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Workingmac.com Interview With Jordan Hubbard

LiquidPC writes: "workingmac.com has an interview with Jordan Hubbard (one of the founders of the FreeBSD project, and currently works for Apple on development of OS X). Questions range from 'How do open-source operating systems compare to closed-source operating systems?' to 'What does the future hold for FreeBSD?'" It's a quick interview, but a good read. Interesting that to talk about the Mac OS now is to talk about UNIX.

282 comments

  1. MacOS X #1 in sales by maggard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What makes all this really interesting is that MacOS X is now the best-selling* unix distribution.


    * Most units sold

    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
    1. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      care to back that up with some fact? there are ALOT of Solaris boxes out there.

    2. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous+Pancake · · Score: 0

      I thought REDHAT was the #1 unix distro?

    3. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by norculf · · Score: 1

      In the home user market at least. You can't really compare it with Slowaris because they are mostly in the high end Unix market. The only market they really share is the hard core psychotic bastard market of people who would actually use Unix at home. And I don't think much effort has been made to gather data on them, because they usually ignore attempts to collect that kind of information, or lie.

    4. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      shaddup

      (offtopic i know... u m0dz are sooooo predictable) sLLlLl0o0owWwWwW d0Wn c0wBoY!!

    5. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BSD = UNIX

      Linux != UNIX

    6. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The original statement:

      "What makes all this really interesting is that MacOS X is now the best-selling* unix distribution."

      ... was obviously not restricted to the home user market.

    7. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slowaris sux ass. I mean, really, the OS itself really sux major ass! And it's all closed source. I mean hell, OpenBSD/NetBSD, Linux (some of the 10 million [fragmented] distro's) are way batter on SPARC than Slowaris itself. It's not the OS that makes it so good, it's damn the hardware itself, not the GAWD DAMN STUPID SLOWARIS OS.

    8. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BSD/OS = UNIX, but any variant you can get for free is not, or it would not be free.

      Look up the lawsuits that almost prevented FreeBSD, and friends from existing, and the subsequent removal of any Real UNIX (tm) code.

    9. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Marten1970 · · Score: 2, Informative

      It is really quite simple. You wonder: is Mac OS X the largest unix distro? Go count the figures. Microsoft has a 90 percent marketshare, Apple has 5 percent and all the Unix versions (AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, ***BSD and the many linuxes) combined have another 5 percent marketshare. Since Apple is now shipping all macs with os x installed (wether people actually start using it instead of keeping hanging around in mac os 9 is a different issue), it must be the largest unix distro by now because it has about as much marketshare as all other unices combined. Further more: Apple sold loads of cd's too. Considering the fact that the company has sold more than 10 million Macs that are able to run os x (G3 and G4) in the last couple of years, and quite a number of those users (that is the impression one gets in the newsgroups and all) has been running os x (either a licensed copy or a illegal one), I think we are talking quite a big distro here... This is no strange thing. Their unix has been tweeked and interfaced to be understandable for mere mortals (the 95 percent of the population that doesn't understand and doesnt' want to understand Unix CLI).

    10. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you.

      MacOS is #1 by sheer trojan horsing, if no other reason. By units. Like he said, 5% mac, 5% other unices. The rest of the market is Windoze, many of whose users couldn't answer the question, "Is your machine a Windows machine".

      Linux is unix. gimme a break.

      Solaris is like 1 million or tops, 2 or 3 million. Yes many are huge machines, which counts for something.

      RedHat is the largest LINUX. Probably about as big as solaris, in units. Many are "big" pc's, big servers, but not as big as solaris enterprise servers.

      Just cuz you know lots of people who use some OS, does not mean that there's more than a million people using that OS. No human being has a million friends.

    11. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Metrol · · Score: 2

      You wonder: is Mac OS X the largest unix distro? Go count the figures. Microsoft has a 90 percent marketshare, Apple has 5 percent and all the Unix versions (AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, ***BSD and the many linuxes) combined have another 5 percent marketshare.

      Now for something really scary. If OSX is considered a "Unix" due to it's incorporating BSD tools, then what about other OS's doing the same. Oh man, NT uses BSD's TCP/IP stack! AHHHHH! Microsoft has this market too!

      * Reality Check *

      Okay, before getting flamed into tiny ashes, I do realize there's more to being Unix then the individual tools. I just had to share my scary thought for the day. Just try sleeping nice tonight now!

      --
      The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
    12. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *sigh*

      Figures that a bunch of amateurs would only think about the desktop.

    13. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Dahan · · Score: 1

      OSX is considered a "Unix" due to its kernel being Mach/BSD. And why do you think NT uses BSD's TCP/IP stack? NT [poorly] implements BSD's socket API, but that doesn't mean the underlying stack has anything to do with BSD code.

    14. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by gig · · Score: 2

      It's not the most popular Unix yet. I think Steve Jobs said earlier that it will probably be the most popular by the end of 2001. Regardless, it's only a matter of time. They're shipping a lot of computers every quarter, and they've made no secret about the fact that Mac OS 9's days are numbered. Mac OS X 10.1 will be much more popular than 10.0. There are plenty of users who are waiting for the early-adopter phase to be over and for the apps to be coming fast and furious, and 10.1 is the key to that.

      This doesn't take a single thing away from any other Unix, though ... it's just that now we have a whole range of Unix to choose from, for any task that you could name.

    15. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by um...+Lucas · · Score: 1

      Well, NeXTSTEP was considered a "unix", and since OS X is just a new incarnation of NeX\TSTEP with a new GUI as well, it'd stand to reason that OS X is Unix\ as well

    16. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by firewort · · Score: 2

      Mac OS X got certified by the open group, so it is UNIX.

      oddly, I can't seem to find the PR on this, or I'd link to it, but I do remember reading it.

      Apple's current web-pages refer to a UNIX-based operating system... and yet, I clearly remember reading the annoucement that they were certified to use the UNIX mark.

      --

    17. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by pmz · · Score: 1
      I guess I'm a psychotic bastard because I use UNIX at home. Oh, well. "Slowaris" really isn't a good descriptive term. I run Solaris 8 on a 40MHz SPARCStation. It is quite responsive and even handles CDE well. The great thing about UNIX is: throw enough memory at a program and it will run pretty well even with a slow processor. (Up to a point, that is, as GNOME, StarOffice, and Netscape 6 seem to be special in this regard).

      Nonetheless, this year I will certainly budget for a counselor to handle that psychotic bit and talk to my mother about that bastard bit. Thanks for setting me straight.

    18. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Me too! Solaris 7 on a 25 MHZ Sparc IPC, because 8 doesn't support the sun4c architecture. My Ultra Creator 3D 167MHZ beats the shit out of my p3 450MHZ. My Sparc5 is actually faster running Solaris 8 than it is running OpenBSD.

    19. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by chrsbrwn · · Score: 1

      Psychotic bastard? Hmm... certainly not me...

      What was your email again? hmm... clickety-click...

      Pay no attention to those men at your door... they're just there to... ummm... sell you Amway...

      (and for the record: 1 SparcStation 20 running Solaris 7, 1 Ultra 10 clone running Solaris 8, one HP 715 running HP/UX 11, a peecee running windows 2000, an old powermac running linuxppc, an old peecee laptop running openbsd, and an iBook running Mac OS X. HP/UX and openbsd have probably contributed the most to my psychoses :)

    20. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by wysoft · · Score: 1

      My Sparc5 is actually faster running Solaris 8 than it is running OpenBSD.



      This is something I've never heard of!

      --
      -- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
    21. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by wysoft · · Score: 1

      Hey! Twelve year old who's never used a Sun system! Solaris source code is available! Granted you have to pay a license fee to use it, but it's available. What other commercial Unix vendor feels comfortable enough to release their sources (besides Caldera)?



      Oh, and have you ever tried running OpenBSD on something as simple as a SPARCstation 20 with dual CPUs? You'll be wasting that extra CPU and your sound as well. At least NetBSD will soon put an end to both of these facts :)

      --
      -- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
    22. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by pmz · · Score: 1

      I just noticed that e-mail address, too. Now, how can someone writing from microsoft.com blurt out "Slowaris" without feeling somehow hypocritical?

    23. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Oztun · · Score: 2

      In the industry "Slowlaris" is generally used to describe the intel version. Even people I know who work for Sun use it ;).

    24. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by norculf · · Score: 1

      How is that hypocritical? If I were saying Solaris was the greatest thing in the world, that might be hypocritical. Saying it sucks ass is completely consistant with the facts implied by my email address and whatnot, mainly that I support Microsoft products.

    25. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dear norculf,

      To answer your question: windows is slow, hence there is an element of hypocrisy when a microsoft employee calls solaris 'slowlaris.' I would have called it irony, not hypocrisy, but that's just me.

      Sincerely,
      Captain Obvious

    26. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The operating systems you mention are going after a completely different market than OS X, so comparing market share is pretty pointless.

      Linux - appealing to hobbyists, and a great low cost alternative to commercial servers. Also free.

      solaris - enterprise level commercial UNIX

      OS X - ideal for novice computer users, and professionals in desktop publishing and video editing.

      The intersection of these three markets is pretty small, so I don't see the point in arguing over who has more users. Despite the fact that they all are UNIX based, they really have precious little in common.

    27. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Open Group recognizes Apple computer as implementing the single unix specification although they don't mention if OS X does it, or if it's their old AIX server they used to sell.

      They have not registered the UNIX trademark, so it's not technically UNIX, but UNIX-like.

    28. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by norculf · · Score: 1

      You forget that I don't acknowledge that Windows is slow.

    29. Re:MacOS X #1 in sales by sinator · · Score: 1, Informative

      Just a correction: that's A/UX, not AIX. AIX is IBM's commercial UNIX.

      The kernel for OS X isn't a UNIX(TM) kernel, it's Mach, developed at Carnegie Mellon. BSD is implemented as a userland server atop the microkernel (much like OSF/1). Theoretically, if anyone deigned to write Win32 as a subsystem atop Mach, you could have Windows applications running on top of the server.

      I'm not sure -- does the Classic environment run on top of BSD on top of Mach, or does it run directly on top of Mach?

      --
      Three Step Plan:
      1. Take over the world.
      2. Get a lot of cookies.
      3. Eat the cookies.
  2. Re:Not like I give a shit.... by WasterDave · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I dropped two points, but that was as a result of starting a DB flamefest and getting -1 Offtopic and -1 Troll. Like you're about to. And me again in all probability.

    But, like the man says, not that I give a shit.

    Pretty shite interview BTW. I take it the submissions queue got toasted along with a load of other stuff then?

