FreeBSD PowerPC Porting

[Chuck Swiger]

bedhead wrote:
>    Have you approached Apple for the source code they use in OSX?

[ "you" is not clearly defined. ]

Sure.  I am or was reasonably familiar with the source code Apple has 
released, and there are FreeBSD committers who now work at Apple.

>    I thought open source meant that you could use the code but any
>    changes / modifications had to be made available to the originator and
>    the community under terms of most open source licenses.

Yes, the Apple license is open source, which means that source to most of 
MacOS X is indeed available as a project called Darwin:

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apsl-2.0.php

There is also anonymous-CVS and CVS-over-SSH available.

>    I would class the entire port that Apple did as a huge change.

OK.

>    I am not a UN*X user, nor do I understand most of UN*X, although my
>    reasons for visiting your site and for making the above suggestion are
>    as follows:

It is unclear whether you are in the right mailing list (freebsd-advocacy?), 
although you did ask questions.  :-)

[ ... ]
>    4.   Most of All - I think that the development of PPC FreeBSD code by
>    the originators of the code would keep the PPC code centralised, up to
>    date with other ports and most of all, help Apple (if they are then
>    willing to use your code base).

There is a reasonable amount of cross-pollination between the two projects, 
although the focus is somewhat different.  I would be more likely to run MacOS 
X on Intel hardware than I would be to run FreeBSD on a PowerPC box, frankly, 
but to some extent that would depend on what I planned to do with the machine.

-- 
-Chuck