Submitted by The lure of shiny toys has helped Apple’s BSD-based Mac OS X operating system overtake Linux to become the operating system that is the second most used by developers, according to Evans Data.
The lure of shiny toys has helped Apple’s BSD-based Mac OS X operating system overtake Linux to become the operating system that is the second most used by developers, according to Evans Data.
this article is quite bad
agreed, what is this garbage doing here?
how so?
The author clearly has no idea what he’s talking about. There are many reasons why one would choose Linux (or Windows) for development. Stability is very rarely one of them (i.e. they’re both generally stable enough and have been for a long time).
It depends what the author meant by ‘in the past’.
If you look back 10 (maybe 15 years), you would find that Unix was a popular development because of its stability. You definitely did not want to develop software under DOS, Windows 3.x, or even Windows 9x unless you were targetting those platforms because a critical bug would send the system into a nose-dive (either via crashing those OS, or leaving it in an unknown state that would make bugs hard to track). Of course that started changing with the introduction of Windows NT, but I don’t think that developers started moving to Windows as a development platform en-masse until Windows 2000 or XP.
True. But considering that this is an article about Mac OS X, I kind of assumed that this was the time frame the author was talking about.
Linux on the desktop used to be stable. It no longer is. Most desktop Linux distros are buggy and less stable than Windows. That has been my experience with OpenSUSE, Fedora and Kubuntu. Its sad really. I think its because they’ve moved to a faster release cycle and try to pack in much more software so not everything gets fully tested.
My experience is the exact opposite. You will find plenty of people with anecdotal evidence supporting either side.
OS X is the development platform for iOS, which is where the easy money is these days (or so we are lead to believe), so of course it should be big. But is it BSD? Sure it contains parts of various BSDs, but neither iOS nor Xcode nor OS X is BSD licensed, share little or nothing of architecturally, etc., and hardly anything made for OS X is compatible with the actual BSDs.
It’s like claiming Windows 95 helped making MS-DOS development more popular. Just a bunch of journalistic dumbfuckery that deserves no further attention.
The source of a lot of the BSD Unix components are distributed under their original BSD license.
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/shell_cmds/shell_cmds-162/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/file_cmds/file_cmds-212/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/developer_cmds/developer_cmd…
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/basic_cmds/basic_cmds-51/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/text_cmds/text_cmds-81/
…
For some utilities Apple has released their contributions available under the APSL.. while verbose it’s still considered a permissive license.
http://www.opensource.apple.com/license/apsl/
So, stop spreading FUD.. OS X is a BSD derivative, and it is fair to call it the most publicly successful one, denying OS X is more popular than Linux is just silly.
Edited 2011-08-10 19:11 UTC
No one is denying OSX os more popular than Linux. What they’re saying, and I agree with them, is that OSX is so different from the other BSDs that it doesn’t make sense to put them in the same basket.
There are significant differences between all the existing BSD derivatives today that makes your point entirely irrelevant.
Anyone using BSD knows this, differences don’t magically remove heritage or similarities in programming environments..
Many FreeBSD developers use OS X quite frequently, go to a BSD conference and spot them.
Just a question. But doesn’t this kind of defeat the purpose? Despite PC BSD and DesktopBSD putting a lot of effort into making FreeBSD more desktop friendly, these developers are essentially saying ‘no, not on my desktop’, are they not?
I mean, as I understand it, some of the Haiku guys are using it that OS full time, and it’s still in alpha.
I’m also working on a project to make BSD ready for the desktop. I think most of the FreeBSD developers know there are gaps in what can be done on BSD. We don’t have native flash or adobe reader. The linux emulation for these is very buggy. Some of us also need to run commercial apps because there aren’t good replacements. At work, I use FreeBSD + KDE 4. At home, I’m currently dual booting MidnightBSD + Windows 7 (for gaming) on my desktop and laptop and have a Mac Pro desktop as well. I use the mac for surfing, itunes and email. I could do a lot of that on BSD now, but I’m often breaking things as I work on them.
In short, I think BSD can be ready for the desktop but there’s a lot to be done yet.
In some ways, I’m trying to develop a free, open source os x as much as i am a BSD. I’m not going for binary compatibility or an XNU kernel design, but I am trying to get a decent objective c runtime in base, llvm, libfoundation and corefoundation compatibility and have libdispatch as part of the os as well as mDNSResponder. I don’t consider Mac OS X BSD either but it’s as close as one can get without being BSD. It is running FreeBSD kernel code in XNU using a funnel after all.
I wasn’t denying its popularity, I was denying it’s BSD. Having a few BSD commands available under the BSD license doesn’t make it a BSD.