    Dave

    --
    I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
  3. the truth by Anonymous+Pancake · · Score: 0

    'How do open-source operating systems compare to closed-source operating systems'

    look at windows market share vs. linux market share.. look at microsoft stock price vs. linux's stock price.

    the future of freebsd? I hear it's dying

    1. Re:the truth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For Linux, there's only one true, and good distro out of all the fragmented million others.. It's nothing other than Slackware. Hell, even Debian is commercial now. Totaly defeats the original purpose of Linux. For slackware, it's not about 'money' unlike all the crappy others that are followers of M$'s empire.
      FreeBSD isn't about money either, but the license is the most business friendly and definatly has it's advatages over GPL. Just as GPL has other advantages over BSD license. OpenBSD/NetBSD 200% not about money, and damn I love *BSD!

    2. Re:the truth by Anonymous+Pancake · · Score: 0

      Well bsd code has helped mac users go from an archiac piece of caca OS to something at least half-dencent.. and microsoft has probably 'borrowed' BSD code to fix god knows how many things in windows.. so it's not all bad.. at least if BSD dies there will be lots of things to swipe from it's casket...

    3. Re:the truth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      *BSD is dying

      Yet nother crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

      You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

      Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

      Du to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and ws taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

      All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continus to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For ll practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

      *BSD is dying

    4. Re:the truth by gig · · Score: 2

      > Well bsd code has helped mac users go from an
      > archiac piece of caca OS to something at least half-
      > dencent

      There are plenty of people who could say, "Well, the Mac UI and application platform has helped Unix users go from an archaic piece of caca OS to something at least half-decent." Technologically speaking, Aqua is at least as much of a step-up over X Windows as Darwin (Mach/BSD/GNU/etc) is over the kernel and low-level of classic Mac OS ... which you think is better is only a matter of whether you look GUI-down like most Mac users, or kernel-up like most Unix users. I've seen more than one Unix guy on the Web talking about how happy he is to have a bash shell open right next to iMovie and QuickTime Player, and more than one Mac user talking about how happy they are that their Mac hasn't crashed at all since they got X. Everybody is happy. Yin and yang together at last.

      Yes, Microsoft's TCP/IP stack is byte for byte from BSD. Robert X. Cringely was talking about just that a few weeks ago in his pbs.org column.

  4. Re:Not like I give a shit.... by BierGuzzl · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Maybe it was something you said?

    Either that or it was just another result of a shockwave emitted by the collision between mac happy users and the unix tao of old. I suspect the DB wipeout to be just as much a victim of this as your karma. May OS-X live long and shake the foundations of computerdom for many years to come.

  5. What I really want to know by grammar+fascist · · Score: 3, Funny

    What I really want to know is how he wrote so many books about absolutely nothing at all. If someone were to come up with run-length plot encoding, you'd probably get at least a 1000:1 compression ratio on most of them.

    Oh, wait. Wrong Hubbard.

    --
    I got my Linux laptop at System76.
    1. Re:What I really want to know by Alorelith · · Score: 3, Funny
      I know your type of comment seems to be a running joke around here, but to mistake Jordan for L. Ron is completely foolish and mindless. It amazes me that the same 'jokes' always seem to be modded up; I wonder if everyone around here laughs at the same jokes over and over, even after they've worn thin and used in practically every Slashdot article ever written.

      Hey, why did the chicken cross the road?

    2. Re:What I really want to know by DiLLeMaN · · Score: 1
      Hey, why did the chicken cross the road?

      WHAHAHA, mod this sucker up, he's funny =]

      --
      /var/run/twitter.sock is a twitter socket puppet.
    3. Re:What I really want to know by dosun88888 · · Score: 1

      Would it have been funny if he mistook him for Robert Jordan? The same joke would have applied.

      At least something of L. Ron's proof of the concept that a lot of people are complete idiots and will pay for just about anything could have been said.

      The fact that most of those imbeciles are in the entertainment industry was already an axiom.

    4. Re:What I really want to know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so so funny hahaha. Hey moderators, imagine a beowulf cluster of this dumbshit

    5. Re:What I really want to know by grammar+fascist · · Score: 1

      Oh, I am terribly sorry. Have I hit a soft spot?

      First of all, the posting guidelines say that if you haven't got anything good to contribute, you can at least try being funny. I've never used BSD, so I decided to be funny. It seems to have actually worked, despite your protest.

      Second, I've been around long enough to hit the karma cap, but I've never seen anyone mistake Jordan for L. Ron. Even if I had been completely aware of my striking unoriginality, I would have posted my pithy joke anyway, assuming that it was about time to resurrect it. (Besides, I thought that the run-length plot encoding was pretty good.)

      Third - it was strapped to the elephant.

      --
      I got my Linux laptop at System76.
    6. Re:What I really want to know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought it was funny. Elron. Jordan. He's not even trashing the religion, just sortof a cute pun.

      ok so before I start trashing the religion...

    7. Re:What I really want to know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree, that chicken joke is destined to become a classic!

    8. Re:What I really want to know by Alorelith · · Score: 1

      It wasn't really a personal attack against you, more of a dislike for same old "Oh, wrong XYZ" type of joke. I would link to a bunch of them to aid my case of their overuse, but I'm too lazy and there are too many. If you took my comment as a personal attack that's fine, but a little less self importance might have been better.

      BTW, I actually did think the run-length plot compression was pretty funny, but without the attached "wrong Hubbard," I think it would have been much more effective; however, it probably wouldn't have generated as many mod points due to its subtlety.

    9. Re:What I really want to know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I laughed at the run-length plot encoding bit. Not out loud, mind you, kind of a giggle-fart deal.

  6. well by qwerty123 · · Score: 0

    I should read the article, but c'mon the guy worked heavily with FreeBSD and open source. I'm sure hes gonna say open source and freeBSD sucks........

  7. Re:NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF! by norculf · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    One of my favorites. Do you know Year of tha Boomerang?

  8. Why based on by XBL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FreeBSD 3.2? Why not the 4.x series?

    1. Re:Why based on by Marten1970 · · Score: 1

      Because: 1. Apple was concentrating on building a consumer operating system and didn't want to build on a moving target, so it restricted itself to one version. Writing a modern consumer OS with a GUI and other nice things like quartz and aqua and whatever is far more difficult than some server unix distro with a CLI. 2. I imagine they just took the stabelest and most secure version they could find and newer versions are often not trouble free, because of the new not yet matured and in real life tested code.

  9. Re:No, BSD es muerto. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now that's new. Cut-n-paste BSD trolling under your own account name. And not one, but three opportunities for enterprising moderators to push this guy's base posting level down to about -3 Dumbfuck.

  10. Growth by Thomas+M+Hughes · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    pN: What is your history with the FreeBSD project?

    Jordan: I started it along with three other folks back in 1992. It's grown quite a bit since then and so have most of us as well (too much sitting).


    How come geeks either seem to be really large (as in above example) or anorexic and needing a lot more calories? Is it just that some don't get enough exercise because they're distracted by coding, while others don't get enough food because they're distracted by coding?

    1. Re:Growth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Perhaps you're thinking of cause and effect in reverse.


      People who aren't naturally athletic may have a greater tendency to choose computers as a hobby.


      Besides, most weird-looking "geeks" I know, including myself, aren't the build they are due to unnatural eating habits. They just would have to work too hard to change (would need to spend all their spare time working out to lose weight or eat twice their weight daily to gain weight).

    2. Re:Growth by n0-0p · · Score: 1

      Anyone who doesn't get decent regular exercise will generally fall into one of those two categories. Which one depends primarily on your body type and diet. The body adapts to it's environment and nothing in the average geek environment tends to promote physical prowess.

    3. Re:Growth by WasterDave · · Score: 2

      I'm not so sure this is actually the case y'know. Good stereotype, certainly, and while geekdom certainly has its' fair share at either end of the bellcurve I do think there are a fair number still somewhere in the middle.

      There are also quite a lot of sporty (mostly mountain bikes and snowboards) geeks who break the stereotype.

      Dave

      --
      I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
    4. Re:Growth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I work with Jordan at Apple, and he's actually not THAT fat.

    5. Re:Growth by Arandir · · Score: 1

      Sigh...

      Jordan was young when he started with FreeBSD. He is older now. When you get older your metabolism changes and you have to work harder to keep your youthful appearance and shape.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    6. Re:Growth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course there's another explaination. Those who aren't anorexic or overweight are getting laid. And then they lose interest in hacking. And reading slashdot.

    7. Re:Growth by spauldo · · Score: 1

      Coming from someone who's been both, I see it as pretty simple.

      Before I joined the military, I was one of the skinny anorexic types. I worked tech support for DEC, so I didn't get any exercise. I ate a lot, but stayed skinny.

      Later on I started unloading trucks (hey, I came from a small town, after the DEC job ended after 2 years, there was little else to do) but it wasn' very stressful, and I remained the same skinny guy.

      When I joined the military (to do networking), I gained 40 pounds in technical school. I was only there for 2 months. Why? Because in basic I was getting a good workout, then stopped in tech school. I gained another 10 pounds at my first post (did mostly networking there).

      Now I'm over my weight limit. People consider me a big guy now. I've been in less than 3 years.

      So, I tend to think that for non-athletic types such as I, there isn't much of any middle ground. We're either over or under weight. The average weight seems to be reserved for those that get exercise. Most geeks I know abhor the stuff (as do I).

      --
      Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
  11. Re:Not like I give a shit.... by tiwason · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    aahh..... nothing like negative karma...

    I need to get a life...

  12. Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by Bonker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A little while back when rumours that the complete source of Windows 2k had made it 'into the wild', many open source developers were faced with the daunting proposition of keeping an eye out to avoid any Microsoft-originated source code.

    Since he works for Apple, I have to wonder if Hubbard is not 'contaminating' any Open Source code he puts his fingers on.

    The arguement goes as so... The way I understand it, Hubbard is working on Darwin, Apple's 'open source' OS. Darwin is equivalent to FreeBSD with a command shell. X and your choice of window managers can be installed on top of it, but it won't be OSX. Now, presumably, Hubbard must be exposed to a *lot* of proprietary code in order to best optimize Darwin to run the OSX user interface. Does this invalidate his open source efforts? Does he have a special contract with Apple so that any OSS can be released under (I'm assuming) the BSD license? Does Hubbard safeguard himelf from seeing any non-OSS code while at work?

    It's possible, but somehow I doubt it. Anyone else know?

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    1. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by scorpioX · · Score: 2, Informative

      I doubt it's much of a problem. Almost all of Darwin is Open Source. Those parts that are encumbered are only done so, because of restrictive third-party licenses (such as Lucent's code that Apple uses in it's Airport 802.11 driver). Most of this encumbered code is being moved out the kernel proper and into loadable kernel modules (KEXT's), so that none of Darwin itself will be encumbered. And some of this encumbered code can be replaced by Open Source code. (Going back to the Airport driver, see Rob McKeever's Wavelan driver for an Open Source replacement
      http://homepage.mac.com/robm/WirelessDriver.tgz. )

      As to parts of Darwin (kernel or userland) being optimized for OSX and not Darwin proper, that is unlikely. It's not like NT 4 and up where the GUI is running in the kernel and they can do all kinds of funny tricks.

