Related link: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,43299,00.html

Wired describes this big IBM initiative as an “IBM Dream”–but it still looks to me like a pipe dream. In something as slippery and subtle as security, I don’t belileve machine intelligence can out-fox
determined human intelligence.

PC Week sent a Windows reporter to cover Apple’s new operating system,
OS X, and they are taking a beating over it in the BSD community.

The introduction says,

“Aesthetically similar to Unix, Mac OS X is built on a customized
variant of the mach3 Unix kernel
and bsd Linux, providing more stability to programs and demonstrating
true multitasking capabilities.”

The statement “mach3 Unix kernel and bsd Linux” clearly proves that
adding buzzwords, like “Linux”, to a
sentence doesn’t necessarily improve it any.

Mach is a micro-kernel and comes from Carnegie-Mellon University, with later additions by the University of Utah, and is licensed under a BSD-ish license. In
other words, it’s “open source” for some definition of that term. It was used in the NeXT OS, which was purchased by Apple. However, BSD was developed at the University of Berkeley California, decended from the original AT&T Unix code, and is clearly not Linux. Linux was written from scratch to be like Unix and is only a Kernel. BSD is developed and packaged as a complete operating system.

The other point that PC Week is getting beat up over is their
description of the case sensitive login as “clunky”
and a “hurdle”. This is called “security” and Windows’ lack of it puts
it low on my list of choices. Pressing
the ESC key to bypass the Windows login hardly seems secure, but clearly
appears to be what this article was expecting.

All in all, Mac OS X seems to be shaping up to be a very nice operating
system. They did their comparison
against a public beta, not the final shipping copy. I can’t wait till my
copy gets here.

-Chris

Apple’s new OS, Mac OS X, is currently only supported on Mac hardware; however, with today’s release of Darwin 1.3.1, that may soon change.

Although the Darwin project is guided by Apple and used as the core of their new operating system, it is an open source project. Work has been underway by the open source community since release 1.0 to make Darwin available for the Intel platform. Darwin project leaders at Apple have recognized this effort and created an official binary installer for the Intel platform.

The 1.3.1 release, which synchronizes with Mac OS X 10.0 plus the current state of several projects, is now available on http://www.opensource.apple.com/

The release includes a binary installer for PowerPC, as well as for certain x86-compatible configurations. ISO images are available for both Intel and Mac hardware, but require a sizeable download and a free partition to install. This release will shortly be available on CD.
Pre-orders for Darwin on CD are available from Daemon News

The CD will contain installers for both platforms, as well as many packages as can be built prior to going to press. Work is underway on a packaging system for Darwin. Apple is endorsing the Open Packages project, which plans to unite the existing BSD ports collections into a unified project.

The Darwin Project is also releasing version 5 of the HeaderDoc project.
HeaderDoc is used to integrate documentation with source code and obtain user-friendly html viewing.

On March 24th, BSD accomplished what Linux has been promising for years now. They put the power of Unix into a desktop system and made it available
to the masses.

The launch of Mac OS X is turning Apple into the largest distributor of Unix, and more specifically BSD Unix. Now anyone with a desire to run Unix can purchase it for about the same cost as a Microsoft operating system. For the regular user, it looks and acts just like a MacOS user would expect. However, all the features that make it Unix are easily tapped into by the developers and power users who want to take the OS to its limits.

Now, BSD is poised to take over another segment the Linux crowd has been vying for — the embedded market. Embedded Linux has been a hot topic of late, as new companies are trying to get into the market space.

However, the business-unfriendly GPL has played a key role in keeping Linux from being adopted by major players in the embedded arena. Especially in embedded systems, retailers don’t want to be forced to make their code changes available. When you have to heavily adapt the software to work with your hardware and internal systems, the viral GPL can make keeping your code safe impossible. Instead they have chosen the more intellectual-property-friendly BSD license to protect their business interests, while leveraging the Open Source community.

Wind River (Nasdaq:WIND), already an international player in the embedded systems market, announced today the purchase of BSD/OS from BSDi (not the company, just the rights to the software). The remainder of what was BSDi will be spun off into a hardware company called iXsystems. Inc. More information on that is available here. The new company will sell high-end server machines pre-loaded with BSD/OS and FreeBSD.

As part of the deal, Wind River has hired Jordan Hubbard to become their principal technologist for FreeBSD. Jordan is one of founders of FreeBSD and has been the chief PR representative for the project. According to Jordan, FreeBSD will remain unchanged; however, Wind River promises expanded funding for the project — the primary thing that has been holding it back.

However, the license isn’t the only reason BSD was chosen. Wind River executives said there were three reasons. First, that BSD has unparalleled technology. Second, that they love the way the open source BSD is organized compared to the disarray of the multitude of Linux Distributions. And third, the BSD license is very business friendly. It allows customers to build applications without losing intellectual property.

It also allows Wind River to build a seamless solution, combining all of its internal software properties to meet customer needs. When asked why it chose BSD over the other options, the company replied, “Frankly there was no contest.”

Wind River will continue to market BSD/OS and leverage FreeBSD as a means
of
accelerating development and innovation. With Jordan Hubbard on board,
they
will be able to utilize the 2.5 million users and developers of
FreeBSD.

With Wind River targeting the embedded market, and Apple putting BSD on
the
Desktop, BSD’s future looks really bright.