OpenBSD Journal

Thank Apple for FreeBSD

Contributed by jose on from the corporate-help dept.

Kelly McNeill writes: "One of the most popular, yet grossly overstated comments made about the BSD operating system is that it is dying. While hardly true, Linux's rapid growth didn't help the misperception and it certainly stole a great deal of the spotlight the OS managed to secure for itself. It couldn't be more ironic that the one company which had more death proclamations than even BSD put it back in the spotlight. Rozz Williams submitted the following editorial to osViews which discusses Apple's role in giving BSD its new energy ."

Apple's building on FreeBSD, but they've helped all of the BSD projects out, giving bugfixes, code in some places, and lots of credibility.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By James Frazer () on

    This is a horrible story. It couldn't have been more incorrect.

    It claims that FreeBSD 5.x SMP is a result of Apple. FreeBSD 5.x SMP is the result of BSDi code/ideas being given to the FreeBSD guys.

    Apple has taken a lot from FreeBSD, but hasn't given back very much -- maybe some, but definately not as much as this guy claims.

    Comments

    1. By Dave Steinberg () dave@redterror.net on http://www.geekisp.com/

      Agreed. Loving BSD is good and all, just don't have this guy write the history books!

    2. By djm () on

      Yes, many of Apple's contributions are not under the standards BSD license and they have certainly not released any of the really interesting parts at all.

      Comments

      1. By Michael Lucas () mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org on www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas

        While they haven't released the really interesting parts (i.e., Quartz), they've certainly released a lot of changes to the sources that they took. And those are under the original license.

        What they haven't done is offered them back as patches or PRs to the original source; we have to go look for them.

        If you're a junior programmer/committer wannabe, you could do far worse than trolling the OpenDarwin repo looking for fixes that could be integrated into the BSD of your choice.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward () on

          If you're a junior programmer/committer wannabe, you could do far worse than trolling the OpenDarwin repo looking for fixes that could be integrated into the BSD of your choice.

          Don't know, Darwin is a bit of a strange beast, try looking at the compat_darwin stuff in NetBSD if you want to know how strange.

    3. By Anonymous Coward () on

      It claims that FreeBSD 5.x SMP is a result of Apple.

      You're right, Apple's SMP comes from Mach.

  2. By Anonymous Coward () on

    Some user's might disagree but thanks to Apple BSD is known to many more people then before . Some of them used Macs , some of em used Linux or even Windows .

    Many PC users whom switched to Mac OS based Server use BSD on some of em , where they where using Linux before .

    Maybe Apple itself doesn't add to many code to the BSD but the Mac community whom is intrested in porting and/or making cli software for the Mac OS X are definatly very close to their BSD counter community & many of em joined the bsd community to proove that

    i love BSD for its functionality , but i love Apple Mac OS X more for it's functionality ( especially cause i'm a desktop user )

    Thanx

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      2nd "functionality" should be " ease of use "

      Sorry

  3. By Anonymous Coward () on

    One day while searching for something on Google, I stumbled on the following:
    http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.1.3/man-151/usr/man/man8/
    Take a look at lpd, shudown, ftpd, nologin, reboot, etc. There are many files that seem to to originate from Net/OpenBSD and/or have a deraadt@ stamp on them. Granted, they are only man pages, but why take source from FreeBSD and use source man's from Net / Open? hmmm.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      Because OBSD's man pages are better? ;-)

    2. By Anonymous Coward () on

      (Speaking as a rather dedicated FreeBSD user) Because the retard that wrote this story thinks FreeBSD is BSD and probably went to an American school where they tought him to do research for writing assignments with a Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

        Oh yeah? How embarrassing is this?

        One retard condemning American schools, American reference materials and someone’s research skills while using made-up or non-existent words (‘tought’). Any spell-checker or dictionary will reveal that there is no such word.

        Even worse, this retard is posting from within the US and, probably (one way or another), taking advantage of the US’s fine educational institutions.

        Hey, retard! Go home.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward () on

          The person who posted that comment is an American who attended American schools and knows personally just how rotten they are.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward () on

            ...but I don't lose much sleep over errors in spelling.

          2. By Michael () on

            As an american who attended american schools, I'd have to say that my schools were exceptional in their quality of education. Yes, they were public schools.

            You can't generalize the entire nation, it's a big place.

            Comments

            1. By Anonymous Coward () on

              Well, bless your heart. Now shut up and get back to your knitting.

          3. By Anonymous Coward () on

            Actually, America has some great schools. Perhaps if you'd paid a little more attention in class you could've gotten into one.