    2. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by cpeterso · · Score: 2, Informative


      As far as I know, Jordan Hubbard does not actually write FreeBSD code. He is a doc writer, FreeBSD advocate, and release manager (Linux users might not be familiar with this concept).

    3. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by Soong · · Score: 1

      Not more than anyone else who writes software for a job.

      If you're company does X, you should think twice about working on Open Source project that does X.

      Apple has a stated policy about Open Source (Darwin etc and the APSL). I think that pretty much handles this case.

      I work for a company with a competitive closed source optimizing compiler. Even though I work in a different division, I hesitate at trying to add to GCC when futzing around at home.

      --
      Start Running Better Polls
    4. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by Arandir · · Score: 2

      One great myth of Copyright is that you can get contaminated by looking at the code. This is not true.

      Copyright protects a particular *expression* of an idea, not the idea itself (that's patent's job). Examine the Rogue Windows source, Apple source, and anything else you want, and write your own version. You just can't copy the code.

      It's actually slightly trickier than this. Copying code and file layouts, and other similar things, could still get you in trouble. However you are on safe grounds if you "keep the book closed while you write in the answers."

      That said, corporations (and individuals) are jealous of their own code. If they know you've seen their code, they may very likely take you to court. In in a civil case they don't have to prove anything, only to get a jury to agree with them. And you also have the phenomena known as "cryptomnesia". You think you're writing original code, but you're just transcribing what you saw last week. That's why some folks use "clean room" processes to reverse engineer stuff.

      But unlike some past cases where is was closed binary distributor versus closed binary distributor, FreeBSD and Darwin are wide open. Show me, Mr. Prosecutor, what part of the printout known as Exhibit A was created by your client. With the corporate backing of Apple, I don't think Jordan or FreeBSD will have any worries.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    5. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by blaster · · Score: 1

      Most commercial developer's understand how to cope with these sorts of things. Lots of people have access source code they are not supposed to share, as well as code that they have the freedom to work on. Before Jordan worked for Apple he worked for WindRiver/BSDi/Walnut Creek. There he had access to the BSD/OS source code. It was never an issue.

      Just for reference, I was an opensource developer who was eventually given commit access to Darwin, and later I was hired by Apple, so I have some personal experience with this situation, but feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt ;-)

      Louis

    6. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it's not so much the copyrights but standard NDA and employment agreement that most companies use. In the standard case, these would likely forbid an Apple OS developer from working on an outside project, at least during his/her employment

    7. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by warlock · · Score: 2

      Even before jkh joined apple, there were apple employes with commit access to FreeBSD's source. Really, it's not an issue.

    8. Re:Hubbard crippling himself by working for Steve? by melatonin · · Score: 1
      Now, presumably, Hubbard must be exposed to a *lot* of proprietary code in order to best optimize Darwin to run the OSX user interface.

      Well, no. You can take Darwin and replace every corresponding component in an OS X distribution, and it will work perfectly (except for CoreFoundation, because Darwin has only a subset called CF-Lite, but the remaining CF code is identical). Darwin is perfectly in sync with OS X release. Actually, the current Darwin is newer than the 10.0 release.

      If your assumption comes from the fact that Darwin is slow, then well, I'm sorry, but Mac OS X 10.0 is slow too :(

      --
      Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
  13. A quote which sums up why OSS will survive.... by moniker_21 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "The developer has to have a personal interest in the features in question..."

    When you have people personally motivated to help support a peice of software I feel you get a superior product. Some mindless drone ordered to sit in front of a terminal to code a peice of software that he has no relation to is going to feel less motivtated to do a good job. So what if OSS has numerically less people developing for it then commercial sofware, at least it's poeple who actually care about the software and it's success. Think about it.

    --
    I posted to /. and all I got was this stupid sig
    1. Re:A quote which sums up why OSS will survive.... by moniker_21 · · Score: 1

      That may be true, but at least i'm not a closed minded bigot. Try saying something constructive next time. =)

      --
      I posted to /. and all I got was this stupid sig
    2. Re:A quote which sums up why OSS will survive.... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 2


      When you have people being paid to help support a peice of software I feel you get a superior product. Some guy coding a peice of software in his scarce spare time is not going to be able to get as much work done and the product will not be complete. So what if OSS people care about their products more, they code only for their own needs and the "customer" comes second.
      </paraphrase>

      Extreme arguments can be made both ways. The ideal situation is to pay coders who also care about their product. Perhaps some innovative solution needs to come along where people can support open-source programmers with tips or something. If SourceForge adopted an optional donation system, we could see how well something like that would work on a large scale. Imagine: people being paid to do what they like! What a concept!

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    3. Re:A quote which sums up why OSS will survive.... by NonSequor · · Score: 2

      I remember seeing some site where you could put a bounty of sorts on a currently nonexistent program you needed or a feature you needed an existing program to have. I have no idea where the site was or if it still exists.

      --
      My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
    4. Re:A quote which sums up why OSS will survive.... by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 2
      When you have people being paid to help support a peice of software I feel you get a superior product. ... So what if OSS people care about their products more, they code only for their own needs and the "customer" comes second.

      Complete non sequitor. Open source doesn't have a 'customer'. I know I've been droning on about this for ages, but the nugget of truth you're looking for is that the Open Source movement will never make software for Joe Public to use, because Joe Public needs things that we don't and vice versa. The fact that it lacks the ease of use features that Joe Public needs doesn't make it less good - it's designed by and for a community which doesn't need them, and doesn't value them.

      It remains true that Open Source software is by and large better engineered, better written, better suited to the purpose for which it was built, and generally just better.

      --
      I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
    5. Re:A quote which sums up why OSS will survive.... by gig · · Score: 2

      > The ideal situation is to pay coders who also care
      > about their product. Perhaps some innovative
      > solution needs to come along where people can
      > support open-source programmers with tips or
      > something.

      Apple pays Jordan Hubbard and he also cares about the product. This is pretty standard Silicon Valley stuff from before the dot-com bubble got so big that nobody could see anything around it. Netscape used to be a really big happy gang of engineers who were building exactly what they wanted to build and being paid well for it. Microsoft doesn't want to compete with these kinds of companies, and has shown that it is willing to break the law to avoid competing with them.

  14. If you programmed at all... by Amokscience · · Score: 5, Insightful

    you would know that it's because it takes a good length of time to get something as large as an OS ready. They wanted a nice stable, proven code-base to work from and so they picked a certain snapshot of FreeBSD and used it. That way you don't have to work out the nightmare of continuing to upgrade and merge old code with new code (which I get to do at work, wheeee). When Apple decided to go with OS X, FreeBSD 4.0 was likely in alpha stability.

    OSX did not pop out overnight (or even in the last 6 months). You've seen how 'fast' Mozilla has come along, no?

    --
    Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
    1. Re:If you programmed at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      So why now? Why did *BSD fil? Once you get past the
      fact that *BSD is frgmented between a myriad of
      incompatible kernels, there is the historical
      record of failure and of failed operating
      systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about
      15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it
      has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps
      losing market share but why? Is it the problematic
      personalities of many of the key players? Or is
      it larger than their troubled personalities?


      The record is clear on one thing: no operating
      system has ever come back from the grave.
      Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from
      spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead.
      As the situation grows more desprate for the
      adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold.
      An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shround
      over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope
      is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in.
      Now is the end time for *BSD.

  15. Way too short by Canyon+Rat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This interview just scratches the surface. Let's see if we can get Jordan to answer questions on /. I'm sure that would be much more interesting.

  16. Sigh... by The_Messenger · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    It's a quick interview, but a good read. Interesting that to talk about the Mac OS now is to talk about UNIX.

    FreeBSD is not UNIX. UNIX is a brand of systems including Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, UnixWare and several other products. See the Open Group for more details.

    FreeBSD is based upon 4.4BSD-lite, the last CSRG release, which contained no AT&T code. There is no common codebase. And, even if there were a common codebase, BSD systems are no longer considered UNIX. So FreeBSD can't even be called a UNIX-workalike; GNU/Linux fits that description better.

    But we can't expect Timothy to understand this. He's still recovering from Code Red II, which I understand affected every single unlicensed copy of Windows 2000 that OSDN/Bendover/VA Itsux/Cocksmackers is running. And that's a lot of unlicensed copies! (Hint, hint, lurking astroturfers...)

    --

    --
    I like to watch.

    1. Re:Sigh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "See the Open Group for more details."\

      If you actually followed your own advice, you'd know that the UNIX brandname is purely a specification and a certification nowdays and has nothing to do with code ancestry.

      (It's true that the spec is modeled after AT+T SysV code, which includes all those nasty things invented after 1984 that BSD developers, and sometimes Linus, hate with a passion.)

    2. Re:Sigh... by Arandir · · Score: 2

      Take a look at a Unix family tree. FreeBSD has a direct line all the way back to BSD UNIX. Neither Linux nor GNU can claim that. It's closer in lineage to being a True Unix than many Certified Unices.

      FreeBSD, SunOS and Solaris have a single common ancestor. If the Sun offerings are indeed real and genuine Unix, then surely FreeBSD is in the same family. My neighbor is a "Smith". His daughter was born "Smith" but married a "Jones". Even though her name is legally "Alice Jones", she is still most certainly a "Smith".

      FreeBSD does indeed share code with AT&T based systems: the code that AT&T got from BSD UNIX. It was not a requirement of the court settlement that AT&T had to remove any BSD licensed code. (44BSD-Lite still had some AT&T code left in it, the settlement merely declared it "clean").

      FreeBSD is a Unix-workalike. Filesystem, kernel architecture, tools, etc. GNU isn't even close. Ever play the game "which one is not like the other"? Go grab any random GNU tool and compare it to the corresponding tools from FreeBSD and five other Genuine Certified Unix(tm) systems. GNU will stand out like a sore thumb.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    3. Re:Sigh... by gig · · Score: 2

      Who gives a shit about branding? This is Slashdot, man. If you can run Unix apps on it with just a few tweaks then it is Unix. If it runs Apache, it is Unix.

      Next you will be telling me that Windows Me is no longer Windows because it doesn't have an NT kernel.

  17. BZZZT! Nope by Ex+Machina · · Score: 0, Troll
    That is completely wrong!

    First of all, Mac OS X uses the BSD Mach Microkernel (developed by Rick Rashid.. now VP of research for MS) instead of the a traditional monolithic UNIX kernel! It has a lot of the GNU and BSD tools included with it, but after all, GNU's not UNIX!


    Not to sound rude, but clueless mac evangelists should check their facts!

