After Ken Thompson returned to Bell Labs in 1976, Bill Joy and Chuck Haley began working on Unix at Berkeley. In early 1977, Joy assembled the first Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), combining Berkeley’s Pascal system with ex, an editor derived from em. BSD was not a complete operating system but software added to an existing Unix installation; about thirty copies went out during its first year. Recipients needed an AT&T Unix source license, while Berkeley charged only for copying and distributing the tape. Joy continued refining the software in response to users, then created 2BSD, which included vi, the C shell, and other tools. Nearly seventy-five copies were sent out, with Joy personally handling requests, tape duplication, and mailing.
Berkeley’s work expanded when a VAX computer arrived in 1978. Graduate student Ozalp Babaoglu, with Joy’s help, added and debugged virtual memory for VAX Unix, enabling programs to use more memory than the machine physically contained - a capability needed by Berkeley’s Macsyma group. Joy and other Berkeley programmers combined the virtual-memory kernel with 2BSD tools and the Pascal system to create 3BSD, shipped from December 1979. Its successful distribution to research institutions attracted DARPA’s attention: institutions on ARPANET used varied computers and operating systems, and DARPA saw Unix’s portability as a way to make software easier to share across them.
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