    3. By panda () on

      more interesting thant man pages is the ident(1)
      command. you'll see how often openbsd and netbsd turn up, quite impressive.

  4. By Spawn () spawn@maltliquor.ca on mailto:spawn@maltliquor.ca

    Apple's pattern is to sync every major Mac OS X release with the latest major FreeBSD release. For example, Mac OS X v10.1 corresponded to FreeBSD 4.4 and Mac OS X v10.2 matched up with FreeBSD 4.7
    Haha this is the worst article ever, its funny when someone clearly has no idea what there talking about.

  5. By felix () fkr@opendarwin.org on mailto:fkr@opendarwin.org

    horrible article. why is deadly.org even bothering with this?

    Comments

    1. By j () on

      ... it's an interesting example of how to get a name when incompetent ?

    2. By Anonymous Coward () on

      I don't know if you ever noticed, but if you look at BSD convention pictures, you will see more and more OpenBSD people running OpenBSD on an iBook.

      Owning an Apple product turns anyone, slowly but surely, into an Apple zealot. Sad but true.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

        That's 'cos iBooks rock!

        Seriously now: I've got an (ancient) orange clamshell iBook (300MHz) running OpenBSD. It's fast enough to be very usable (actually, it wasn't bad when running OS9 either, but it's faster running OpenBSD).

  6. By SteveM () on

    Hi,

    I arrived at your forum through a mac site, which linked to this story because BSD is now a relevant subject for discussion by mac users. I never had any experience of BSD, free or otherwise, before darwin and OS X. Now, thanks to Apple, I am aware of it's security strengths, it's inherent power and grace, and it's robustness as an OS.

    I am also a computing undergraduate, who has been able to bring the knowledge and awareness of BSD into my studies - enabling me to spread the good word wherever I go.

    My simple observation is this - if you wish the OS that you care about to be appreciated by as many people as possible, then the moves by Apple are surely positive for BSD. It was certainly positive for me. If, however, you wish to to keep FreeBSD as a language for exclusive "initiates" only, then the hostile reaction of certain posters to this kind of article seem perfectly justified.

    People like me are here entirely due to Apple's implementation of BSD - but I for one am less inclined to investigate the world of FreeBSD in the light of some of the attitudes I've read here. If this is desirable to you, then you should have no fear that users like myself or Apple shall ever contaminate your site in the furture.

    Thanks for listening.

    Comments

    1. By click46 () click46@genmay.net on mailto:click46@genmay.net

      it has nothing to do with new users. it has everything to do with moron "journalists" who write article after article filled with COMPLETELY incorrect information. it's really not that hard to do some research before writing a widely published article.

      really, it isn't.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

        Thats what journalists are for. Without then we'd not have the reliable niche of people with a clue - everyone would have a clue (which would be bad!)

        Comments

        1. By Gimlet () on

          Thats what journalists are for. Without then we'd not have the reliable niche of people with a clue - everyone would have a clue (which would be bad!)

          Ha! We'd still have universities. And government. And corporations. And, well, yeah, pretty much nobody has a clue.

      2. By limeybloke () steve_derham@mac.com on mailto:steve_derham@mac.com

        welcome to the world of Mac , by which I mean , get used to innacurate reporting as most Journo's only know windows or ( if you're lucky ) just the simplicity of DTP on a mac . If stuff like this is being written at all it's probably because the journo uses a mac running OSX and is interested in this unix thing it's apparently running on . I have good friends that run an ISP using BSD machines and they are very happy that it's being referred to more because of OSX , also they are playing with Macs as a way of integrating their office stuff better with their servers in order to retire windows from their setup entirely ! Now that's gotta be good ! At least Apple release their darwin source for what it's worth , so contibuting to the effort .

  7. By Anonymous Coward () on

    freebsd-ppc does not work except for unstable and that is only for novelty purposes. Apple is not helping freebsd. I run openbsd on a mac it is stable and great ! But really apple is not opensource. Nor is IBM it's partner in crime. They are all just like SCO but to the press they act different ;)

  8. By Bob Calder () b_calder@bellsouth.net on mailto:b_calder@bellsouth.net

    If I might give a personal experience as an illustration? ......
    I switched from Win to Apple when OS X went to 10.1
    Now, I get interested in a good server.
    I look at the stats for uptime.
    Lo and behold, the top sites all use BSD.

    Well, having dipped my toe into the water by way of Apple, I shall attempt to experience BSD firsthand.

    I have regular contact with a group of teachers who are using a php/MySql classroom management tool and I'm sure that most of them are smarter than I. The group now numbers in the hundreds - in every country with Internet connections.

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