    1. Re:BZZZT! Nope by ClarkEvans · · Score: 1

      Could you point a url to some background on this? There are lots of people speaking
      about what *is* without backing it up and
      it's hard to know what the facts are. For instance, one of my friends said Max OS X
      was based on _open_ BSD. I guess that
      is wrong. What *is* Max OS X based one
      exactly?

    2. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OSX uses the Mach MicroKernel (note: not a BSD piece of software) for what it does, and FreeBSD for what Mach doesn't.

    3. Re:BZZZT! Nope by jonbelson · · Score: 1

      Mach /is/ derived from 4.2BSD (see Daemon Book for details)

      --
      C-YA
      Jon

      http://www.witchspace.com

    4. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Z4rd0Z · · Score: 2
      Okay, now you're spreading misinformation in the guise of correcting someone else's misinformation.

      It has been hashed and re-hashed over more times that can be counted: Mac OS X is Unix, like it or not. Many Unix systems have been built on the Mach microkernel. Two I can think of off hand are OSF/1 and NeXT. OS X, of course, is based largely on NeXT. Also, there is no such thing as the "BSD Mach microkernel". That is pure fiction. Mach was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon, not UC Berkeley.

      Not to sound rude, but cluess GNU evangelists should check their facts!

      --
      You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
    5. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Arandir · · Score: 2

      What makes a Unix a real Unix? It has absolutely NOTHING to do with whether the kernel is macro or micro. It has a lot to do with trademarks and history.

      FreeBSD does not have the legal right to call their OS "Unix", since they have not paid for that right. However, considering their history, FreeBSD is much more Unix than most certified Unices. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. Linux is also a waterfowl, but of the flightless variety living in the southern hemisphere :-)

      I recall that Darwin has been listed as an official Unix by the OpenGroup. Certainly Apple calls it such on the box of Mac OSX.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    6. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The main problem with calling OS X "Unix" (or "BSD"), at least in terms of userbase, is that it only walks like a duck or quacks like a duck under certain circumstances. Sure, some users do use the unix features, but most blissfully ignore them -- a task virtually impossible on any traditional unix system.

      Imagine someone took the Linux kernel and wrote an entirely new userspace, dumped X11, and then made the GNU utilities an optional install with dire warnings to third party developers not to write any code that depends on them, including shell scripts. Wouldn't sound much like Unix to me, except at the syscall level...

    7. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Steffen · · Score: 1

      It's not a UNIX (tm)... very few noteable operating systems are these days. GNU/Linux certainly isn't.

      It is however Unix-like.

    8. Re:BZZZT! Nope by gig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mac OS X is a Unix. We check our disks with fsck, and we see what's running with top (although we have GUI apps we can use instead of the command line if we want). Man pages are all there. The default shell is tcsh. Emacs and pico and Apache are all there in every installation of Mac OS X. Strip off the GUI and you have Darwin, which is a Unix OS that's clearly derivative of Mach, BSD, and NeXTSTEP/OpenStep.

      Here is an interesting tidbit: it is taking a longer time for the bulk of Mac developers to port their apps to Mac OS X than it has for the bulk of Unix apps to show up. It's easier to make a case that Mac OS X is not Mac OS than it is to say it's not a Unix.

      I mean, MacGIMP is here on Mac OS X now, and Photoshop doesn't even have a ship date yet (although it's been shown off publicly and is apparently just waiting for Mac OS X 10.1). The GIMP is running in rootless X Windows right on the Mac desktop. This is a Unix, buddy.

      Even though Mac OS X has been certified as a Unix by the Open Group, you don't have to ask them anything in order to figure out if something is a Unix. Kleenex(TM) is a brand name, but it is also a generic term. When someone says, "have you got a Kleenex?" they do not care if you hand them a Puffs(TM) or whatever. When someone says they want "Unix reliability" they're talking about the general reliability of all Unix systems, not about Unix(TM).

      Linux is Unix. GNU is Unix (although it is clearly not UNIX(TM), and the (TM) is the entire reason for the acronym). In every technical way, GNU and Linux were designed and implemented to be Unix operating systems. It is so much about compatibility that it's amazing to see people trying to act like Linux is an island.

      If it runs Apache, it is a duck.

    9. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First lines in the interview:

      pairNetworks: What is FreeBSD?
      Jordan: The textbook answer is that it's a Unix-like operating system based on the BSD 4.4Lite2 distribution from U.C. Berkeley.

    10. Re:BZZZT! Nope by nam37 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "If it runs Apache, it is a duck."

      umm... MS Windows can run Apache....

      nam

      --
      The two rules for success are:
      1) Never tell them everything you know.
    11. Re:BZZZT! Nope by pmz · · Score: 1

      UNIX is UNIX for the same reason GNU's Not UNIX.

    12. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apple, like *BSD, is dying. Get used to it. Next time you drive by an any office building, look up at all those floors, and all those windows, and all those cubicles. Your chances of finding any Apple product inside are slim to nil. Apple is not designed for the needs of business.

    13. Re:BZZZT! Nope by blinko · · Score: 1

      Adavis Tevanian did more to write Mach at CMU and Tevanian gave Microsoft's employment office the finger on principle. He was a major figure at NeXT. Tevanian is now Apple's head of software development.

      --

      --
      blinko - "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
    14. Re:BZZZT! Nope by DarkFall · · Score: 1

      You know...there's a Woody Allen quote:

      "All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. All men are Socrates"

      Mac OS X is like UNIX as much as we are like Socrates..really close, but still has it's own flavour. This isn't bad..it's quite good really..but to say it's the same would be a bit of a stretch.

    15. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apple is recognized as a vendor that supports the the single unix specification but AFAIK, OS X is not registered to use the UNIX brand name

    16. Re:BZZZT! Nope by benedict · · Score: 2

      Mac OS X is based on Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 3.2, mostly.

      Rather than paste in all the links I've found which document this, I'll point you to the Google search I used to find them:

      http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mac+OS+X%22+%2 2F reeBSD+3.2%22

      --
      Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
    17. Re:BZZZT! Nope by crtreece · · Score: 1
      If... Windows... weigh... the same as a duck,... its made of wood. Therefore, a WITCH.

      BURN IT, BURN IT!

      --
      file: .signature not found
    18. Re:BZZZT! Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The terminal and various bsd tools (and some GNU ones) are part of the default install. The development tools are an optional install, the dev CD is part of the retail package. These dev tools are the GUI based Project Builder environment. Gcc is part of the default install.

  18. Did someone fart? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny, I thought I might have heard a consumate parasite mutter something critical about another OS.

  19. Moderators on crack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    how the hell is this +3 interesting? it deserves a -1 flamebait or -1 troll. It is time for slashdot to get a new moderation system

    1. Re:Moderators on crack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How's that gonna help, when the same idiots are moderating? You can't solve social problems with software, as much as taco tries.

    2. Re:Moderators on crack by dpete4552 · · Score: 1

      Um, the same people do not moderate. Different people become moderators every few days, and those people are no longer moderators ofter 3 days.

      --
      http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
    3. Re:Moderators on crack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, i'm no longer moderating. I moderated
      a few clearly trolls down to -1 and a few
      good posts up one, and I lost a few karma
      points, enough so that I can't post at +2.
      So... I guess SlashDot doesn't need moderators
      like me.

    4. Re:Moderators on crack by Chainsaw · · Score: 1

      Well... Mostly because it's correct. Like it or not, MacOS X is considered a real Unix and is used by tons of people because of the very user friendly interface.

      --
      War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
  20. Hot damn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lots of Flamebait, a nice assortment of Offtopic, and Troll that can't be beat. Thanks people. The racism is a nice touch too! I'm very pleased with your wonderful work tonight. THANK YOU!

  21. Ok, will do. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks for the advice you cum guzzling, cock munching, infant fucker.

  22. Answer: by cpeterso · · Score: 1


    FreeBSD.


  23. Because he's being paid to WORK ON FREEBSD also... by keepper · · Score: 5, Informative

    Damn, you would figure you guys would read a bit more before you post ( but heck, this IS slashdot ).

    Part of his duties, besides being involved in dariwn, are to keep working on FreeBSD.

    Why you ask?

    Because apple is source syncing many parts of Darwin with FreeBSD and there's soon to be a move to start syncing it with the 4.x branch.

    Besides, that was the numero uno premise jkh had before he went to work at apple. According to his emails to the freebsd mailing lists, we wanted to assure everyone that his role in freebsd would not be compromised by his work at apple. If anything, freebsd is gonna get more benefits out ot it.

    PowerPC port anyone?

    "FreeBSD... because a pc is a terrible thing to waste."

  24. Sysadmin Mag readers are frying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit beleaguered Sysadmin Magazine readers when last month the DEA confirmed that they account for nearly all this nation's LSD consumption. Coming on the heels of the latest High Times survey which revealed none of them know which end of a joint to light, this news confirms the truth the rest of us know: Sysadmin Mag readers are frying.

    How many tabs of acid does that work out to? Let's take a look at the numbers:

    In 1999, 39.9 percent of adult males arrested were found to have traces of pot in their systems. How does this relate to the number of dosers? Well it allows me to pull the ratio of 5 to 1 out of my butt. So lets say that 7.9 percent of arrest-prone lowlifes are licking lysergic acid-laced Mickey Mouse stamps. With their judgement thusly impaired, they are prone to believe in system speed test done by so-called sysadmins who don't even bother to tune an operating system after installing it.

    Sysadmin Magazine readers face a hazy future, albeit one populated by dancing pink elephants and other distracting hallucinations. The rest of us can only pity these poor souls.

  25. PairNetworks by tstock · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's interesting that Pair Networks is asking the questions... they have about 300 FreeBSD servers, and have been hosting web sites since January 1996.

    Didn't expect many OS X questions :-)

  26. nope by keepper · · Score: 2, Informative

    he writes quite a bit of code still..

    One of the things he's currently working on is the rewrite of sys install into something that is humanly understandable ... hehe

    Plus he's very involved in packaging it all together.. after all, he is the "release engineer" also..

    1. Re:nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, next-gen install tools, called libh, are being done by a fellow named Alex. System upgrades and management are being done by a fellow named Eric.

      But you are deffinitly right about jkh writting code - he has over 6,000 commits to the src/ directory of the FreeBSD cvs repo.

  27. Re:Not like I give a shit.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey, don't feel bad. Since the DB shit, I now an a moderator with 3,456 points left which expire 9/22/01. (Which is why you're now a troll) W00t!

  28. Re:Linux + MySQL sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Please contact the server administrator, pater@slashdot.org [goatse.cx] and inform them...

    "There was a great disturbance in the F0Rc3, like a million trolling script kiddies cried out at once, and then realized they had to get lives..."

