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PlayStation 4 Will Be Running Modified FreeBSD
jones_supa writes "This discovery comes nicely alongside the celebration of FreeBSD's 20th birthday, for all the UNIX nerds. The operating system powering the PlayStation 4 is Orbis OS, which is a Sony spin of FreeBSD 9.0. It's not a huge surprise FreeBSD is being used over Linux, in part due to the more liberal licensing. The PlayStation 4 is x86-64 based now rather than Cell-based, which makes it easier to use FreeBSD. BSDs in general currently lack manufacturer supported full-feature AMD graphics driver, which leads to the conclusion that Sony and AMD have likely co-developed a discrete driver for the PS4. Some pictures of the development kit boot loader (GRUB) have been published too."
BSD license, I'm not sure you understand it.
PS4 is on FreeBSD, X1 is on a Windows-kernel abomination, and the Steam box is going to be Linux. Interesting. Any chance the WiiU has secret Mac lineage to complete this?
The license war he's talking about would proceed approximately as follows:
GPL: had BSD been licensed under the GPL (I know, word salad), then Sony would have been forced to release the modifications to the kernel, and we would be able to better mod the PS4/overall cost to society would be lower since all the improvements would be available to everyone
BSD: had BSD been licensed under the GPL, Sony would not have used the kernel, they would never upstream any changes, and the overall cost to society would be greater since they would have been forced to develop their own, in-house kernel.
I'm trying to be neutral here, but I'm probably just starting the flamewar. You probably can tell what my bias is, but whatever.
This will also probably also be good for FreeBSD in terms of its codebase as well. I expect Sony will probably be feeding back some patches.
This man is in denial.
--
BMO
This has been disputed over and over again. I think that after 42 years of trolling, we now all agree on which one is the best and why, no ?
Having been part of the team that evaluated practically every processor being considered for Apple products from 2003-2009, Cell wasn't used because it sucks as a general purpose processor. The SPUs are interesting but you need to completely rewrite algorithms to use them effectively. While porting to Intel wasn't exactly easy (mostly due to the endian switch), it didn't involve rewriting every compute-heavy algorithm from scratch. Intel also had a roadmap while Cell was a point design.
kc8apf
Emacs the answer is.
This will also probably also be good for FreeBSD in terms of its codebase as well. I expect Sony will probably be feeding back some patches.
This man is in denial.
-- BMO
Not really. It is much less expensive to allow the patches to be integrated into the parent project then it is to patch the project after every update. In addition, others will be able to test/verify that changes don't break the patches if they are given access to them. So it makes sense to feed back as many patches as they can as it greatly reduces the effort required to maintain their port.
Indeed. The best is whatever works for you.
BSD: Good if you want high availability/adoption and don't care if derived projects are OSS.
Linux: Good if you want high availability but no closed-source spinoffs.
There aren't even many Linux Zealots left.
No need to gloat when you've conquered the world.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Apple has contributed lots of patches back to BSD. Juniper has contributed much to BSD, etc.
In general, people that use BSD contribute patches back because it is in their best financial interest to do so. Not because the license says they must, but because they want to. This generally leads to better quality patches too, in my experience.
But don't expect the video driver: that's likely covered by NDA with AMD...
It is funny how there are many definitions of Sony . When they opened the bootloader for Android the Slashdot crowd reasoning was "it was the Ericsson part" (even if the Ericsson was dropped) that is the reason they play nicely. But the Sony - BMG rootkit scandal was Sony doing, even if you can seed the same doubt. I think when they opened up their smartwatch (http://developer.sonymobile.com/services/open-smartwatch-project/smartwatch-hacker-guide/) is also Ericsson doing I presume ? Companies can change you know especially if they did some wrong in the past, the world isn't always black & white.
That being said, I don't know if you are aware that a lot of the older people (that made the PS3 decisions) with regarding the SCEE are out of the picture. The PS4 wasn't even developed in Japan or by a Japanese, hell it will even be released earlier in the US and Europe. If you follow the news a bit you will see Sony has a massive attitude change regarding the PS4. You just need to look how they are handling Indie's these days. You must read the humbling interviews with a guy like Cerny, what a chance in comparison with the arrogant Sony.
With regarding the OS a lot of people seem to forgot that Sony also supported linux through the PS2 lifetime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2) and they never took it back. So it may be that the removal of the OtherOS for piracy reasons was more valid then the so called hatred for Linux suddenly. There are strong opinions about linux, but does opinions never involve the fact of the possibility of that method being abused as an easy way to pirate. Or what should be the real reason that they removed OtherOS support anyway ? Because they hate linus or RMS ?
You are right there should be other mod options like "living in the past" that I would gladly reward you with.
I heard on the internets that version 6 of Emacs was going to be called VI
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
I heard that Steve Jobs used to use VI. He switched to EMACS couldn't kick the habit of hitting the i key before typing.
If it wasn't for the fact that OpenSSH is BSD licensed, we'd still have TELNET all over the place. I benefit from that.
The same is true for every other standard internet service. TCP/IP, HTTPD, SMTP, DNS, DHCP, FTP, LDAP, NTP, etc. Just try to name one service that has become a defacto standard, which only had a GPL-licensed reference implementation... They don't exist.
I benefit from that, you benefit from that. And it's solely the domain of BSD/Apache-licensed software. NOT GPL'd software.
The right to get a tarball is of almost no practical value. Look at things like Xen, Android, Webkit, etc. A publicly available blob of code helps no one. It can't get integrated upstream without those companies going far above and beyond what the GPL requires. And if they go above and beyond what the GPL requires, there's no reason to believe they won't go far above and beyond what the BSD license requires.
It's in the companies' self-interest to release their code changes under the same license for upstream integration. And even if they chose not to, there's no HARM to the public or the contributors, as the upstream source is still available under the same license as always.
And with the BSD license, companies have the option to contribute in other ways if they can't release source code. Money to the upstream project is almost always more beneficial than a blob of changes. One example, while Apple may have locked-up their Darwin OS under a different license, they've still contributed plenty back to BSD. LLVM comes to mind, but there are many others as well.
It's not FREEDOM to compel others to give their hard work to you, for free. And others choosing not to do so, does NOT imping upon your own FREEDOM. You had the same amount of freedom before and after they used some BSD licensed code in their own project. The GPL may just as well have a clause saying you must donate X dollars to the FSF if you want to use the software. You seem to think it's "FREEDOM" when penalizing anyone who uses GPL software, so that should be just as good...
And you should be very careful with that line of thinking... The GPLv3 has been a flaming pile of failure, because it forced too many demands upon those who wished to use licensed code. It caused a surge of BSD development, most notably projects like LLVM which are on-course to replace GCC, all despite not having a license that forces people to support the project.
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