Hell, most OS X apps are even incompatible with Darwin.
Yes, it is BSD.. I promise you.
Sorry, but your promises are empty. OS X is proprietary.
That does not matter, BSD has a long history of being used in commercial products.. that doesn’t make it any less of a BSD, quit trolling.
The kernel and userland for OS X are open source with the exception of a their graphical environment.
That’s like running GIMP on Windows and calling it open source.
Wrong, only small parts of the OS X userland are BSD.
Ever tried running pure Darwin? Ever tried running an OS X binary on it? It doesn’t exactly work, most of the time. Practically never. Now, this article is about OS X making BSD a more popular development environment than Linux, which suggests OS X development actually targets BSD libraries and tools, which isn’t the case. Cocoa development on OS X isn’t BSD development.
Of course it wouldn’t. missing several libraries to execute graphical applications.. the executable format is MachO and their libc is open source, so base executables distributed with or compiled on OS X would obviously work on a vanilla Darwin setup if those dependencies were resolved.
OS X’s userland includes most of or all the common BSD utilities, modified for increased POSIX compliance, it does preserve BSD behaviour where needed.
OS X’s C programming headers contain BSD preprocessor directives, and other Berkeley extensions not defined in POSIX.
A developer at the helm physically or connected via SSH can develop using common development utilities, the XCode package uses GCC, they don’t use binutils but that’s a GNU package. BSD originally had it’s own a.out implementations of ld/as prior to switching to ELF.
The kernel contains original BSD code, with Apple contributions. The userland contains BSD derived core utilities shipped along with proprietary and other 3rd party open source software.
Including proprietary software doesn’t make it any less of a BSD, in fact, the early releases of BSD contained all sorts of proprietary code up until the unencumbered releases.. the fact that you believe so only highlights your own ignorance.
Your argument is invalid, people using OS X are using a commercial BSD product based on both open and closed source software.
Edited 2011-08-10 22:40 UTC
The BSD subsystem is optional (or was, back in the days of smaller hard drives) when installing OS X. The rest of the system (which is the majority) does not depend on it. Most apps don’t. Are apps that don’t use BSD based on BSD? No. Do you use a BSD when you don’t use BSD? My opinion is that you don’t.
I don’t deny that OS X has a BSD subsystem. I just deny that OS X development is BSD development, and that the parts of OS X most people touch have anything to do with BSD.
Your argument is a bit like saying a caravan is a brick building just because you’ve filled it with bricks.
You’re an idiot.
Ah, the crux of internet debate.
lol
There is no such thing as the ‘BSD subsystem’ .
BSD was originally composed of a kernel, a bunch of C libraries and a bunch of command line tools.
– The kernel of Mac OS X is different then any other BSD (it uses Mach) but then, the NetBSD kernel is also different then any other BSD. However, many components of the kernels are common such as the network stacks.
– The C libraries are very similar across the BSD ( including Mac OS X ) and are based off the same source.
– The command line tools are not uniformly the same but the bulk are essentially identical.
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You’re wrong. Here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2356#faq11
It doesn’t matter what systems developers touch. MacOS X has quite a bit of BSD in the kernel. No matter which libraries a developer decides to use, all of his code is at the mercy of the kernel.
Honestly you’ve no idea what your talking about.
– There is a vast array of open source command line tools in Mac OS X. The /usr/bin on my fresh Lion install has over a thousand and most of those are open source.
– The average command line binary that uses the standard C api (as opposed to Cocoa) will run just fine on Darwin and Mac OS X.
The reason why you perceive that Mac OS X is different is because the bulk of it’s differentiation comes from the many proprietary kits that Apple has built.
Those kits certainly make Mac OS X unique but they do not invalidate the BSD heritage.
What’s really ironic about your objections is many in the FreeBSD community feel that Apple has borrowed so much from FreeBSD that they should be giving more back to it’s ‘sister’ operating system.
It’s a bit weird that you claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about without refuting anything I said. I agree with your every point.
I never intended to claim they invalidated the heritage. Apple has lifted lots of code from many places, and I will never deny that. Most OS X development, though, does not take place in BSD land, but rather in Cocoa, using libraries that have nothing in common with the BSDs.
That’s really interesting if true.
I’m not a BSD person so I don’t really know how they feel, but it seems like by choosing the BSD license, philosophically, one is stating anyone can take the work and do whatever they want with it and not have to give back… as opposed to GPL like license where one is stating that others must “give back” by releasing their changes when they distribute.
To be clear, I’m not trying to start a BSD vs GPL license flame war. It is just that your comment surprised me, and I’m just curious if that’s how people who have chosen the BSD side really feel or not.