  29. Phew! Don't misread the title! by Mr.+Flibble · · Score: 3, Funny

    I saw the Slashdot headline:
    Workingmac.com Interview With Jordan Hubbard

    as:

    Mac's working With L. Ron Hubbard

    I think we can all be thankful that the second title is not real!

    --
    Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
    1. Re:Phew! Don't misread the title! by SClitheroe · · Score: 0, Troll

      wow..do you want some sort of award, or were you just hoping to karma troll a point or two??

    2. Re:Phew! Don't misread the title! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      L Ron Hubbard is dead.

      But then again, so is the Mac.

  30. OS X has run for branding and has been accepted. by Thaidog · · Score: 1

    OS X has run for branding and has been accepted.

    --

    ||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.

  31. snore by soellman · · Score: 1

    what a boring interview.. nothing of substance in there at all.. ah well.

    1. Re:snore by MrBlack · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      I've read this post before. It wasn't interesting then, it isn't interesting now. Give it a rest.

  32. ��BSD *EST�* muerto!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you actually bothered to ever learn any Spanish, you would know that estar is always used with past participles, not ser. Qué idiota eres! Chupa mi vérega.

  33. Re:BSD DOESN'T SUCK, THE USERS DO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree with you on #freebsd on efnet, those people suck major ass!! #freebsd on undernet is ok except two gaylords, JunkMale and Lax( Lazarus).

    #freebsdhelp on undernet is the best! You can't go judging an OS cause #channel-os-name on efnet sucks, just as bad as #windows*.*, #Mac/#Apple*.* and #linux unless you're saying the same for Linux/Windows/Mac ppl too which includes you too.

    That's efnet for you! I'm a BSD guy myself, and matter of fact women come after me, I don't have to go looking. But we don't need to go there.

    PS: Ever meet a Windows/Linux guy? By day (Mr. Bill Gates is my God!) By Night, I'm a Linux hoe, just another follower as the rest.

    Get the picture now?

  34. not so much insightfull... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    as the question was stupid.

    Why when I close my eyelids can't I see? (Score:3 interesting)

    Because you see out of your eyes. (Score:4 insightfull)

    1. Re:not so much insightfull... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice cut, my man. Keep 'em coming.

  35. MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +1 funny!!

  36. Re:Question.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sniff Sniff, smells like a combination of Windows & Linux to me. Now I know where you mom got it from.

  37. Take your dorky Star Wars quotes, and shove them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x *
    gg
    o /\\ /\o
    a||\||a
    t|`.|| :t
    s`||\||s
    e \| // \\\ --__ \\ :e
    x \\/ _--~~~--__| \|x
    * \\_-~~-_\|*
    g\_\_.--------.______\| |g
    o\\______// _ __ _ (_(__> \ |o
    a\ . C ___) ______ (_(____> | /a
    t /\ | C ____)/\ (_____> |_/t
    s/ /\| C_____)| (___> / \s
    e| ( _C_____)\______/ // _/ /\ e
    x|\ |__ \\_________// (__/| x
    *| \\____) `---- --'| *
    g| \____\ /__/ | g
    o | /|| \| o
    a || /\ \| a
    t |/ /|| \|t
    s |/ /\__/\___/||s
    e |/ /||||e
    x ||||||x
    * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x * g o a t s e x *

  38. Snap! Clam! Sn*p! Sn-p! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any relationship to the father of all clams?

  39. oh god... by keepper · · Score: 1

    If this comment is a true thought....

    May god help us all....

  40. Shameless plug much? by niXter · · Score: 0
  41. Lame questions by Z4rd0Z · · Score: 1
    I was pretty disappointed that the interviewer didn't ask better questions. JKH is an interesting guy, and I'd rather hear him answer some less vague questions. All we got were vague answers, to the effect of "FreeBSD will probably go in the direction that its users want it to go".

    And can you believe they asked if OS X and FreeBSD would merge? Come on now...Although I'd sure like to see an open source Quartz!

    --
    You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
    1. Re:Lame questions by Z4rd0Z · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Nice try, fuckbreath. I always check the URL at the bottom of my screen before clicking.

      --
      You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
  42. OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by IronChef · · Score: 4, Interesting


    OK, here's a weird, wacky idea.

    I think the Feds should fund the development of an operating system and office suite. The software would be released to the public, including source code.

    Sounds crazy at first, yes. But bear with me.

    My reasoning is this: simply put, an OS and office suite is IMPORTANT. Damn important, like roads, and telephone service. Like those other infrastructure elements, it makes sense to have some kind of government supported offering. We already rely on Federally-funded roads... the Post Office gets Fed subsidies and tax breaks... Why not get some support for them from the gov't for the computers on our desks?

    The idea is not to give the government control of OS technology though... the goal is to give US something WE can use, for nothing more than a couple bucks each in taxes. GovOS would give people a way to write a paper for school, or look at the web without being FORCED into buying an OS from some other big company. It would be an ideal solution for basic gov't employees -- those people who do nothing but prepare documents and send email all day.

    Of course, we would ALWAYS have the choice to go with MS or Apple or whoever, but GovOS would be ideal for poor people, or for schools that otherwise would have to lay out a fortune in OS licenses.

    The GovOS should be made compatible with as much hardware as possible. Its office suite should be made as inter-operable as possible with all the current document standards. Businesses that want to do work with the government would be required to submit files in GovOS-compatible format.

    Before y'all flip out, this really isn't any different that the current Free Software philosophy that permeates this site. I'm just saying, let's go a step further and throw some tax money at the problem. How much could it *possibly* cost to start with Linux or FreeBSD, and create a dirt-easy-to-install OS and office suite? A few hundred million? Like, the price of a few warplanes? It's nothin'. We're paying for far less useful things already. And the gov't pays Microsoft alone a hell of a lot in license fees. Imagine what could be developed if a small fraction of that money was used to hire decent programmers?

    GovOS isn't about restricting freedom. It's about increasing it, by providing a tax-funded public domain desktop computing infrastructure. OS plus office suite, with some well-paid professional developers behind it, in the public domain... It sounds good to me.

    I know a lot of you are going to say, "we don't need GovOS. We have Mandrake and Debian." To that I say those are fine products, but they *clearly* have not passed the ease-of-use test the mainstream demands. So let's throw a bomber's worth of money at one of them and produce something that anyone can install and use -- and rob Microsoft of a ton of money in the process.

    1. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Arandir · · Score: 2

      Since when has it been the job of a government to create operating systems? Why should the users of existing operating systems be required to pay for its development?

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    2. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You're a Libertarian's nightmare. Congratulations.

      But seriously, I don't want the government to use
      my money on on OS. I don't want the government
      to use my money at all. I want to keep it.

      The government is useful for spending money on things
      no private sector company in their right mind would
      spend money on. Like environmental monitoring.

      An OS is something the private sector can handle.

    3. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by IronChef · · Score: 2


      I'm actually pretty Libertarian at heart. And I admit this is a far-out scheme.

      But I think you can argue that an operating system is a vital commodity. It's infrastructure. It's like a road. And the government throws all kinds of money at those things, for the greater good. I'm a very pro-freedom kind of guy, but I do NOT want roads privatized.

      But putting all that aside, you might be able to justify it from a simple cost savings angle. The gov't has a zillion copies of Windows and MS Office. If they developed their own software to their own standards, they might save money in the long run. And if that software became freely available... well, cool. Options are good.

      An OS is something the private sector can handle.

      Considering the current Microsoft trial, I would say it has been handled badly.

    4. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by hyrdra · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Welcome to GovOS.

      Please enter your social security number, date of birth, tax identification number, and driver's license number. Please scan your finger print and prick your finger on the way out.

      Welcome, John Doe. GovOS has detected multiple documents which violate a newly established copyright protection law, called the DMCA. You have also visited several web sites which violate these laws. GovOS has added these offences to your criminal information file and has issued warrants for your arrest. Please wait while the police arrive at your location...

      Thank you for using GovOS, citizen!

      Gives a new meaning to illegal operation, doesn't it? Don't mix laws with operating systems, OK? Some things just don't have to be that efficient.

      --


      "I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
    5. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by steveha · · Score: 3, Informative

      the Feds should fund the development of an operating system and office suite.

      One of your points is that it wouldn't take very much money, by government standards. And that is true.

      But just because government is already spending piles of money it shouldn't spend, doesn't make it right to have government spend even more money it shouldn't.

      You know, safe cars are important. Instead of letting the car makers come up with safe cars, maybe the federal government should spend a few bombers worth of money on safe cars? And I hate it when little children fall into swimming pools. Should the federal government spend money on developing a really good fence to put around swimming pools? Just because something is good and worthwhile, doesn't mean that it is appropriate to have the federal government spend money on it. There is no end to cool projects they could fund, and if I approve of them doing the one I like, I have no moral grounds to disapprove of them doing the ones I don't like.

      Besides, I would hate to see a free software project made into a pork-barrel project. It would not be pretty.

      One of the problems: government loves attaching little strings to the money. Federal money for software development! But 60% of it must be spent in Senator Kennedy's district. And the new products have to be approved by a comittee that will check it to make sure none of the messages offend anyone. (And I mean anyone.) And the armed forces will make up a 10,000 page document of requirements that the program must meet, and it won't be shipped until it meets them all, and the requirements will be continually updated... the whole thing would be a nightmare.

      It is possible for government to do things quickly and efficiently, but that's not the way to bet!

      Now, an idea I would approve of: require all federal offices to gradually phase out proprietary software and phase in free software, over (say) the next 10 years. If a department finds that the free software doesn't meet its needs, it can fund developers to add the missing features. 10 years is very generous; they could do it much sooner than that if motivated.

      steveha

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    6. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Frymaster · · Score: 2
      Please enter your social security number, date of birth, tax identification number, and driver's license
      number. Please scan your finger print and prick your finger on the way out.


      and this is different from passport how? if an os vendor is going to get all that info on me, i at least want it to be an os vendor i can vote for.


      now, NaderOS might be something i would pay an extra $2 a year in tax for... (RobinsonOS as translated for canadians)

    7. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by discovercomics · · Score: 2

      It boils down to fundemental differences in opinion as to what the role of Government should be. I am opposed to the intrusion of Federal and State Government into my private life, at any level. Hard to avoid it it seems but I can still hold this Philosophical opinion. Creeping government intrusion into "Free Software" would be an anathema to "Free Software"

      The Federal Highway system evolved from a military need/want to have a means to move troops within the borders of the US.

      The telephone system has been a private enterprise for quite some time now.

      The Post Office no longer recieves Federal subsidies.

      The answer is not to "throw some tax money at the problem". If the Government was using a *nix varient as the primary operating system and a *office suite, then it would be very simple to notate that correspondance with govt agencies by vendors and business should be in a file format that the choosen govt office suite could deal with, then your criteria for "Businesses that want to do work with the government would be required to submit files in GovOS-compatible format." would come to fruition. Without any Federal money needed to purchase software. Set up and training will still require money.

