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My impression is that FreeBSD is Apple's shadow in FOSS, they hold a lot of soft power over it. I know the kernels are different and obviously only part of the

My impression is that FreeBSD is Apple's shadow in FOSS, they hold a lot of soft power over it. I know the kernels are different and obviously only part of the userspace is the same, but is FreeBSD actually far enough away from Apple to say it's not bogged down by corporate interests? I don't imagine it's the same as Linux at all, but it exists in a non-trivial way, no?

wkat4242 1y ago
It's not. Apple (or rather NeXT) took some of the userland for macOS but it's not contributing back and it doesn't have much influence. It's more like a fork a long time ago. A few companies do. Skype and Netflix did but hardly use it now (at least Skype left it, not sure about Netflix but I never hear about it from bsd devs). Ix systems and netgate do but they're tiny.. No, it's not influenced in a trivial way and certainly not by apple. This is a huge difference to Linux where the vast majority of kernel commits come from big tech and have nothing to do with things end users care about. Also there's nothing in the FreeBSD world like the Linux Foundation which is basically a corporate lobby group.
- johnnyjeans 1y ago
  > but it's not contributing back and it doesn't have much influence. I understand the former. But with how Apple operates, it's really hard to believe they'd pull downstream from something they don't have some kind of soft power over. They do still pull downstream AFAIK? Maybe that's changed? >Ix systems I did some reading and saw a FreeBSD contributor ended up going to Apple until 2013 before he founded this company. https://www.ixsystems.com/clients/ https://www.ixsystems.com/clients/ Apple is listed here. Six degrees of separation and all, but probably not a coincidence. Nothing wrong with that, business is a social structure. This is how they work. We make and keep friends, even if only professionally. Backchannels are where real deals are made. But this to me is not nothing. No corporate influence means there's a lot of nice things you don't get. You just can't afford the manpower. It looks more like 9 Front than a BSD that has some serious billion-dollar problems under its belt. That sounds harsh, not a judgement. Just very deep skepticism of the assertion of no influence. I'm realizing there's not a lot that can be done to sway that intentionally. > This is a huge difference to Linux This I'm well aware of. I just like having a perspective across the fence. These days they're starting to get a little too aggressive for my tastes. FreeBSD seems fine in comparison.
  - toast0 1y ago
    > But with how Apple operates, it's really hard to believe they'd pull downstream from something they don't have some kind of soft power over. They do still pull downstream AFAIK? Maybe that's changed? Apple doesn't merge often. They basically haven't merged kernel tcp since 2002. When I started using OSX in 2011, they hadn't merged userland for several years, and when I stopped in 2019, they had only merged once. They famously stopped picking up bash when upstream changed the license, and most of the FreeBSD userland doesn't change that frequently, so most things you wouldn't notice a difference. cal(1) started highlighting the current day at some point, tar probably grew new compresion arguments, etc. Apple certainly was a major contributor/driving force/etc of LLVM for a while, not sure if they still are? And LLVM was adopted by FreeBSD, so maybe that's where this idea is coming from?
    - johnnyjeans 1y ago
      > And LLVM was adopted by FreeBSD, so maybe that's where this idea is coming from? Partially, but after seeing the Jordan Hubbard connection, there's a lot of layers to this. May have reinforced my biases, but it's definitely non-trivial according to my hippie-tier anarchist baseline. Oops. Worst case scenario of answering your own question. But your reply does give me actually contradicting evidence. It wouldn't surprise me that distance has grown to the point of total atrophy, given the general trajectory Apple has been on since 2012 or so. This is why I ask these questions, because the people on the ground give the most informative answers. As Ptahhotep advises circa ~2300BCE: > Fine words are more sought after than greenstone, but can be found with the women at the grindstone.