[Xastir] New stable release out: xastir-2.0.4

[Curt, WE7U]

On Wed, 5 Dec 2012, Jeremy McDermond wrote:

> On Dec 5, 2012, at 6:34 AM, "Curt, WE7U" <curt.we7u at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I thought it was based on real BSD, not FreeBSD.  Not open-source Unix.  They have to pay the license-holder of Unix for it.
>
> The NeXTSTEP kernel was originally a single server Mach microkernel with a 4.3 BSD server on top of it.  When Apple got ahold of it they changed out the userland with FreeBSD versions and modified their 4.3 BSD server with some of the FreeBSD kernel code as well.  That doesn't make it "derived from" FreeBSD or really even "based on" FreeBSD.  In some ways it acts like FreeBSD, but in other ways it's completely differently.  For example, sometimes the pthread library doesn't work very well because it's not the native threading method.  Threads are implemented on the Mach microkernel level and there are calls such as thread_policy_set() to interact with them in their native API.

Huh.  So this means it's not 4.3 BSD but derived from it, with FreeBSD and Mach microkernel bits added for flavoring.  A new creature, but again would require licensing from the Unix license holder because it is based off real BSD.  Correct?

-- 
Curt, WE7U.        http://wetnet.net/~we7u
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