    8. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by imadork · · Score: 2
      I think the Feds should fund the development of an operating system and office suite. The software would be released to the public, including source code.

      Notice, he didn't say the government should WRITE the OS, he said they should FUND the OS.

      I always thought that OS development would be best if it were done by a non-profit foundation. Sort of like a "PBS" for computers, except much more useful. It could put out a default platform and publish the source code. It would maintain a basic standardized structure for configuration files, etc. If the government gave it some funding, it could mandate that all government computers use this OS, giving developers a reasonable installed base to target.

      Most of all, the government can take all the money it gives to MS, Sun, and the $3.50 it gives to Apple for OS licenses, and channel that directly toward OS development that meets its needs.

      Of course, we'd all have to look forward to "If you like the way we just fsck'ed your boot drive, please contribute! For $1000, you become a Charter Member and get a free stuffed penguin!"

      OK, maybe the concept needs work...

    9. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by naasking · · Score: 1

      Most of the govt's current functions were added on after the fact. Roads? Sewage and water treatment? The only thing government started out with was law and law-enforcement. Everything else you see today was added later. Why would an OS by such a far-fetched idea?

    10. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't they just get Larry Ewing to paint on a stars and stripes Uncle Sam suit on Tux and have the government support free, tried and true linux. Mexico is moving towards linux and so are many public schools in the US.

      It's a thought...

    11. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This seems like an obvious comment, but nobody has picked it up yet. I thought a lot of the original BSD work was funded by DARPA (or maybe ARPA). Also, wasn't there a recent slashdot story on the government funding of a secure version of FreeBSD? Finally, if you look at who's doing a lot of the coding on Free/Open projects, they're students, many of whom are funded from government money.

    12. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by tbone1 · · Score: 1
      Assuming this isn't flamebait, ...

      I think the Feds should fund the development of an operating system and office suite. The software would be released to the public, including source code.

      You know, that kind of thinking has worked SO well in Russia, Cuba, and Detroit. (And FYI, I've been to all three.)

      Why, and I ask this seriously, do you think that the government would be any better than the private sector at making an OS? Before you answer, think: are your kids better off at a private school or a public school? Would you rather hand over your 401(k) and pension to social security, or have your social security handed over to the people who look after your 401(k) and pension? Is your home bathroom cleaner than a public toilet? [Last question void for male college students living in group housing.]

      GovOS isn't about restricting freedom. It's about increasing it, by providing a tax-funded public domain desktop computing infrastructure.

      Really? Government cannot create its own wealth, it must take it from those who can. Government cannot create freedom. It can protect freedom, or it can take it. And if you've ever been auditted by the IRS or have the Department of the Interior declare your subdivision a wetlands, you know which one government bureaucracies most likely choose. In this case, it would take our money (and hence our earned property and freedom) for its own purpose, which would, incidentally, attack a company inwhich many taxpayers have invested. Thus, you are robbing people doubly, by holding a loaded IRS to their heads to make them fund something that decreases their wealth more. This is something most government bureaucrats can only dream of. Salud!

      Remember, nothing is free; everything comes at a price, whether it's money, time, sweat, or demoralization from living with complete b*tch. However, you point that out yourself with:

      So let's throw a bomber's worth of money at one of them and produce something that anyone can install and use -- and rob Microsoft of a ton of money in the process.

      ... in which you equate government programs with robbery. Milton Friedman, using Adam Smith's notebooks, couldn't have put it better.

      I agree, an OS and office suite that is usable is important; too important to be put in the hands of the government.

      --

      The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
    13. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by tbone1 · · Score: 1
      • Please enter your social security number, date of birth, tax identification number, and driver's license number. Please scan your finger print and prick your finger on the way out.
      and this is different from passport how?

      MicroSoft doesn't have the military, ATF, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. (I'm not saying they wouldn't do it if they could, you understand.) Or, as George Carlin put it, "Well, we don't have them, the army has them. That's right! The army has all the flamethrowers! I'd say we're ****ed if we have to go up against the army."

      --

      The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
    14. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by ScumBiker · · Score: 1

      I think that's one of the best ideas I've heard lately. How hard would it be to form such a corp? I'm willing to participate, at least from a managerial point of view. This way I could contribute to the cause, since I'm not a coder per se.

      I guess one way to start is to make a meeting place. I've got a forum app running on my personal website, http://www.jwenger.org. I'll add a section called PublicOS. If anyone is interested, we could discuss this further there.

      --
      --- Think of it as evolution in action ---
    15. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by ktakki · · Score: 2
      OK, here's a weird, wacky idea.

      I think the Feds should fund the development of an operating system and office suite. The software would be released to the public, including source code.


      Get with the program, kid. The era of Big Government is over.

      It's time for Faith-Based Computing solutions.

      "God is my co-processor."

      Spearheaded by privately-funded initiatives with matching funds provided by Federal block grants, the vital task of providing operating systems and userland utilities will be managed by religious institutions with a proven track record in this area of expertise.

      VaticanOS, based on RC-DOS; Windows for Prayer Circles 3.11; WinME (Methodist/Episcopal); *BSD (Behold, Shiva the Destroyer); ScientologOS (now with 30% fewer Body Thetans and censorware in the kernel); MacintoshenOS (with Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox compatability layers); Shi'ia and Sunni Linux...

      Let a thousand pustules bloom...

      k.

      --
      "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
    16. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *BSD (Behold, Shiva the Destroyer)
      Mrtyuh sarva-haras ka aham.
      Thus, I am death the destroyer of all.

    17. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by simpl3x · · Score: 1

      why the hell isn't this being done? it does seem that creating user levels and such would be transferrable to a consumer like os. it is likely that aol will do something like this...

    18. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Arandir · · Score: 2

      Because if it's the job of the government to create our operating systems, then it might also be their job to create out email clients, window managers, desktops and latest first-person-shoot-em-up games.

      Somewhere you have to draw the line, and without any criteria you can't do it. Which is why I asked my question, in an effort to get some criteria.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    19. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by adjusting · · Score: 1

      Heh. Prepare for POS jokes.

    20. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a very pro-freedom kind of guy, but I do NOT want roads privatized.

      Why not? I'll give you one very good reason to privatize roads:

      If we privatize roads, we can get rid of the gas tax. What's wrong with the gas tax? Simple: it's regressive and it's often raided for other uses, such as corporate welfare.

      (I'm actually pro-corporation; I just think corporate welfare hurts industry as a whole by propping up failing industries.)

      Remember the history of roads: they were set up for military purposes, to move mechanized forces around. The gov't could cut them loose and simply insist on certain standards to make sure they were up to scratch.

      I'm big on the whole "taxation with representation" thing. Most existing taxes go into a huge treasury where they are subject to politics. Once they get into that big treasury, the original owners of the money lose accountability for it. We ought to replace our current system of taxation with a service-based gov't, one in which the few services that aren't privatized are funded by tolls.

      The remainder of the gov't's job would be to regulate industry, hopefully through meta-regulation wherein the gov't monitors private standards boards and issues a seal of approval to the best ones.

    21. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by glitchvern · · Score: 1

      BSD was goverment funded. They had, I believe, a darpa grant to work on the tcp/ip stack. Search the internet and read about the history of BSD. Code from BSD has found it's way into just about every os there is including linux.

    22. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Malcontent · · Score: 2

      "MicroSoft doesn't have the military, ATF, FBI, CIA, NSA"

      They don't need it. The govt is perfectly willing to use all of it's might to enforce the wishes of MS. If the govt would refuse to enforce the property rights of MS you can bet your ass MS would raise an army of "enforcement agents" to track your ass down and make you pay.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    23. Re:OS Ramblings (OK, it's OT, so shoot me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Think about that one for a minute. If the Government spec'd and controlled the OS and Office application sector, the entire suite of software would be written in Ada by a large group of disgruntled employees who are just this -><- far from going postal! You would seriously end up with a HUGE relic in about 20 years. Which would cost BILLIONS and BILLIONS to complete.

      The California Department of Motor Vehicles is a classic example of this. They spent $40,000,000 to attempt to rewrite their driver and vehicle license tracking system. After years of development, the project failed with NOTHING to show for their efforts.

      The United States is great, not for what the government has done for us, but precisely because we have been free to provide for ourselves!

      Youth is wasted on the young!

      He who choose to not study history is doomed to repeat it! :P

      Pik0

  43. they grabbed FreeBSD in 1995, not 2001 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple didn't fork from FreeBSD 6 months ago as you might like to believe. Apple inherited OpenStep, the basis for OS X, from NeXT in 1997. It was probably NeXT that worked FreeBSD into the OS X tree 5-6 years ago.

    I don't have a BSD timeline in front of me, but 3.2 may very well have been a recent release when NeXT started working on it in the mid-90s.

    -an apple coward

    1. Re:they grabbed FreeBSD in 1995, not 2001 by Amokscience · · Score: 2

      According to this URL:

      http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/history.htm l

      ..it's 1999. That jives with my personal experiences using FreeBSD 3.4 since late 1999.

      And next time read a bit more carefully. I never said it was forked 6 months ago. I don't know how you got that into your head. Then again, you are posting as AC.

      --
      Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
  44. left handed, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you're pretty small...

  45. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    *BSD is dying


    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD
    community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for
    less than a fraction of 1 prcent of all servers. Coming on the heels of
    the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more
    market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along.
    *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by

    failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin
    comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a
    Kreskin to predict
    *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak
    future.
    In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because
    *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many
    of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink
    flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader
    Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD
    are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet
    is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400
    NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of
    NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent
    article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore
    there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with
    the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut
    Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was
    taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead,
    its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys
    show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick
    and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to
    survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues
    to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in
    time. For ll practical purposes, *BSD is dead.


    *BSDis dying

  46. Re:*BSD is dying by HongPong · · Score: 2

    Ok, i'm biting on a troll, but.. um... OS X is the most popular BSD ever, selling like hotcakes and all that. It's growing, foo.

  47. Re:*BSD is dying by Marten1970 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, well considering the fact that the largest unix distro (OS X) is BSD based I don't think you say it is that dead...

  48. i agree, good work everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i'm working on some good trolling and crapflooding material so stay tuned

    1. Re:i agree, good work everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how much "work" does it take dumbshit?

  49. Give it a rest by Motheius · · Score: 1

    Wow! You are so enlightened. Not! Let's disperse some of your misconceptions: 1. Usenet posts != number of users of the OS Why could you even come to this conlusion? This is like counting the number of flies at a picinic and assuming that the counted number represented the entire population 2. FreeBSD is NOT owned by Walnut Creek. WC simply was the largest distributer of FreeBSD untill they were acquired by BSDI. While FreeBSD and BSD/OS are close cousins, BSDI doesn't own FreeBSD either. Or NetBSD or OpenBSD for that matter. If *BSD is dead then how is it that I am still able to track CURRENT on FreeBSD or OpenBSD? I know you can't answer this so why don't you do us all a favor and go take a personality test and become a scientologist

  50. lyrical correction, part 2 by Sexual+Asspussy · · Score: 0
    i appreciate your revision but i've noticed another error:

    If you're gonna fight, get outta here
    You ain't no better than the bouncers

    becomes

    If you come to fight, get outta here
    You ain't no better than the bouncers

    doing all i can. maybe someone should put up the b-side?