Sure is. They (the *BSD guys) should have thought of that when they defined the BSD license. That’s what you get for being so generous with that license.
Just because the BSD license allows people the freedom not to share code, doesn’t mean they don’t think people should share code. They just prefer to allow people the freedom to make that decision for themselves, and contribute code back out of their own volition rather than be compelled to.
You’re confusing the BSD users with the BSD developers. Sure, many of the users probably think that. Many users of various operating systems have various opinions. However, unless they’re writing code or are a part of any of the organizations that’re actually in charge, then I wouldn’t put too much stock in their opinions. The fact of the matter is, many people who’re BSD users weren’t even around when the license was created. This is the situation that they’ve fallen into. I’m sure that many people don’t like the rules of certain countries that they happen to visit, but who are they to make decisions about things like that??? No one is forcing BSD users to use BSD. No one is forcing Linux users to use Linux. The users are always free to use whatever they want to use. If they don’t like the license, they can always leave.
Yes it is, it’s a proprietary derivative of BSD (like pretty much any commercial UNIX).
No, It’s XNU, which is BSD, Mach and propitiatory components.
It maybe in many ways BSD derived and it definitely is UNIX certified, but it’s not BSD in the simplistic terms you stated.
No it is certainly not *BSD. It is Certified Unix alright, but OS X is not at all *BSD, no more than Windows or GNU/Linux.
OSX is so far removed in code, culture, and practices from the other BSD Operating systems, that its a bit of a stretch to still call it a BSD. In Biological Taxonomy, it has left the BSD Family, but probably still in the same Order.
Inaccurate, take the time to review modern NetBSD/OpenBSD and FreeBSD.
They’re not stuck in the mud, they’re not just university BSD with a few stylistic touch-ups.. there are massive changes all over the place, in each of them.
They have been developed independently for more the a decade, perhaps sharing some common code and drivers.
New kernel API’s, incompatible changes and differing goals and ideas have made them unique.
They don’t use the same rc initialization scripts and they don’t synchronize their userlands but develop them independently.. copying some fixes, independently fixing others.
So what does it take to be called a BSD? as someone who has used BSD for many many years, and use OpenBSD exclusively at home, I’m still certain that calling OS X a BSD system is “safe” and is as accurate as calling OpenBSD a Unix system.
Edited 2011-08-10 22:58 UTC
In my taxonomy, the popular BSD’s ( free, open, net) would be different species, possibly different genomes as well, but still the same family. Unix would be a Kingdom, I think. I think the taxonomy is accurate, but throughout biological history there have been arguments about how to name and place species. As a current Open BSD user, you’re probably closer to it than I am as an ex FreeBSD guy.
+1
I think that is fair… I don’t want to add fuel to the fire (it is a rather silly argument to be honest), but as I see it:
FreeBSD – Performance focus
NetBSD – Portability focus
386BSD – Grand-daddy of them all (essentially defunct now)
All derived very early on from the same code base for the kernel and userland – they have diverged greatly over the years but are essentially direct siblings.
OpenBSD – Security Focus (fork of NetBSD)
Same kernel and userland originally, diverged mostly due to focus on security.
DragonFly – Focus on distributed computing (fork of FreeBSD)
Major Fork, including kernel and userland redesign. Relatively new but dramatically different from its ancestor.
Then you have to “commercial” descendants:
OSF/1 – (Mach Kernel, research project. Defunct)
Tru64 – (Mack Kernel, OSF/1 fork. Defunct)
NEXTSTEP – (Mack Kernel, BSD network stack and process model. Defunct)
SunOS – (Died off early – later version were System V based. Defunct)
Ultrix – (BSD kernel, but partly System V userland. Defunct)
OSX – (Heavily modified, but still Mach based with BSD network stack and process model. Fork of NEXTSTEP)
The only commercial one still around and kicking in any real form is OSX. Reading some of the comments on here, to me it seems like those who are denying that OSX is a BSD derivative are underestimating the amount of code that found it’s way into it from BSD. Conversely, those claiming it IS a BSD are overdoing it a bit…
The XNU kernel in OSX is based on Mach, with quite a few bits and pieces from BSD (the tcp/ip stack and process model most prominently). Most of the reason to do this was a desire to use what is essentially a BSD userland on it to achieve Unix compatibility. In that respect it is certainly a BSD. However…
Saying it is a BSD in some ways is pushing it a bit. It certainly can act like a BSD Unix if you want it to, and it does so by incorporating quite a lot of code from various bits of the BSD codebase. But likewise, Windows 2008 can do much the same (and it does it in much the same way) when you run Unix services on it, but no one claims it is a BSD Unix…
The reason no one claims that is because NT was built on a fundamentally different kernel than BSD was – if anything it is based on VMS (in concept at least). It did not start off trying to be a Unix, but it was always intended to support various “personalities” to allow it to look like one if desired.