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        > May have reinforced my biases, but it's definitely non-trivial according to my hippie-tier anarchist baseline. The definition of 'trivial' would come into play yes. I would only consider it non-trivial if a commercial party can (and does) influence the direction of development. I don't think Apple does so. Even Netflix. In the Linux world there's billions of investment and many contributors are directly employed by big business. The waters are much murkier there. Again, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just not something I want which is one of the reasons I picked FreeBSD. Other reasons were the great ports collection, the division between OS and apps (you can have rolling apps but a stable OS), the traditionalism (only change things if it's really needed) and the single main flavour of the OS which makes support much easier. Also the excellent documentation.
- assimpleaspossi 1y ago
  >>Netflix did but hardly use it now Unless I misunderstood you, Netflix delivers all video content via FreeBSD and contributes code back and money to the foundation.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    I had read they were migrating to Linux but I could be wrong. I just never hear much about Netflix in FreeBSD circles. If they still use it they are more of a user than an influencer in its development.
    - soupbowl 1y ago
      They use it and influence its development. You can search freebsd git repo, you'll see Netflix all over it for many years Including 2025. They've added many large features across the code base.
cperciva 1y ago
I'm not sure where you're getting the "Apple holds soft power over FreeBSD" thing from. Netflix is probably at the top of the list given all their performance and stability work -- and, you know, the fact they push a large chunk of all Internet traffic using FreeBSD -- and NetApp and Juniper are somewhere up there, but I'm not convinced Apple would even be in the top 10.
- johnnyjeans 1y ago
  > I'm not sure where you're getting the "Apple holds soft power over FreeBSD" thing from. The only thing I've ever heard from FreeBSD-land, not paying attention to users, but the maintainers and the tools. Apple comes up. In the same manner that RedHat and others come up for Linux. How to explain? It's an abstract pattern. Transparent, understandable. I mentioned somewhere about the connection through ix systems. And honestly to project, if I was a maintainer of something used between Netflix and Apple, I'd prioritize Apple. Apple has outlived IBM. If you know your history, you know how serious that is. If you've got authority over something as large as FreeBSD? Yeah, you don't ignore that kind of actual power especially when it's personal. Like I say, all based on guesses. But some things are hard to mistake.
  - cperciva 1y ago
    Apple did very important work making LLVM happen, but that was a long time ago. At this point there are lots of companies involved in that project. As far as "power" is concerned... speaking as release engineer, I don't give special treatment to anyone; nor have I even been asked to. If anyone has a special relationship it's Netflix but if anything that's the opposite way around: "Can you please throw 10% of all Internet traffic at this TCP stack patch and let us know if anything breaks" is a thing. They're incredibly helpful with Q/A.
    - johnnyjeans 1y ago
      Consider me convinced. Like I say, it was never anything but empirical skepticism. Neither for or against until sufficient evidence has been collected, as painful as that can be. Thank you for your work on scrypt.
AdieuToLogic 1y ago
> My impression is that FreeBSD is Apple's shadow in FOSS, they hold a lot of soft power over it. Apple has no influence over the FreeBSD project. > I know the kernels are different and obviously only part of the userspace is the same, but is FreeBSD actually far enough away from Apple to say it's not bogged down by corporate interests? Yes. OS-X (now macOS) is based on XNU[0], which itself has roots in the Mach[1] microkernel. The Unix user-space programs distributed with OS-X/macOS are those found in FreeBSD distributions AFAIK. This is also conformant with FreeBSD licenses for same. So there is no "soft power" Apple has over FreeBSD. And FreeBSD is not "Apple's shadow in FOSS". > I don't imagine it's the same as Linux at all, but it exists in a non-trivial way, no? No. It does not. EDIT: Just in case you'd like to verify any of the above yourself, see here[2]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) 2 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Just for reference, Apple's XNU-based kernels have a concept of "flavors" and use some FreeBSD code in the kernel to provide its BSD "flavor".
deleted 1y ago
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wkat4242 1y ago

