FreeBSD For The iMac And Other Eye-Openers

Anonymous Coward writes: "In this interview, part III, over at GNULinux.com you can read what Jordan Hubbard, CEO of FreeBSD Inc., has to say about the future of FreeBSD. '[...] Finally, the notion of the PC is changing. One could even argue that the PC has widened to encompass the PowerPC, because there are all these iMacs on peoples' desks, and according to the original mandate we should be looking at those iMacs, too, which is what we're doing,' sounds pretty sweet." This article provides a positive (but sober) overview of recent and anticipated progress from the devil-suit side of free software. You might also be interested in Jordan's answer to the question, "Can FreeBSD scale to the PDA?"

Comments

Re:Use NetBSD code?

[seebs]

The main obstacles are technical and political; the NetBSD people have insisted on a few substantial differences in kernel structures. Still, code has been shared in the past, and probably will be in the future.

Anyway, where do you think the Alpha port came from? Lots and lots of code was "borrowed". (In fact, this is one of the old grudges; some of the people who did the BSD-on-Alpha work originally feel they didn't get fairly credited for their work when it got borrowed.)

Anyway, the code is out there, and anyone can use it. Neat, huh? It's sort of like *actually* free software.

Better compiler optimizations?

[phandel]

Since the iMac now apparently has enough people using it to warrant a FreeBSD port, does this mean {the FreeBSD team, someone else} will help work on gcc optimization? The PPC is known to be one of the worst targets, right up there with Alpha.

Use NetBSD code?

[slim]

I freely admit to not knowing as much about the BSD license as I do about the GPL: how much trouble, both technically and legally, would it be to merge the platform specific code from the various NetBSD ports into the FreeBSD tree?

(and would there be any point)

On a side note -- I presume "Gift-F" was the interviewer mishearing "#ifdef", right? So neither the author nor the editor bothered to understand their own sentence...
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Re:Use NetBSD code?

[Arandir]

Technically, I don't know. Legally, absolutely no problem whatsoever. Go read the BSD license. It'w quick, easy, understandable, and small enough to actually include in the header of each and every one of your source files.

The BSD community sometimes refers to licenses as "encumbered" or "unencumbered". Unencumbered means that the developer doesn't have to propogate someone else's restrictions onto his own code. Anything beyond "do whatever you want as long as you pass on this permission and warranty statement" enters the realm of encumbering.

The BSD community takes the opposite tack of the GPL community, focusing on the 99 people who will do the right thing, as opposed to the one person who won't. To rephrase the biblical lesson, the two cents given by the widow hacker freely and without regret far outweigh the millions given by the pharisaic developer who did it just because the license said so.

Of course it can scale down!

[SecretAsianMan]

Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.

For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.

but aren't they forgetting their point?

[matticus]

from what i understand of FreeBSD, their point is to make the best possible BSD for the x86. I believe they have a port to the Alpha, but when i talked to them at Comdex, i was under the impression that was sort of an experimental thing they did for fun-they are focusing on improving x86 FreeBSD and leaving everything else to their bsd brethren. is this symbolic of a new direction in FreeBSD? or have they received enough support to begin to develop for the PowerPC? or is this just a fluke? I'm all for them staying in the PC market-FreeBSD is as solid of a server OS as you'll find anywhere. but...i'm not them.

"the problem may have been that there was a stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf!" - David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap

See the forest. Forget the trees.

[tpv]

their point is to make the best possible BSD for the x86

You could more say their point was to make the best BSD for the x86, but even that's no quite true.
386BSD came out, and the FreeBSD guys (who obviously weren't FreeBSD guys then) thought "Cool, UNIX for the masses. And it's free. We like this." But 386BSD never went anywhere. It jumped out of the blocks, but then stopped, and so FreeBSD started where 386BSD left off.

Their goal was to provide UNIX for the people out there. That meant providing BSD for the common hardware, the x86. It wasn't that they thought other platforms weren't good, or didn't deserve FreeBSD, it was (as I understand it) more a case of saying "We want to provide the best unix to the most people" and to devote their limited reources to small platforms was counter-productive.
FreeBSD was never supposed to be x86 for the sake of x86, any more than Linux was (which started off in 386 assembly). It was (and is) x86 because that's where people most needed it. Despite running on many architectures, Linux is still most popular on x86. It's where the market is. FreeBSD is highly pragmatic - don't do it cause it's cool, do it cause it acheives a purpose.
So, the conclusion then is, if the FreeBSD team feels that pouring some of the effort into a new architecture is going to provide greater overall benefit to the users, then it is within their original goals to do so.

x86 was a starting point, not an end.

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I can hear Jeff Goldblum now....

[plastickiwi]

Can't you imagine the Apple commercials?

"You are cordially invited to the marriage of frilly, fru-fru industrial design and the suave sophistication of an impenetrable user interface.

"You'll be the first on your block to have a computer no one wants to look at *or* use."

Every BSD iMac will come with a pocket protector and a black beret.