J. Hubbard, leader of the FreeBSD project to work for Apple. Jordan Hubbard who is leading the FreeBSD project and was one of the founder is going to work for Apple. With a little bit of exageration, its like if Linus Torvald was going to work for Apple. Here's the letter that he send to freebsd-announce@freebsd.org (its not yet archived at http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/). Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 16:08:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Jordan Hubbard jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com To: announce@freebsd.org Subject: My new job Sender: owner-freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG List-ID: <freebsd-announce.FreeBSD.ORG> List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/>; (Web Archive) List-Help: <mailto:majordomo?subject=help> ( List Instructions) List-Subscribe: mailto:majordomo?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-announce List-Unsubscribe: mailto:majordomo?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-announce X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Dear members of the FreeBSD community, As many of you know, I've spent the last 7 years working at Walnut Creek CDROM, BSDi and, for the last 3 months, WindRiver Systems as a general FreeBSD evangelist and product manager for the FreeBSD CDROM product line. That work has certainly been important to the community and it's been very satisfying to see FreeBSD products appear on store shelves and on web sites, to say nothing of the many thousands of CDs we've been able to make available to schools and people doing FreeBSD promotional events. We've also gone from being just one person working on FreeBSD releases to a small team which also works on FreeBSD infrastructural support and "focused efforts" like the SMPng project. By any metric given the economic situation these days, FreeBSD's progress has been very strong and it's been my privilege to be able to work with so many talented people in enhancing its commercial potential. It's my sincere hope that WindRiver will continue these initiatives as well as providing unique and significant value of its own to the FreeBSD community. Those who've been following my writings about and general enthusiasm for Apple's OS X lately also won't be surprised by the news that I'm going to work for A pple Computer. Ever since Apple released the initial public Beta, I've been following OS X's progress with great interest and an increasing desire to get involved with it somehow. For those who've been living under a rock this last year, OS X has finally managed to achieve what's been something of a holy grail for the Unix community - take a powerful Unix core (BSD) and mate it with a usable desktop, GUI development tools and some real applications, all without sacrificing access to the underlying features of Unix. Apple has even bundled tools like PERL and EMACS as part of the base system, proving that they're more than willing to appeal to the techies out there as well as the general consumer who may never get past the desktop. From the Open Source perspective, Apple is also making a strong play with Darwin, the core OS component of OS X. Full sources are available to the general public and Apple is making full use of CVS and other tools which will help keep the development process coherent, just as FreeBSD has done. For a "day job", I really couldn't ask for a better combination of open source community work and cutting-edge commercial development which will help me expand my horizons and hopefully learn more about the intricacies of user interface/human factors engineering. I expect both to help me significantly in the FreeBSD work I will also continue to do. Which brings us to the next topic: "What does this mean for FreeBSD?" Let me assure you all that Apple does fully understand the importance of FreeBSD and they don't want me or anyone else to stop working on it. FreeBSD doesn't compete with Apple's product offerings in any way and provides an excellent source of technology for them. Darwin is substantially based on FreeBSD 3.2 and Apple certainly doesn't want the technology transfer to end there or to be strictly one-way. Part of my mandate will in fact be helping Apple to be an even better Open Source citizen, increasing collaboration and strengthening relationships with FreeBSD and other Open Source projects. With the release of OS X, Apple will literally be the largest Unix vendor on the planet. They take t his very seriously, and realize that their involvement with the Open Source community is a critical component of their success. They've also been very good about giving FreeBSD credit for its contributions during their presentations and on their web site, so this is far from being just another (usual) case of someone taking FreeBSD and burying it deep into some completely closed-source product. Apple is proud of its BSD-derived technology and it's not afraid to say so, something which removes a lot of the concern over a potential conflict of interest from my shoulders. I think that an expanded relationship between FreeBSD and its "sister" project Darwin can only be to the benefit of both groups. If you think about it, our "mandates" are essentially identical: To provide BSD technology to the mass market and work on making it as approachable and robust as possible. Only the types of hardware each focuses on are different, and in areas where there's overlap (USB, firewire, etc) we can certainly do our best to collaborate. As has probably already become rather obvious, I'm very excited to be joining Apple and look forward to working with some fascinating people and products. Wearing my "FreeBSD.org hat", I will also continue to support WindRiver's efforts in any way I can to ensure that the FreeBSD product line there continues and that FreeBSD can continue to be a solution which is broadly applicable to a wide array of markets. The FreeBSD product line has reached the stage where I feel comfortable taking a job which allows me to focus more on Darwin. While I have enjoyed my time working with the people and projects at BSDi and WindRiver, I simply couldn't resist the opportunity of working at Apple. Sincerely, - Jordan This is the moderated mailing list freebsd-announce. The list contains announcements of new FreeBSD capabilities, important events and project milestones. See also the FreeBSD Web pages at http://www.freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-announce" in the body of the message [macosx News]
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