Slashdot Mirror
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.
* 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.
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.
FreeBSD 3.2? Why not the 4.x series?
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!
"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
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
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.
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."
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
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!
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
"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?
Kevin Fox