Subject: Darwin Hi Jordan, My name is Nik and I'm a doing a masters by research at the University of Oslo, my topic being BSD, FreeBSD and Darwin. I would like to talk to you on a couple of issues regarding FreeBSD and Darwin. In section 1.3.1 of the FreeBSD handbook, you write on the history of FreeBSD that 1.0 was a reasonable Success, version 1.1 was highly successful, 2.0 was a significant success. In what respect were these successes? Had any particular goals been defined that were fullfilled? Was it more that the system booted at version 1.0 and 2.0 and didn't behave too different from what you had expected based on the BSD sources? What is your current position at Apple? How involved are you in the development of Darwin? Has your involvement in the FreeBSD project changed much since you announced your employment with Apple a bit more than a year ago? How do you find the technology-sharing between the FreeBSD and Darwin community works today? Sincerely yours Niklas Saers --- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 03:49:39 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard To: Niklas Johannes Saers Subject: Re: Darwin On Wednesday, September 18, 2002, at 03:13 AM, Niklas Johannes Saers wrote: > In section 1.3.1 of the FreeBSD handbook, you write on the history of > FreeBSD that 1.0 was a reasonable Success, version 1.1 was highly > successful, 2.0 was a significant success. In what respect were these > successes? Had any particular goals been defined that were fullfilled? > Was it more that the system booted at version 1.0 and 2.0 and didn't > behave too different from what you had expected based on the BSD > sources? They were successful in the sense that they attracted a lot of new users to the OS and generated a lot of positive feedback from people who were pleased with the product and using it successfully in various production scenarios. Obviously the overall goals were to produce an OS on a reasonable schedule that was highly reliable and useful for providing services, and I think we accomplished that with 1.0 and much more so with 1.1. 2.0 was a success largely because it represented a major transition away from the Net/2 code base, as mandated by the Novell lawsuit settlement with BSDi, and we were under a tight, fixed schedule to completely restart our CVS repo from a different code base. The resulting product might not have won awards for reliability right away, but it was impressive that it worked at all given the time pressure. > What is your current position at Apple? How involved are you in the > development of Darwin? Has your involvement in the FreeBSD project > changed much since you announced your employment with Apple a bit more > than a year ago? I'm currently the engineering manager for the BSD Technology group. My group produces all the official darwin releases and recently played a significant role in launching the Open Darwin project, so I'd say "very involved" would not be an overstatement. My involvement with FreeBSD has changed somewhat in that I haven't had much time for personal contributions at all, though I still occasionally manage to get some code across. > How do you find the technology-sharing between the FreeBSD and Darwin > community works today? In the sense that a lot of FreeBSD code makes it into Darwin, I'd say it works very well. We need to work harder on making sure that changes are folded back in both directions on a more frequent basis, of course. I hope this answers your questions. -- Jordan K. Hubbard Engineering Manager, BSD technology group Apple Computer