  51. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what's 2+2 ?

  52. You hear this a lot by Pinball+Wizard · · Score: 3, Informative
    Jordan sez--

    and that's a pretty big difference when it comes to how one copes with problem analysis and recovery when you hit something the operating system does not handle well or at all.


    However, I have yet to see a single sysadmin tweak the source of a Linux or BSD kernel because they found a bug or performance bottleneck. I mean really, who expects the average sysadmin to go in and fix a kernel if something breaks. No, they submit bug reports and hope someone else fixes it soon. Just like in closed source.


    Not to disparage open source software, but to think the average maintainer is going to dive in and fix things when he notices a problem is stretching things a bit. The people who actually can fix things in the code generally are not sysadmins.

    --

    No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?

    1. Re:You hear this a lot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you assume that only simple sysadmins notice the problem.

    2. Re:You hear this a lot by Grinch · · Score: 1

      I have yet to see a single sysadmin tweak the source of a Linux or BSD kernel

      Sorry, your logic doesn't hold up. I've never personally seen or driven a Ferrari Testarossa - should I claim, then, that they don't exist?

    3. Re:You hear this a lot by Croaker · · Score: 2
      However, I have yet to see a single sysadmin tweak the source of a Linux or BSD kernel because they found a bug or performance bottleneck.

      Well, maybe you don't work with people who are very good at what they do. I know the IT folks here where I work have submitted patches to Red Hat to fix issues they have come across in the field. (At least one of them got "the letter" due to this.)

      Another feature of Open Source is that you can hire someone else to go out and fix the bugs for you much faster than the closed source "wait until the next version" folks will. My company currently is looking offering a bounty for a bug fix to an Open Source piece of software we use. We'll probably get a fix for that in a month, for a reasonable price (much less than we would pay for a one year service contract with some companies).

    4. Re:You hear this a lot by Pinball+Wizard · · Score: 1
      Well, I actually wondered if such people existed, so my statement was partly to draw out anyone who had. :) But I still can't help wondering, if someone is skilled enough to patch Red Hat, why is he working as a sysadmin? Wouldn't he be more suited to a development job?


      Client software OTOH, now that's where you want the source since that's where your company's business logic resides. The "bricks" component of our company primarily relies on a closed source product, and if I had the source I could fix a lot of broken things.


      So really, I should have more specifically stated kernel level development as something most companies wouldn't have expertise to fix if something went wrong.

      --

      No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?

    5. Re:You hear this a lot by rjrjr · · Score: 1
      But I still can't help wondering, if someone is skilled enough to patch Red Hat, why is he working as a sysadmin? Wouldn't he be more suited to a development job?

      Because s/he's probably very, very well paid as a sys admin, and likes that kind of work better. I've known plenty of sys admins who were one hell of a lot brighter and more capable than the developers they supported. Your question could be read to infer a bit of snobbery -- might want to watch that around the people who keep your systems going ;-)

    6. Re:You hear this a lot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a middlin' SysAdmin, but a pretty good
      coder. I back-ported ICH sound to fBSD 4.2REL
      and 4.3REL pretty easily.

    7. Re:You hear this a lot by glitchvern · · Score: 1

      What's "the letter?" And can i see a copy?

  53. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *yawn*

    (notice the lack of capitalization, denoting a lack of effort)

  54. The failure of *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    So why now? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

    The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shround over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

    1. Re:The failure of *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      *BSD is dying.

  55. so... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which one are you?

  56. Penis Feeling Jews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't Know That Darwin Is Unix.

  57. Some Numbers... by TheInternet · · Score: 4, Informative

    care to back that up with some fact? there are ALOT of Solaris boxes out there.

    Apple did $19 million in sales of Mac OS X the first weekend it was out. Assuming everyone in that number paid the full $129 price, you get about 150,000 right out of the gate. This doesn't take into account all the beta testers (100,000 in all) that got a $30 discount. Then you tally the developers, educators, and Apple specialists that get it for substanially less or free outright (this revenue might not even been counted in the $19m since it's through special channels).

    Then add in that every machine Apple ships now comes with Mac OS X, and that they shipped 827,000 machines last quarter (which ended June 30). And they've certainly sold some copies of OS X off the shelf in the last 5 months. And none of that counts burned copies of Mac OS X or Darwin users.

    I suspect it's a relatively big number, probably over 1 million at this point. I'm guessing that it will be at least 2 million year's end. And note that all of this happens despite the fact Apple has run zero TV or magazine advertisements for Mac OS X at this point. They are certainly holding off on marketing campaign until at least until 10.1, and very likely until Office 10 comes out (sometime this fall). I'm not clear on whether the measurement for largest Unix vendor is the number of units sold in a particular period of time (which I suspect Apple is kicking ass on), or the total installed base.

    - Scott

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    Tree House Ideas
  58. errrr.... by chegosaurus · · Score: 1

    > If it runs Apache, it is Unix.

    Windows runs Apache.

  59. User-Friendly Unix by Glanz · · Score: 1

    With OS X being the only user-friendly unix-based OS out there, in a few years we may be talking about the death of Linux too.....

    --
    Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
    1. Re:User-Friendly Unix by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2
      Nonsense. OSX takes Windows share, not Linux share. Totally different demographic. Linux may still take Windows share too, but OSX will take Grandma and people who are doing graphics work and people with Aeron chairs and new VWs, while Linux will take people who build their own PCs and can actually make a Windows machine work effectively by knowing all the arcane workarounds and failure modes and what to fix if it breaks.

      There will be no death of Linux. (and this is from someone who expects to be running OSX, thank you...) In fact, Linux will siphon off all the people who are truly gifted in the computer domain. (OSX will siphon off Grandma- and many people who are truly gifted in other domains. Artists, writers, inventors- hell, there's a guy designing a new type of autogyro, a real airplane, using a brilliant flight sim (http://www.x-plane.com/)... on a G4 Powermac. (fullsize pic: http://www.x-plane.com/images/misc/fullsize/cc2.jp g))

      Linux is going to get many of the people who program the programs that make computers go. There will be no death of Linux, just because OSX is all that and an autogyro design tool ;)

    2. Re:User-Friendly Unix by Glanz · · Score: 1

      I know you are right. The only time I ever used an iBook was to delete OS 9x and install Debian alongside OS X on it. In any case, I hope OS X attracts MS users. I must admit it is "pretty" enough to do that. I hope OS X attracts more of my fellow scientists too. Many of them have the time to learn Linux, but not all. A data base I managed was on free BSD and Solaris for security reasons. It was easier to patch holes and modify protocols. Every time our research department tried to use W2k, we were hacked by the enemy (drug companies trying to steal open reasearch before it was released to the world for "free").

      --
      Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
  60. still wrong by mj6798 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    By your definition, Windows is UNIX, too, since it runs almost all those applications and tools as well. The simple fact is that MacOS X shares little with either the traditional codebase or the traditional philosophy of UNIX.

    You might, however, call MacOS X "UNIX compatible", "mostly POSIX compliant", or "an operating system with a UNIX personality".

    1. Re:still wrong by KFury · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "an operating system with a UNIX personality"

      I'd say the opposite. Mac OS X is an operating system with UNIX underpinnings, and a Mac OS personality.

      After all, a personality is what gets expressed to others, not what's deep inside.

      How exactly is OS X less like Unix than Mandrake? I can compile Unix binaries for it, it uses a unix kernel. Are you saying there's a UI wall where if there's too much of a non-geek front-end put onto an OS it's no longer worthy of the UNIX title? Is that the "traditional philosophy of UNIX" that it doesn't share?

    2. Re:still wrong by itachi · · Score: 1

      No, it's FreeBSD, a Mach kernel, and NeXT put into a blender, with a nice candy-coated GUI to make it look nice. It's not UNIX, but it's *nix. At least as much as Solaris & *BSD, imnsho. SSH into an OS X machine and poke around. It's closer to my OpenBSD machine (or the Solaris stuff at work) than any of the Linuxes I've used. I can't speak for the technical requirements of being a Open Group registered UNIX, though. In terms of codebase, it shares as any of the BSD derived *nixes. As for philosophy, what philosophy are you talking about? I can't think of a single common philosophy that all of the UNIX oses have in common, what am I missing?

      itachi

  61. OT: new slashdot feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    okay, now i'm even happier with the new revision of the slash code. on this story, which could be considered both a BSD story and an Apple story, but was posted as the latter, there was a link under the headline to indicate it would also come up as a BSD story on slashdot.org/bsd/

    flexible, finally, and way cool. especially with fuzzy topics like this one.

  62. Best selling is meaningless by swb · · Score: 2

    ...when you consider that most unix installations have nothing to do with "use" in the sense of personal computer interactive operation. They're used for DB, web and other transactional and client/server computing as well as providing the operational guidance for other non-computer based interaction systems (traffic lights). By this standard, a non-trivial percentage of the world may be a "unix user" in some fashion or other.

    I'd also add that commercial UNIX licenses are far different from end-user personal computer licenses. A single commerical UNIX installation may have a many hundreds or thousands of user licenses attached to it. Is one installation with a 1000 client licenses a single sale or 1001 sales? A better sales comparison would add up processor and client licenses together or use dollars spent.

    Either way, Apple is only trying to mislead their way out of last place in the computer industry.

    1. Re:Best selling is meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Either way, Apple is only trying to mislead their way out of last place in the computer industry."

      Yeah, Lamborghini tried the same thing and look where it got them.

      T

    2. Re:Best selling is meaningless by swb · · Score: 1

      What a great metaphor! Lamborghinis are overpriced, unreliable sports cars for rich assholes who have money to burn on image.

    3. Re:Best selling is meaningless by Moofie · · Score: 1

      Hardly surprising, since everybody else in the industry has successfully mislead Apple into last place. It's called marketing, it's inherently dishonest, and EVERYBODY does it. In order for Apple to remain viable, they MUST do the same thing. I hate it, it's wrong, but it's necessary.

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
    4. Re:Best selling is meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell that to Micrsoft. LOL

  63. Oorah Air Force by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the Air Force for you. No regular PT... and what the hell is that cycle ergometry thing anyway? Do you guys even count as a branch of the military anymore or do you fall under the postal service? I do like the new logo though. It look's like something off of Starship Troopers.