Likewise, OSX (and NEXTSTEP before it) were based on a a different kernel (Mach). It was not trying to be a Unix either – it was the development framework that they built on top of Unix that was the focus. Unix was merely a good foundation (much like the Linux kernel is for Android). The major difference between the approach NT took and what NEXT did was NT could run a Unix “personality” on top of its native services. In NEXT the majority of the native services were Unix…
So I think both sides of the argument have a point. Personally I think of OSX as an extension of NEXTSTEP, and in that regard while it certainly contains quite a bit of BSD derived code and can function as a full fledged Unix, the focus of the OS is around Cocoa.
The BSD bits and the userland are very useful as a foundation, and it would not be the same OS without them, but you could for arguments sake port Cocoa to something else and still call it OSX – most developers would hardly notice. But OSX without Cocoa… Well that would just be a new OS. I think the you have to take the focus of those developing the OS into account, not just the origins of the code. In that respect OSX is more of a first cousin (or maybe half-brother) than a direct descendant.
Edited 2011-08-12 02:52 UTC
Yes, but there is no BSD based on Apple’s Code (like PureDarwin), so BSD has no relation to the article.
Is the impression correct that software developed on Mac can in theory be easily portable to say Open BSD or Desktop BSD and others..?
In general? No, it is not correct.
I mean, cli applications are easy to port to bsd, so long as you do not use any apple-specific services. Add an apple service in the mix, and you have to find the bsd equivalent (if it exists) and duplicate that part of the code.
In the GUI front it gets way worse, because you are no longer targeting the same “gui server”, and no apple libraries (core*) are available to bsd’s…
Software using standard or common C99/POSIX functions in the C library or C++ code is easily portable between Unix systems.. even Linux.
Graphical applications are a different story, OS X has it’s own libraries for writing applications.. in some cases they could be ported to GNUStep but usually people writing portable software would opt to target a more popular toolkit on other Unix systems like GTK/Qt or even X11 directly.
Edited 2011-08-10 19:27 UTC
lol whut?? Popularity is a component of portability?
Try rephrasing that a few levels above stupid.
It’s not Mac OS X which help BSD overtake Linux for development, but iOS SDK which run only on Mac OS X which does it.
With same broken logic, one could also wrongly deduce that iApp’s developers prefers XCode than any other IDE. Or Objective C than any other language.
It’s not like they have other choice.
Oh, and BTW, does this guy know that there are many developers outside USA too. Thanks to not take a USA only survey as a valid worldwide image.
Edited 2011-08-10 20:06 UTC
AFAIK, though they share a lot of stuff, iOS SDK and Mac OS X SDK are not the same.
But both needs to have a Mac OS X machine, which *is* my point.
I know several IT companies which never had Mac computers until recently, when contractors asked them to develop iPhone apps. Since then, several Mac computers were bought, and believe me, it’s only because it’s the only choice in order to develop an iPhone app, because if iOS SDK could be used on the existing PC computer under Windows or Linux, be sure these companies would never have bought macs.
For developping Android apps, I know several that several IT does this under Windows + Eclipse and refuse even to install Linux + Eclipse over systems which comes with Windows pre-installed.
My point is that Mac OS X is more often used for development now than 5 years ago mostly because it’s the only way to develop iPhone/iPad apps. If another choice was legally possible, less Mac OS X will be used as development machines because it make often no sense for these companies to have to buy Macs while pratically all their market is using non-Macs systems.
Some of them, though, may have find out that their expensive Macs they bough for iPhone/iPad apps projects could alse be used for others projects, but I’ll bet that it’s not the majority.
Most of the developers I know that use OSX for development are deploying their code to Linux servers, not to IOS devices.
as those emails we all get that say we’ve inherited millions of dollars from some Nigerian warlord who randomly decided that you were related somehow.
In the left corner: We have the Linux User, denying that OSX is still a BSD.
In the right corner: The BSD Users, claiming that with OSX makes BSD more popular.
Lets get ready to rumble
No, Serious.
I think OSX is definite part of the BSD Family. I mean, when you call “android” a linux, then OSX is a BSD. Whether Free or not.
By the logic that Android is Linux, OS X would be Mach.
I’d love to see an analysis of OS X to see just how much BSD derived code there is in there compared to code from other sources.
