# dspinellis/unix-history-repo

Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today

Repository: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/unix-history-repo
Language: Assembly
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: unix, freebsd, bell-labs, history, evolution, berkeley, snapshot
Last push: 2026-01-05T16:53:18+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 59/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 60, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4429, "days_push": 240, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 7250, forks 500 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:57.838941+00:00)

## What it is
A Git repository reconstructing the continuous commit history of the Unix operating system from 1970 to today, synthesized from 22 snapshots of Bell Labs, Berkeley, 386BSD, and FreeBSD sources. It contains roughly 850 thousand commits and 2700 identified contributors, intended for empirical software engineering research and software archaeology.

## Use cases
- study the evolution of Unix source code over five decades
- run git blame and git log on historical Unix files
- mine commit data for empirical software engineering research
- explore how BSD and FreeBSD evolved from early Unix
- trace authorship attribution across Unix history
- archive or fork a replicable snapshot of Unix history

## When to choose
- you need a continuous versioned timeline of Unix source code history
- you are doing software archaeology or empirical research on long-lived systems
- you want to explore historical Unix releases with standard Git tooling

## When to avoid
- you need a runnable Unix operating system rather than a historical dataset
- you want to contribute code changes to Unix or FreeBSD itself
- you cannot handle a multi-gigabyte repository

## Facets
- artifact type: dataset
- maturity: active
- function: version-control, developer-tools, data-science
- domain: operating-systems, version-control, developer-tools
- platform: cross-platform, windows
- tags: unix-history, git-repository, software-archaeology, freebsd, bsd, bell-labs, empirical-research, operating-system-history, history, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- dspinellis/unix-history-repo (main) score 59

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:57.838941+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:39:43.645883+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:57.838941+00:00, sha cfbfbfb730e5)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.