Keith Bostic (born July 26, 1959) is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

and one of the key people in the history of

Berkeley Software Distribution The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginn ...

(BSD) Unix and

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

Biography

In 1986, Bostic joined the

Computer Systems Research Group The Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) was a research group at the University of California, Berkeley, that was dedicated to enhancing AT&T Unix operating system and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. History Profes ...

(CSRG) at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He was one of the principal architects of the Berkeley 2BSD, 4.4BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite releases. Among many other tasks, he led the effort at CSRG to create a

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

version of BSD Unix, which, in turn, enabled the creation of

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

, and

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

. Bostic was a founder of Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDi), which produced BSD/OS, a proprietary version of BSD. In 1993, the

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

Association gave a Lifetime Achievement Award (''Flame'') to the Computer Systems Research Group, honoring 180 individuals, including Bostic, who contributed to the group's 4.4BSD-Lite release. Bostic and his wife

Margo Seltzer Margo Ilene Seltzer is an American computer scientist. She is currently the Canada 150 Research Chair in Computer Systems and the Cheriton Family Chair in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. Previously, Seltzer was the Herchel ...

founded Sleepycat Software in 1996 to develop and commercialize Berkeley DB, an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

, key-value database. Sleepycat Software was the first company to develop dual-licensed open-source software. In February 2006, the company was acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

, where Bostic worked until 2008. Bostic and Michael Cahill founded WiredTiger in 2010 to create a

NoSQL NoSQL (originally meaning "Not only SQL" or "non-relational") refers to a type of database design that stores and retrieves data differently from the traditional table-based structure of relational databases. Unlike relational databases, which ...

database management system. In November 2014, the company was acquired by

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available, cross-platform, document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database product, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional database schema, schemas. Released in February 2009 by 10gen (now MongoDB ...

, which employed Bostic. Bostic is the author of nvi—a re-implementation of the classic

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

vi—and many other standard BSD and Linux utilities. He is a past member of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

, and several

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

working groups, and a contributor to POSIX standards.

Publications

* M. McKusick, K. Bostic, M. Karels, J. Quarterman: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, April 1996, . French translation published 1997, International Thomson Publishing, Paris, France, . *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bostic, Keith BSD people Free software programmers University of California, Berkeley people 1959 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) American technology company founders Businesspeople in software American computer businesspeople