, making it binary-compatible with Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix. Both projects will be detailed in June at the Usenix show, when the Santa Cruz version goes into beta test. Berkeley Software reckons that it shouldn’t have too many problems making BSD binary-compatible with Santa Cruz Unix as BSD and System V aren’t very different anyway – the main problem lies in differences in the way shared memory is handled, but Berkeley Software intends to license third party libraries to solve this. Meanwhile BSD/386 v1.1 for iAPX-86-based hardware is already shipping, and costs $545 for a single system unlimited user binary licence, and $1,045 for binaries plus source code. Additional system licences cost $200. Berkeley Software reckons that it has sold 9,000 of the licences up until now, which it reckons is enough to generate annual revenues of $1m, and is seeing turnover double on a month-by-month basis. The product’s main appeal, the company believes, lies in its network access capabilities – BSD has full peer-to-peer communications with the Internet, which means that customers do not need a router to hook up to it. The offering also comes as an all-inclusive package on CD-ROM, including compilers, X Window System and Mosaic licences.