It's not. Apple (or rather NeXT) took some of the userland for macOS but it's not contributing back and it doesn't have much influence. It's more like a fork a long time ago. A few companies do. Skype and Netflix did but hardly use it now (at least Skype left it, not sure about Netflix but I never hear about it from bsd devs). Ix systems and netgate do but they're tiny.. No, it's not influenced in a trivial way and certainly not by apple. This is a huge difference to Linux where the vast majority of kernel commits come from big tech and have nothing to do with things end users care about. Also there's nothing in the FreeBSD world like the Linux Foundation which is basically a corporate lobby group.

johnnyjeans 1y ago
> but it's not contributing back and it doesn't have much influence. I understand the former. But with how Apple operates, it's really hard to believe they'd pull downstream from something they don't have some kind of soft power over. They do still pull downstream AFAIK? Maybe that's changed? >Ix systems I did some reading and saw a FreeBSD contributor ended up going to Apple until 2013 before he founded this company. https://www.ixsystems.com/clients/ https://www.ixsystems.com/clients/ Apple is listed here. Six degrees of separation and all, but probably not a coincidence. Nothing wrong with that, business is a social structure. This is how they work. We make and keep friends, even if only professionally. Backchannels are where real deals are made. But this to me is not nothing. No corporate influence means there's a lot of nice things you don't get. You just can't afford the manpower. It looks more like 9 Front than a BSD that has some serious billion-dollar problems under its belt. That sounds harsh, not a judgement. Just very deep skepticism of the assertion of no influence. I'm realizing there's not a lot that can be done to sway that intentionally. > This is a huge difference to Linux This I'm well aware of. I just like having a perspective across the fence. These days they're starting to get a little too aggressive for my tastes. FreeBSD seems fine in comparison.
- toast0 1y ago
  > But with how Apple operates, it's really hard to believe they'd pull downstream from something they don't have some kind of soft power over. They do still pull downstream AFAIK? Maybe that's changed? Apple doesn't merge often. They basically haven't merged kernel tcp since 2002. When I started using OSX in 2011, they hadn't merged userland for several years, and when I stopped in 2019, they had only merged once. They famously stopped picking up bash when upstream changed the license, and most of the FreeBSD userland doesn't change that frequently, so most things you wouldn't notice a difference. cal(1) started highlighting the current day at some point, tar probably grew new compresion arguments, etc. Apple certainly was a major contributor/driving force/etc of LLVM for a while, not sure if they still are? And LLVM was adopted by FreeBSD, so maybe that's where this idea is coming from?
  - johnnyjeans 1y ago
    > And LLVM was adopted by FreeBSD, so maybe that's where this idea is coming from? Partially, but after seeing the Jordan Hubbard connection, there's a lot of layers to this. May have reinforced my biases, but it's definitely non-trivial according to my hippie-tier anarchist baseline. Oops. Worst case scenario of answering your own question. But your reply does give me actually contradicting evidence. It wouldn't surprise me that distance has grown to the point of total atrophy, given the general trajectory Apple has been on since 2012 or so. This is why I ask these questions, because the people on the ground give the most informative answers. As Ptahhotep advises circa ~2300BCE: > Fine words are more sought after than greenstone, but can be found with the women at the grindstone.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      > May have reinforced my biases, but it's definitely non-trivial according to my hippie-tier anarchist baseline. The definition of 'trivial' would come into play yes. I would only consider it non-trivial if a commercial party can (and does) influence the direction of development. I don't think Apple does so. Even Netflix. In the Linux world there's billions of investment and many contributors are directly employed by big business. The waters are much murkier there. Again, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just not something I want which is one of the reasons I picked FreeBSD. Other reasons were the great ports collection, the division between OS and apps (you can have rolling apps but a stable OS), the traditionalism (only change things if it's really needed) and the single main flavour of the OS which makes support much easier. Also the excellent documentation.
assimpleaspossi 1y ago
>>Netflix did but hardly use it now Unless I misunderstood you, Netflix delivers all video content via FreeBSD and contributes code back and money to the foundation.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  I had read they were migrating to Linux but I could be wrong. I just never hear much about Netflix in FreeBSD circles. If they still use it they are more of a user than an influencer in its development.
  - soupbowl 1y ago
    They use it and influence its development. You can search freebsd git repo, you'll see Netflix all over it for many years Including 2025. They've added many large features across the code base.

cperciva 1y ago

I'm not sure where you're getting the "Apple holds soft power over FreeBSD" thing from. Netflix is probably at the top of the list given all their performance and stability work -- and, you know, the fact they push a large chunk of all Internet traffic using FreeBSD -- and NetApp and Juniper are somewhere up there, but I'm not convinced Apple would even be in the top 10.

johnnyjeans 1y ago
> I'm not sure where you're getting the "Apple holds soft power over FreeBSD" thing from. The only thing I've ever heard from FreeBSD-land, not paying attention to users, but the maintainers and the tools. Apple comes up. In the same manner that RedHat and others come up for Linux. How to explain? It's an abstract pattern. Transparent, understandable. I mentioned somewhere about the connection through ix systems. And honestly to project, if I was a maintainer of something used between Netflix and Apple, I'd prioritize Apple. Apple has outlived IBM. If you know your history, you know how serious that is. If you've got authority over something as large as FreeBSD? Yeah, you don't ignore that kind of actual power especially when it's personal. Like I say, all based on guesses. But some things are hard to mistake.
- cperciva 1y ago
  Apple did very important work making LLVM happen, but that was a long time ago. At this point there are lots of companies involved in that project. As far as "power" is concerned... speaking as release engineer, I don't give special treatment to anyone; nor have I even been asked to. If anyone has a special relationship it's Netflix but if anything that's the opposite way around: "Can you please throw 10% of all Internet traffic at this TCP stack patch and let us know if anything breaks" is a thing. They're incredibly helpful with Q/A.
  - johnnyjeans 1y ago
    Consider me convinced. Like I say, it was never anything but empirical skepticism. Neither for or against until sufficient evidence has been collected, as painful as that can be. Thank you for your work on scrypt.

AdieuToLogic 1y ago

> My impression is that FreeBSD is Apple's shadow in FOSS, they hold a lot of soft power over it. Apple has no influence over the FreeBSD project. > I know the kernels are different and obviously only part of the userspace is the same, but is FreeBSD actually far enough away from Apple to say it's not bogged down by corporate interests? Yes. OS-X (now macOS) is based on XNU[0], which itself has roots in the Mach[1] microkernel. The Unix user-space programs distributed with OS-X/macOS are those found in FreeBSD distributions AFAIK. This is also conformant with FreeBSD licenses for same. So there is no "soft power" Apple has over FreeBSD. And FreeBSD is not "Apple's shadow in FOSS". > I don't imagine it's the same as Linux at all, but it exists in a non-trivial way, no? No. It does not. EDIT: Just in case you'd like to verify any of the above yourself, see here[2]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) 2 - https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu

heavyset_go 1y ago
Just for reference, Apple's XNU-based kernels have a concept of "flavors" and use some FreeBSD code in the kernel to provide its BSD "flavor".

deleted 1y ago

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