    1. Re:Oorah Air Force by spauldo · · Score: 1

      Cycle ogometry?

      It's simple - it fails everyone but the smokers and fat people. People usually fail it a few times then get a waiver :)

      Unfortunately, I'm a fat smoker and it fails me too. Of course, I deserve to fail it. But then again, in my career field we don't go charging up hills shooting people either, so my fitness isn't as important as an infantryman or such.

      And I like the logo too, but it was a pain having to get all the organizational webmasters to change it back at my last base (I was the main webmaster for a while), so that kind of spoiled it for me...

      --
      Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
  64. Unix to the masses? by Uttles · · Score: 1

    So let me post a question to all of you: do you really think apple has done it, they've presented Unix in a way that makes it pretty, nice, easy, and usable by the masses, including those who don't know where the "any" key is on a keyboard? If anybody could do it, it's apple. I miss 7.5.5 though, I really do. Maybe I'm just too old school.

    --

    ~ now you know
    1. Re:Unix to the masses? by tbone1 · · Score: 1
      I think they have, with certain caveats. For one thing, nothing is foolproof. Fools are just too damned clever for that. Also, some people have a knack for breaking things. My father, for example, is a retired engineer who has this absolute talent to improve anything to the point of disaster. I also have a brother who could break an anvil using duct tape and a toothpick.

      So given the caveats that anything that works can conceivably be broken, I think Apple has almost done it. There are still one or two missing features, and there are still a couple things (like speed), that will be improved in 10.1. Like anything worth having (democracy, love, wealth, a harem), it's a work in progress, and will never be COMPLETELY perfect ... partly because needs change, so the definition of perfection isn't static. Still, it's one heck of a start, and there's been quite a bit of improvement between 10.0.0 and 10.0.4. Let's call it "cautious optimism" for now.

      --

      The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
    2. Re:Unix to the masses? by CoffeeNowDammit · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      Granted, every OS is a work in progress, but I've been playing with it for the past few days, and.. I look at my Linux box at work much differently.

      GNOME, KDE, et. al. are toys compared to Aqua/Darwin. The only thing I need on my Mac is an X-Windows server, and a decent package manager, and I'm good to go. (v10.1 wouldn't hurt either.)

      Sure, there are foibles here and there (speed is one issue), but.. damn it's a gorgeous Unix system.

      --

      ".sig, .sig a .sog, .sig out loud,
    3. Re:Unix to the masses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Here's you XFree86:

      http://mrcla.com/XonX/

      For future reference you can go to:

      www.macslash.com

    4. Re:Unix to the masses? by szomb · · Score: 1

      Let's call it "cautious optimism" for now.

      You are the CEO of the .com company I used to work for, aren't you?

      --
      Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
    5. Re:Unix to the masses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only thing I need on my Mac is an X-Windows server, and a decent package manager
      Try fink, it's a lot like apt-get for OS X, you can even install X11R6 with it.

  65. Any relation to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    L. Ron Hubbard???


    Just asking a simple question.

    1. Re:Any relation to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, as a matter of fact. L. Ron Hubbard was Jordan Hubbard's uncle.

  66. Apache != UNIX by solios · · Score: 2

    You said:

    "Who gives a shit about branding? This is Slashdot, man. If you can run Unix apps on it with just a few tweaks then it is Unix. If it runs Apache, it is Unix. "

    You couldn't be more wrong if you were paid to be. I think this sums it up:

    http://httpd.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win3 2/

    So, in effect, you're wrongfully stating that Windows is a UNIX. Which is akin to calling a McDonalds hamburger a Porterhouse Steak.

  67. Small, bitter little troll arn't ya by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What made you so bitter? Linux and Windows installs?

  68. Re:BSD DOESN'T SUCK, THE USERS DO! by oulman · · Score: 1

    #freebsd on efnet is *NOT* a help channel. and asking questions will generally get you banned. why? because there are other channels for this.
    -cough- #freebsdhelp -cough-

    BSD users suck? ever been in #linux on efnet?
    -snicker-

  69. BZZZT! Nope rebutted by maggard · · Score: 4, Informative
    Ex Machina wrote:
    That is completely wrong!!
    Man did I hit a soft-spot with you.
    First of all, Mac OS X uses the BSD Mach Microkernel (developed by Rick Rashid.. now VP of research for MS) instead of the a traditional monolithic UNIX kernel! It has a lot of the GNU and BSD tools included with it, but after all, GNU's not UNIX!
    MacOS X is unix, at least insofar as anyone cares. It's certified to use the Unix trademark, it's listed in unix family tree, it walks and talks and quacks like a unix so yeah, it's a unix. There are pendants out there who will argue this-or-that "isn't unix" and the rest of usinix just ignores them and gets on with life.

    As to your various other claims there is no "BSD Mach Microkernel" though MacOS X is based on a derivative of the Mach microkernel originally developed at CMU (I know - those three letter school acronyms all sound alike..)

    Mach's " Principal Investigator " was Rick Rashid, with Avadis "Avie" Tevanian who was " principal designer and engineer of the Mach operating system. BTW Avie Tevanian left CMU to continue the development of Mach at Next and is now Sr. VP of SW Engineering at Apple.

    Not to sound rude, but clueless mac evangelists should check their facts!
    First of all I'm neither clueless nor a Mac evangelist, second off... Just where is your "second of all?
    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  70. Not with my tax dollars. by cjsnell · · Score: 1

    GovOS isn't about restricting freedom. It's about increasing it, by providing a tax-funded public domain desktop computing infrastructure. OS plus office suite, with some well-paid professional developers behind it, in the public domain... It sounds good to me.

    As if we don't already have enough government waste. If Microsoft needs something like 7000 employees (source: here) to build an OS and Office suite, I can't imagine what the government would need. We'd probably have a Department of Operating Systems and a congressional Operating Systems committee.

    No thanks, I'd much rather take a one-time hit of $600 for an OS and office suite than take another income tax hike so that some poor folks can have theirs for free. That, by the way, is the problem with excessive government. Those of us with higher incomes usually end up saddling most of the burden to provide services that are mostly utilized by those with lower incomes.

    1. Re:Not with my tax dollars. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      That, by the way, is the problem with excessive government. Those of us with higher incomes usually end up saddling most of the burden to provide services that are mostly utilized by those with lower incomes.


      When you figure out how, socially speaking, that's a bad thing, you let me know.


      Prick.

    2. Re:Not with my tax dollars. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any government as a whole should be looking out for it's "people". Not it's wealthy people or any one group in particular. It is easy to say that you don't want your tax dollars to go to someone who's poor. That's only looking out for yourself. Who cares about silly things like social welfare anyway.

  71. Pinnochio by Harv · · Score: 1
    This whole argument about what makes a Unix is pointless.

    Was Pinnochio a real little boy before the incident with the large sea creature?

    Are you the same person in all respects, that you were when you were 5? (For those of you who ARE 5, well, you get the point.)

    Just remember the old maxim:" the enemy of my enemy is my friend." All this infighting is like volunteering for a circular firing squad, while a certain company is readying the release of XP and .NET and laying plans for buying the internet.

    OK, maybe that last part is hyperbole, but you get the point. Why not spend your energies developing what's needed for the platform of your choice, but keep an eye on cooperating with other Unices. Otherwise, the concept of "open source=sharing" seems to be infected with the same proprietary instincts as the corporate world.

  72. Cuts both ways . . . by werdna · · Score: 2

    Some mindless drone randomly hacking at code for a hobby, regardless of his motivation, isn't going to write great code either.

    Sure 90% of commercial software is crap. I think, however, it is probably more because 90% of everything is crap, than because commercial entities hire mindless drones. It is as senseless to attribute to all commercial software the traits of its weakest contributors as it is to attribute to all open source software the attributes of its greatest exponents.

    I have seen the worst code contributed as open source, stuff I would fire people for if it were submitted as paid work product. I have likewise seen excellent code produced commercially, and of course, vice versa on both counts.

    The ideal is to be motivated BOTH for love of the making and for personal incentives. I count myself lucky that I've never worked at anything for a living I didn't love. But a lot of that has to do with only picking the projects on which you love to work, and doing so without regard to the money. My theory has been that the money will take care of itself if you focus on excellence and passion in your work. But that doesn't mean that sucking the money out of the work makes it better.

  73. Phew! You're a moron! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think we can all be thankful that we're not you!

  74. Open Group? by ce25254 · · Score: 1

    I've searched the Open Group website and also their UNIX® site, and I can't find anything about Mac OS X being certified. I can't find any references to Darwin. Where is this certification referenced?

  75. Re:NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF! by spoot · · Score: 1

    I've still got the arm band that came with the single.

  76. AtheOS compared to MacOS X? by bcrowell · · Score: 1
    I'm curious because of your sig -- how would you compare AtheOS to MacOS X? They're both operating systems that implement the Unix command-line stuff, but they both emphasize a modern, well-designed GUI, unlike Linux, which got GUIs (two of them, ugh!) as an afterthought.

    1. Re:AtheOS compared to MacOS X? by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 2
      I've only used OS X for 10 seconds at CompUSA once, so I'm afraid I can't provide much informed commentary. I can say this, though: OS X was meant to provide people with something interesting and different so they would take notice and help Apple gain market share. AtheOS is only meant to be a pet project for one guy, and despite its GUI-oriented nature, it does not go in for much eyecandy (yet?).

      AtheOS isn't really mature enough to compare in any meaningful way to OS X. That's why I say it is 'an OS with promise.'

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  77. Holy crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Office 10 looks fucking beautiful. Is that really Microsoft?!

  78. Federal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    computers are global

    if you do get your USGovOS, I hope it's more like your FedEx than your health system

  79. or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



    have you thought that geeks may be less interested in appearance and more interested in knowledge, mental fitness and thinking?

    those who put their physicality as their first priority spend more time exercising

    those who put their mentality as their first priority do not

    which is why a lot of women prefer a geek with something interesting in his head rather than a himbo flexing his muscles without a thought in his

  80. Insightful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



    7.5.5 was nice, but I prefer having OSX and a 30 GIG HD

  81. not to encourage /. spam... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but those shirts are pretty cool

  82. old Mother Hubbard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is L. Ron Hubbard's mother too

  83. Re:The future looks bad for FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RPM based FreeBSD?!

    muwahahahaha! I'm glad you've already been tagged "troll" so I didn't have to. OTOH, we could use a new moderation class, "-1, mandrake-hugging-biggot-assed-moron".

    Have you ever actually looked at the FreeBSD package system? What exactly does RPM offer that .tgz files with a couple of data files can't do?

    Please crawl back under your bridge.

  84. The CLI is open source by kiwipeso · · Score: 1

    Only the Gui and it's programs are closed.

    --
    - Kaos games and encryption systems developer