Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9

The operating system at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 4 is FreeBSD 9.0...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTM5NDI

[brosis]

But can FreeBSD run on Playstation or any of its software? Any *freedoms* left after Sony facelifting? Would also be interesting if at least Sony contributed anything back?..

[shmerl]

So, what APIs will be available there for developers?

[Ericg]

But can FreeBSD run on Playstation or any of its software? Any *freedoms* left after Sony facelifting? Would also be interesting if at least Sony contributed anything back?..

Probably contributed some things back the same way Apple does-- maintaining their patches out-of-tree is a big maintenance burden that just adds more work for them.

[elanthis]

So, what APIs will be available there for developers?

A combination of the BSD POSIX-like APIs for basic OS/hardware services, some superior games-centric APIs (a port of the Direct3D 11 graphics API rather than the CAD-oriented OpenGL mess as one example), plus the console-specific Sony PSN/chat/profile/video/controller APIs.

[Nille]

Probably contributed some things back the same way Apple does-- maintaining their patches out-of-tree is a big maintenance burden that just adds more work for them.

i doubt that Sony give anything back.

[birdie]

Michael, can you please stop posting wild rumors as fact?

That's beyond unprofessional.

[-MacNuke-]

i doubt that Sony give anything back.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...ch/013744.html

I do not think that Sony will do anything great in FreeBSD but as Ericg said... out of tree patches are not what anybody do for a long time.

[brosis]

OMFG FreeBSD! Sony must be Satan! I am curios what the linux zealots will say to this one. Hahahaha they chose FreeBSD over Linux. This is really fun. Linux is really being adopted by the people. See what happens when you are fanatical? It drives people away. Which is the opposite of what we want...or say we want.

They did not adopt Ubuntu and windows, thats for sure. So you must be crying ಥ_ಥ

Also, what did they gave back to BSD that makes you assume of any adoption profit? That way, it plays no role - if they write their own or take BSD/MIT-licensed and close it down; it lands as an end-user black-box appliance anyway.

Michael, can you please stop posting wild rumors as fact?

That's beyond unprofessional.

Talk about that, you yourself are a number one FUD poster.

[nukem]

But can FreeBSD run on Playstation or any of its software? Any *freedoms* left after Sony facelifting? Would also be interesting if at least Sony contributed anything back?..

This is whats wrong with BSD licensed software in general. It allows companies to just take and take and give nothing back but a locked down system.