"David Blevins" <dmblevins at mediaone.net> wrote: > > I've been hearing a lot about FreeBSD since Apple integrated it into the > Mac OS X. An integration like this doesn't happen over night, I imagine > that Apple has been funding the project for quite some time. With > Apple's focus on usability, it's no wonder FreeBSD's user-friendliness > is a bit of an anomaly. > > The first thing I think is "Why FreeBSD and not Linux?" Why did Apple pick FreeBSD instead of Linux? Probably because of the different licenses. Apple made some extensions to the kernel to get it to work on Apple machines. I guess they ended up releasing the source in the end (they call the low-level system Darwin), but they could have kept the whole thing proprietary. Legend has it that one of Steve Jobs's other companies, NeXT, made some extensions to the gcc compiler for the Objective-C language that they wanted to keep as proprietary. They were confronted and released their changes, but I'm sure it left a nasty taste in Jobs's mouth. I'm not sure if the story is true, but it would explain why Apple seems to stay away from Linux and GPLed software. In fact, Apple used to support work on Linux for the Mac (mkLinux, I think, though the `mk' was for `micro-kernel'), but that quietly went away when Jobs returned to be iCEO. Anyway, I'm just bitter that Apple won't let me play Sorenson QuickTime movies on my Linux box :-p -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ I came, I saw, I hid in the / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ basement. \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20011102/29edf79e/attachment.pgp