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PlayStation 4 runs modified FreeBSD 9.0
- sciurus 13y agoThe original source (as far as I can tell) is http://www.vgleaks.com/some-details-about-playstation-4-os-development/ http://www.vgleaks.com/some-details-about-playstation-4-os-d...
- kryptiskt 13y agoThe PS3 also has FreeBSD onboard (they call their version CellOS or something), so this is not hugely surprising.
- jevinskie 13y agoGameOS on the PS3 is Sony proprietary AFAIK. OtherOS was traditionally Linux but glevand the hacker (not glevand the SCE employee) got FreeBSD running as well. The hypervisor (lv1) is a modification of the IBM reference hypervisor.
- profquail 13y agoAccording to Sony's licensing page, the PS3's OS is based on FreeBSD 8.2: http://www.scei.co.jp/ps3-license/ http://www.scei.co.jp/ps3-license/ They've also apparently used FreeBSD on the PS Vita: http://www.scei.co.jp/psvita-license/ http://www.scei.co.jp/psvita-license/
- sigil 13y agoHey Sony, you should consider: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors I guess they could be the big anonymous donor, although I always assumed that was Apple.
- avar 13y agoWhy would any public company make anonymous donations? Isn't it going to become public anyway via public accounting? I'm not familiar with U.S. law in this regard.
- bjterry 13y agoA public company is not required to disclose its individual donations except insofar as they would be material to making an investment decision. The bar for that is tremendously high for a company like Apple or Sony relative to the size of any such donation.
- gilgoomesh 13y agoApple doesn't make many public donations as a matter of policy. Steve Jobs was famously against publicly declared donations – he thought it was hypocritical, stole credit from the recipients and diminished the concept of selfless giving. http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/steve-jobs-secretly-gave-millions-to-charity-publically-criticised-for-not-doing-enough/story-e6frfmd9-1226650636880 http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/steve-jobs-secret...
- baby 13y agoWow, that's actually very very good for someone that seemed so harsh. On a side note, this Bono guy is everywhere, does that mean that Jobs was in the same sect thingy?
- lmm 13y agoWe're talking about a guy who stole from his business partner. I suspect his real motive was making an excuse for never donating anything.
- speeder 13y agoHe became religious with some Asiatic religion before he came up with his theory on donations. And there was here in HN a post about how his family did donatelots of money.
- mamp 13y agoBit harsh. True to his work Jobs gave away tens of millions of dollars without publicity. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330727/How-Steve-Jobs-wife-secretly-gave-away-TEN-OF-MILLIONS-money-charity--critics-accused-doing-enough.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330727/How-Steve-Jo...
- dmix 13y ago> I guess they could be the big anonymous donor, although I always assumed that was Apple. NSA? DHS?
- josephg 13y agoAs someone who works on BSD-licensed opensource software, this is fantastic news. Regardless of your opinion of Sony as a company, this is exactly why I love licenses like BSD & MIT - you enable engineers everywhere to build better products.
- zimbatm 13y agoIt would be interesting to know what made them choose that OS. Is it because FreeBSD was better adapted to their needs or because unlike Linux they wouldn't be forced to contribute back to the enormous pile of work that they inherit ? I hope it's the first one and that we'll soon see commits from Sony flowing in.
- ceph_ 13y agoFreeBSD and Netbsd are often chosen due to the more permissive licensing agreements. They allow the revised platform to be fully commercial and proprietary. Another example would be Juniper's JunOS.
- pbsdp 13y agoWhat's interesting is that while Juniper's software is proprietary, they've still contributed patches and funded dedicated upstream development. This is something enabled by not being required to share more than what they're comfortable with sharing.
- cperciva 13y agoNot just Juniper, either. Most large users of FreeBSD contribute patches back -- the great success of BSD as a license is the recognition that if you use open source, it makes sense to contribute back any non-proprietary improvements, without needing any "encouragement" from the license.
- runeks 13y ago> Most large users of FreeBSD contribute patches back -- the great success of BSD as a license is the recognition that if you use open source, it makes sense to contribute back any non-proprietary improvements, without needing any "encouragement" from the license. I've had the same thoughts recently. At some point it must simply become unmanageable to maintain a fork, at least if you want to enjoy updates to master. But I suspect Sony might not be interested in future updates to FreeBSD, since they will probably prefer working on a static platform, and since the hardware will remain the same as well.
