William Frederick Jolitz (February 22, 1957 – March 2, 2022), commonly known as Bill Jolitz, was an American

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

best known for developing the

386BSD 386BSD (also known as "Jolix") is a discontinued Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was released in 1992 and ran on PC-compatible computer systems based on the 32-bit Intel 80386 microprocessor. 386BSD inn ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

from 1989 to 1994 along with his wife Lynne Jolitz. Before 386BSD, Bill Jolitz designed the Symmetric 375 with an NSC 16032 (

NS32000 The NS32000, sometimes known as the 32k, is a series of microprocessors produced by National Semiconductor. The first member of the family came to market in 1982, briefly known as the 16032 before becoming the 32016. It was the first 32-bit gener ...

) CPU running

4.2BSD The History of the Berkeley Software Distribution begins in the 1970s. 1BSD (PDP-11) The earliest distributions of Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s included the source code to the operating system, allowing researchers at universities to modify an ...

. His own Symmetric Computer Systems sold them from 1987 until 1988. Jolitz received his BA in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

. He and his wife resided in

Los Gatos, California Los Gatos (, ; ) is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population is 33,529 according to the 2020 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area just southwest of San Jose in the foothills of th ...

. On March 2, 2022, Jolitz died from

sarcoma A sarcoma is a malignant tumor, a type of cancer that arises from transformed cells of mesenchymal ( connective tissue) origin. Connective tissue is a broad term that includes bone, cartilage, fat, vascular, or hematopoietic tissues, and sar ...

. His death was announced on April 8, 2022, on The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS) mailing list.

References

External links

* - personal website * article 1957 births 2022 deaths BSD people Free software programmers People from Muskegon, Michigan University of California, Berkeley alumni {{compu-scientist-stub