On Wed, 5 May 1999, Colin Wood wrote:

> Grant Stockly wrote:
> > I've been wondering for a while...why are OpenBSD and NetBSD (and their
> > kernals) so much alike?
> > 
> > Was the NetBSD mac portion of the kernel taken and used in OpenBSD?
> > 
> > They even distribute the NetBSD Installer/Booter on their site.  :)
> > 
> > Whats the story with this?
> 
> OpenBSD split from NetBSD about 5 or 6 years ago, I believe.  They haven't
> diverged too terribly much, at least in the kernel, anyway.  The
> mac68k portion of the OpenBSD kernel is probably quite similar to that of
> the NetBSD kernel.  That pretty much accounts for the similarities.

The split was in late 1995.

Since then there has been a lot of cross pollination - change sharing. A
number of major subsystems get shared back & forth. Whenever something
comes into NetBSD, the source update log should indicate "from OpenBSD"
(or "from FreeBSD") as appropriate.

The main reason for the split was political, and I'd rather not get into
it.

Take care,

Bill