- huxley 13y agoIt reminded me that 3 years ago Sony started working with GNUStep to add touch support and build their SNAP platform, they put the project on hold/cancelled it not long after it became public, but you can still see the code at: https://github.com/deliciousrobots/gnustep-gui-sony/ https://github.com/deliciousrobots/gnustep-gui-sony/ Some of the background: http://blog.deliciousrobots.com/2010/11/27/sonys-changes-to-gnustep-gui-library-adding-touch/ http://blog.deliciousrobots.com/2010/11/27/sonys-changes-to-...
- synchronise 13y agoDid any of these changes get merged back into upstream GNUStep?
- elwin 13y ago> We aren’t sure if this will bring again the “Other OS” functions to Playstation 4 It will at least have to be possible to install other systems. The screenshots show GRUB 2, which is under the GPLv3, so it should be unlockable.
- lotyrin 13y agoAssuming it survives into the final commercial product.
- zanny 13y agoWorst case scenario, someone will rip out the rom chip and reverse engineer whatever kind of efi or acpi firmware they are using and solder their own in. People get mad crazy with video game consoles like that.
- gsnedders 13y agoThe devkit will be unlockable — but that's not interesting. What bootloader the devkit runs has no relation to what the final console will (and I expect that will be locked down, even if it allows other OSes).
- runeks 13y agoIsn't the point that it has to be locked down? I get the impression that one of the merits of a gaming system is how well it protects unauthorized copying of game titles (seen from the game developers' point of view).
- speeder 13y agoActually, the point was to prevent unauthorized self-publishing... This is what doomed the market in 1983, people made so much shovelware and shipped to actual stores, that when someone arrived on a store and grabbed a random title, it was 99% of chance of it being utter crap, thus people stopped going to stores. Nintendo that came up with the idea to just outright make hard as possible for people to self-publish games, going to the extent of even limiting large publishers amount of allowed games per year. Thanks to indie renaissance this is being relaxed now, but not too much... Companies are still scared by the prospect of repeating 1983 or repeating iTunes (that has thousands of shovelware games and discoverability outright suck)
- jjcm 13y agoAny idea if this means there's a potential to play PS4 games on a standard linux box?
- chc 13y agoThat seems pretty unlikely. The Mac OS X core operating system Darwin is also based off FreeBSD, but there's a whole lot on top of the core OS that they don't have in common, so Mac programs are not very easily ported.
- merlincorey 13y agoDarwin includes a separate kernel and binary image format. The question is the Sony OS using regular ELFs and the FreeBSD kernel with modules, or did they replace it entirely as well.
- mortehu 13y agoThey used ELF (or actually SELF, Signed ELF) for PlayStation 3.
- jevinskie 13y agoCorrect. A SELF file is just an ELF-ish header with crypto abilities that wraps a normal ELF file. Many fields are duplicated... some are checked for validity while a different copy is actually used! ;-) http://ps3devwiki.com/wiki/SELF_File_Format_and_Decryption http://ps3devwiki.com/wiki/SELF_File_Format_and_Decryption
- IanChiles 13y agoIf someone wanted to build a PS4 ABI, much like how Wine works, there's a small chance that you could - but most likely not.
- runeks 13y agoI'd say chances are pretty slim. They are only using the FreeBSD kernel. It's the stuff on top (graphics libraries, input handling) that really matters.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bifrost 13y agoDoubtful, it was built well after that OS was released.
- m_gloeckl 13y agoKeep in mind that the final software for the console can differ from the OS that the development kit is running. The Playstation 2 development kit was running Red Hat Linux and shipped with a custom system software once it was released. The Playstation 3 development kit was also running Red Hat Linux, but it shipped with CellOS, an operating system that has supposedly been branched off of FreeBSD during development.
- phryk 13y ago<Generic opinionated argument on BSD vs. GPL>
- mariusmg 13y agoPS3 also used a BSD fork (called CellOS or something like this). I would have been impressed if they had they own embedded low footprint OS. Forking BSD and "eating" a lot of RAM for the OS in a game console is hardly interesting.
- skizm 13y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just for the dev tools? I think the actual OS will be something different (although I assume some sort of Linux Kernel).
- nathanb 13y agoThis article doesn't cite a source. I'd be interested to see more information. (The article also claims that you could install Windows on your PS3, which I never tried but I'm reasonably certain would not in any way actually work).
- osivertsson 13y ago"It is a modified version of FreeBSD 9.0." Is this obvious from the screenshots? Or are they just claiming this without any arguments to back it up?
- bni 13y agoSeems like its common for Japanese consumer electronics companies to use FreeBSD as a base. For example the Panasonic plasma TVs of recent years contain FreeBSD.