6 ms·

Maybe off-topic but what I would really love to see would be for someone to start making BSD based smartphones. It is now easily starting to fit that platform a

Maybe off-topic but what I would really love to see would be for someone to start making BSD based smartphones. It is now easily starting to fit that platform as well not just the PC:s. And BSD lisence would make it possible to make profit in the progress. Free as in freedom. Everything open source. Sandboxed partitions. REAL crypto. No Googler Inside. Stick it to the Man. Everybody wins.

krylon 4y ago
Technically, you could build that on top of Linux, too, just like you could build an Android-lookalike on top of FreeBSD if you wanted to. That being said, it would be nice, at least if the resulting system exposed more of its Unix guts, but I am not overly optimistic.
- mah4k4l 4y ago
  Just saying that the BSD license gives you more freedom for commercial activity over GPL. You can literally do what you want with it, sell it as your own product and all. I'm not the engineer type myself (yet), just a holistic thinker who gives a fuck.
rjsw 4y ago
There was a BSD based smartphone [1], not sure it was any more open a platform than Android though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop
- jdcarter 4y ago
  Only the last Danger device ran NetBSD; all prior ones used a proprietary, in-house OS. It didn't run any of the normal BSD userland, however, as Danger had its own Java-based userland and UI layer. Danger was bought by Microsoft, however, right around the time the NetBSD phone was going to market. AFAIK the tech didn't continue much past the Microsoft acquisition. (Source: worked at Danger on the NetBSD project, but left shortly before the Microsoft deal.)
- mah4k4l 4y ago
  "Purchased by Microsoft in 2008 for 500M". And then the silence was deafening. Hmm...
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tomc1985 4y ago
I've been spotting BSD embedded in an increasing number of devices -- Playstation 4, Pioneer DJ consoles, hell Mac OS is built on top of it ... my guess is the missing piece is driver (and maybe developer) support
- Klonoar 4y ago
  MacOS is not built on top of FreeBSD.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    My post specifies BSD... I don't know which flavors the PS4 or pioneer consoles are built on either
    - i5Aj7PXGjUPy 4y ago
      I think 4.4BSD on MacOS

krylon 4y ago

Technically, you could build that on top of Linux, too, just like you could build an Android-lookalike on top of FreeBSD if you wanted to. That being said, it would be nice, at least if the resulting system exposed more of its Unix guts, but I am not overly optimistic.

mah4k4l 4y ago
Just saying that the BSD license gives you more freedom for commercial activity over GPL. You can literally do what you want with it, sell it as your own product and all. I'm not the engineer type myself (yet), just a holistic thinker who gives a fuck.

rjsw 4y ago

There was a BSD based smartphone [1], not sure it was any more open a platform than Android though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop

jdcarter 4y ago
Only the last Danger device ran NetBSD; all prior ones used a proprietary, in-house OS. It didn't run any of the normal BSD userland, however, as Danger had its own Java-based userland and UI layer. Danger was bought by Microsoft, however, right around the time the NetBSD phone was going to market. AFAIK the tech didn't continue much past the Microsoft acquisition. (Source: worked at Danger on the NetBSD project, but left shortly before the Microsoft deal.)
mah4k4l 4y ago
"Purchased by Microsoft in 2008 for 500M". And then the silence was deafening. Hmm...
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tomc1985 4y ago

I've been spotting BSD embedded in an increasing number of devices -- Playstation 4, Pioneer DJ consoles, hell Mac OS is built on top of it ... my guess is the missing piece is driver (and maybe developer) support

Klonoar 4y ago
MacOS is not built on top of FreeBSD.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  My post specifies BSD... I don't know which flavors the PS4 or pioneer consoles are built on either
  - i5Aj7PXGjUPy 4y ago
    I think 4.4BSD on MacOS