BSDcompatible

BSD-compatible is a term used in software development to indicate compatibility with or adherence to the Berkeley Software Distribution lineage and its licensing and interfaces. It can refer to software that uses a BSD-style license, software that implements BSD Unix APIs, or software designed to run on BSD-derived operating systems.

In practice, BSD-compatible may refer to licensing compatibility, to API and ABI compatibility with BSD Unix systems, or to runtime compatibility via emulation or compatibility layers such as Linux binary compatibility on FreeBSD (the Linuxulator) or NetBSD's Linux compatibility. The concept is also exemplified by libbsd, a library that provides BSD-specific functions to non-BSD systems to ease porting of BSD-based code.

The term is not a formal standard, and the details vary by BSD flavor. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD each maintain different interfaces, behaviors, and supported compatibility features, so the exact meaning of BSD-compatible depends on the context. When used, it often requires clarification about which BSD aspects—licensing, API/ABI, or runtime compatibility—are being referenced.

Examples of related concepts include BSD licenses and permissive redistribution terms, Linux compatibility layers on BSD systems, and projects like libbsd that provide BSD-specific functions to non-BSD platforms. The label can thus indicate licensing simplicity, portability of code, or the presence of compatibility mechanisms to run BSD-oriented software on non-BSD environments.