Free BSD and OSX

zeroturtles wrote:

1. What percentage of Free BSD code is still unchanged in the current version of OS X?

I don't think you will find an answer to this question and most likely this question will need to be directed to Apple's OS X Developers. Here you can find some helpful information https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelPr ogramming/BSD/BSD.html

zeroturtles wrote:

2. I don't want to leave this to speculation, so can anyone point me to a security feature comparison between Free BSD and Mac OSX? I want to see if Free BSD is actually more secure than Mac OSX. Perhaps once everyone reviews features we can discuss security in some high-level detail...

If you want to avoid any speculation then start with reviewing OS X and FreeBSD official documentations:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Security/Conceptual/Securi ty_Overview/Introduction/Introduction.ht…

https://www.freebsd.org/docs.html

zeroturtles wrote:

3. Do any of you personally and factually know (a) any company (b) any government entity (c) any user that actually does use Free BSD or any BSD variants still, like Open BSD on any server, desktop, or laptop as of today, and is still using it?

Thank you for your time and consideration. Please keep up the good work,

Most of the companies would use FreeBSD and other BSD-like systems for Server needs. Here you can find names of companies that are using FreeBSD.

zeroturtles wrote:

I was wondering if Free BSD is even worth my time installing to my computer at home.....

You will need to ask yourself this question. Installation and appropriate configuration of FreeBSD requires a lot of time and research. If you are looking at some alternative, secure replacement OS for OS X, then look at some Linux distributions. There is many good Linux based OS's like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch and others.

And if you have more questions and/or require some additional answers, I would suggest to make your queries directly to the Community of the OS that you are interested with. Over here, you can find few people which might have some experience with different OS's. Checking directly with particular OS Community, you have a better chance to get a quicker and better answer.

Mac OS X took the MACH kernel from Carnegie Mellon University. They then used the FreeBSD kernel APIs. Apple calls this Darwin.

Apple then used the FreeBSD tools and utilities for the command line commands as well as many of the initial daemons. These have evolved in an Apple way over time.

Apple then wrote a huge GUI layer on top of this, which is the part of Mac OS X that most users are familiar with.

Apple wrote its own device drivers.

Over time a lot of the many aspects of the initial kernel have changed.

If you want a Unix interface, then you can use FreeBSD, or try Ubuntu which has worked hard to giving Linux an easier GUI interface. BUT none of them are Mac OS X, and cannot run any Mac OS X applications.

zeroturtles wrote:

and you defend it on an Apple support forum instead of defending Apple products

I'm not defending anything. Not sure how did you got that conclusion...

zeroturtles wrote:

If BSD is total garbage, and iOS, mac OSX = BSD, then iOS, mac OSX is total garbage, and also makes false claims.

Again, not sure how did you get that conclusion either. BSD and other UNIX based OS's are great as long you know how to correctly configure them for your own needs.

zeroturtles wrote:

I have to assume that perhaps most apple products made a big mistake here, and I would actually have to assume the claim that since WIndows is on 98% of all computers and linux on 95% of all servers and Android on 60+% of all mobile devices....

Well, I'll use these instead, thank you. Are you a mac expert? You have a lot of 'points' here. Let me make it simple...

If BSD is total garbage, and iOS, mac OSX = BSD, then iOS, mac OSX is total garbage, and also makes false claims.

Thank you for wasting my time.

You can assume what ever you like. The only person which has wasted some time here is me trying to help you. Do not worry. I will not try to do this again...

Have a nice weekend and good luck with you research.

NOTE: No one here is from Apple. We are just Apple customers.

In many respects we do not know the answers to your questions.

NOTE: it is possible to access the Darwin source code. You can do your own comparisons. HOWEVER, this does not include any of the Mac OS X GUI or GUI based apps. <https://opensource.apple.com/>

BobHarris summed it up well. BSD has been "assimilated" into OS X, what we are left with today is a fairly robust OS. BUT there are some serious issues as Apple insists on avoiding most open licensing terms, so for example SMB is a mess because they do not agree with the licence terms, they rewrote their own version, that is quite frankly a flakey joke.

BUT you will find that most closed or open linux based systems all share the same foundation, the issue with Apple is their interpretation of any standard is often "my way or the Highway".

There is no doubt that Steve Jobs didn't suffer fools, we will have to wait and see what happens once the saucer is opened. Personally I think the standard of programming / bug testing / competence has dropped exponentially in Apple over the last couple of years. I spend more and more of my time trouble shooting "simple" issues like SMB connections, Mail messages etc. It's getting beyond a joke, boring at this stage.

BUT there are some serious issues as Apple insists on avoiding most open licensing terms, so for example SMB is a mess because they do not agree with the licence terms, they rewrote their own version, that is quite frankly a flakey joke.

The disagreement is that if you use GPL v3 Open Source code anywhere in your product, you must open source the entire product.

It used to be in GPL v2, you could use the component (Samba for example) and if you changed Samba you only had to give back the Samba changes and make the Changed Samba sources available.

But using GPL v3 infects your entire distribution. So everything in the multi-gigabyte OS X Install would need to be open sourced if any GPL v3 code was used.

Apple was not going to do that. If they did, then it would be ported to every manufactures PC platform, and Apple already experienced the Cloned Macs in the '90's and ended up weeks away from going out of business, because Apple is a hardware company that attracts customers with their software. And at least with the Cloning business, they did get a licensing fee. Open source doesn't have a license fee.

Loose control of the software, and it doesn't matter how much Apple has in the bank, they will eventually die and be unable to continue developing OS X.

So, yes, Apple refuses the GPL v3 licensing terms, and I think with good reason.