5 ms·

Does Apple contribute back to BSD on any meaningful level?

by porlw 14y ago

demallien 14y ago
Define 'contribute back'. I tend to think of Darwin as being a fork of BSD, so in that sense Apple doesn't commit back into BSD source repositories. But Darwin is open source, so the BSD community is free to take any ideas that please them.
- gillianseed 14y ago
  AFAIK Darwin is licenced under Apple's APSL which is copyleft-based so it's likely the BSD's can't lift code from Darwin. There was OpenDarwin though, which the developers shut down due to lack of interest and other problems. Now there's PureDarwin but development seems very slow.
huxley 14y ago
Not anywhere as much as they should. A few things I do know of: Clang/LLVM (which has substantial support from Apple) will be the primary compiler for FreeBSD. Apple's Grand Central Dispatch (libdispatch) has been ported to FreeBSD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch The TrustedBSD Security Event Auditing and OpenBSM are based on the Mac OS X BSM audit implementation and donated by Apple. As well, CUPS has been ported to FreeBSD.
- gillianseed 14y ago
  >As well, CUPS has been ported to FreeBSD. Well CUPS did not originate with Apple, they bought it when they needed a mature printing system. It existed for BSD prior to Apple's purchase. I don't know if the BSD's have made any use of anything from Apple's Darwin release? Perhaps it's not possible due to the licencing (Apple Public Source Licence) which is copyleft'ish.
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    There is quite a bit of sharing between Apple and FreeBSD. For example libdispatch has been ported to FreeBSD. Also when Apple imported pf into Darwin; FreeBSD used that same port to update their port of pf from OpenBSD. As others have mentioned, stuff like the TrustedBSD and Audit framework came from Darwin, and features such as Seatbelt and sandboxes are slowly being considered or improved upon by Capsicum for example.
yardie 14y ago
BSD is a funny beast in that almost know one is required to contribute anything except a license attribution in their code. Apple doesn't contribute anything to BSD because you really can't, there is no one to answer to. All you can do is stamp the license on your code and other BSD forks may use it.

Does Apple contribute back to BSD on any meaningful level?

by porlw 14y ago

Does Apple contribute back to BSD on any meaningful level?

Define 'contribute back'. I tend to think of Darwin as being a fork of BSD, so in that sense Apple doesn't commit back into BSD source repositories. But Darwin is open source, so the BSD community is free to take any ideas that please them.

gillianseed 14y ago
AFAIK Darwin is licenced under Apple's APSL which is copyleft-based so it's likely the BSD's can't lift code from Darwin. There was OpenDarwin though, which the developers shut down due to lack of interest and other problems. Now there's PureDarwin but development seems very slow.

huxley 14y ago

Not anywhere as much as they should. A few things I do know of: Clang/LLVM (which has substantial support from Apple) will be the primary compiler for FreeBSD. Apple's Grand Central Dispatch (libdispatch) has been ported to FreeBSD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch The TrustedBSD Security Event Auditing and OpenBSM are based on the Mac OS X BSM audit implementation and donated by Apple. As well, CUPS has been ported to FreeBSD.

gillianseed 14y ago
>As well, CUPS has been ported to FreeBSD. Well CUPS did not originate with Apple, they bought it when they needed a mature printing system. It existed for BSD prior to Apple's purchase. I don't know if the BSD's have made any use of anything from Apple's Darwin release? Perhaps it's not possible due to the licencing (Apple Public Source Licence) which is copyleft'ish.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  There is quite a bit of sharing between Apple and FreeBSD. For example libdispatch has been ported to FreeBSD. Also when Apple imported pf into Darwin; FreeBSD used that same port to update their port of pf from OpenBSD. As others have mentioned, stuff like the TrustedBSD and Audit framework came from Darwin, and features such as Seatbelt and sandboxes are slowly being considered or improved upon by Capsicum for example.

yardie 14y ago

BSD is a funny beast in that almost know one is required to contribute anything except a license attribution in their code. Apple doesn't contribute anything to BSD because you really can't, there is no one to answer to. All you can do is stamp the license on your code and other BSD forks may use it.