Considering Mach was derived from BSD, and then parts of it like the virtual memory management were integrated back into BSD, it doesn’t make much sense to argue that something’s not BSD because it’s Mach.
Mach doesn’t really have a userland. In order to get a working Mach system up & running, the normal approach is to use a BSD userland. So, no matter how you look at it, MacOS X’s architecture is consistent with various parts of the BSD tree.
I don’t call Android a Linux (where Linux is defined as Linux distro the likes of Fedora, Ubuntu, etc). Sure it uses the Linux kernel and some userspace utils are common, but otherwise the Android userspace is very different from traditional Linux distros. Particularly in the area that matters most – the application framework.
Same with BSD and OSX – the application framework on OSX (Cocoa and the Core* stuff) is very different from the BSDs, which are more similar to Linux distros in that regard actually.
Edited 2011-08-10 21:18 UTC
Congratulations, you’ve just proved that the userland is a horrible way to determine what family an OS is in. Afterall, OS/2 isn’t Windows 3.1, but you can run programs written for Windows 3.1 on it. You can run Linux programs on FreeBSD, that doesn’t give Linux & FreeBSD family ties. The fact of the matter is that BSD & Mach DNA (figuratively) are in the core of MacOS X. Really, that’s all that matters. In matters of genealogy, it’s not what you have now, it’s what you started with.
As a Linux and Windows user i have to agree with them on this OSX is basically BSD or one can say OSX is powered by BSD. The UI is proprietary but the OS kernel and userland is mostly based on BSD.
Android is a Java OS running in a Google authored JavaVM running on top of a Linux kernel.
There have been musings of porting it to other kernels, I think it has even been partially ported to QNX.
So it’s not really the same thing, Android isn’t native while an OS X application using Apple’s proprietary libraries/kits can still make use of the BSD environment without issues.
Even iOS’s SDK apparently exposed a fair amount of the BSD environment to applications, with some limitations.
Edited 2011-08-10 23:10 UTC
I have mixed “feelings” on all this BSD topic, because the Mac and all the BSDs share the same codebase; a lot of Mac low level software has been ported to the BSDs and Linux and a lot of UNIX apps run with no problems in the BSD layer of Mac OS X.
But… you can use KDE, Gnome, Xfce, etc. etc. desktop, apps, etc. in all “classical” BSDs because the software stack they share is a lot more than the software stack shared with Mac OS X. Actually, though the “classical BSDs” and Mac OS X have the same heritage, I think the BSDs and Linux are closer each other.
So, do not know… the human is, like the monkeys, a primate; but based on that, you cannot state that the human is a monkey.
Edited 2011-08-11 04:19 UTC
OS X has an X11 server as a native application, you could run your favourite desktop environment full screen just like any other Unix.
There are even native ports of GTK+ and Qt to OS X, I believe it is already possible to get KDE/GNOME running without an X display.
http://community.kde.org/Mac
I can’t find any recent article for GNOME, but I see it is mentioned as available in “MacPorts”.
http://trac.macports.org/wiki/GNOME
Yeap, but the Qt Mac port uses Cocoa as backend, so, at the end, your Qt app in a Mac is not sharing a lot of bits with its BSD sisters.
About KDE in the Mac, I tried several times and I was never able to have any KDE 4 app running properly in my box (I read a lot of success stories; Mac Ports and Fink also distribute such apps in their repositories, but in my case, they simply did not work).
Edited 2011-08-11 04:40 UTC
Qt can be compiled against X11 in OS X as well. Why one would do this is another question
.
I did run Xmonad on OS X’s X11 for a while
.
Edited 2011-08-11 15:16 UTC
Linux is a kernel.
BSD is an operating system.
GNU/Linux is an operating system. Android is certainly not a GNU/Linux. It’s just some weird stuff running on the Linux kernel.
It runs on a Linux kernel so obviously it is a Linux.
I really dislike developing on OS X. Compared to Linux it’s a bit of a pain, but maybe it’s just what I’m used to. The Apple version of the UK keyboard layout really kills it for me.
Apparently OS X’s keyboard layouts are customizable and stored in XML format.
So, while that’s a valid initial excuse, the solution was a simple Google search away.
http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele
Developing using the Qt Mac port also removes the ugly need to learn Objective-C
There are also a lot of Linux developers using Macs. Apple makes laptops that are at least acceptable to businesses and many prefer them to Windows. I would say that while more developers may be using Macs, the majority of development isn’t for that platform. Its on other things. Heck in our gaming department, most faculty use macs even though they make Windows games.
OK, I’ll be the first to say it. Quite a lot of code in Linux came from BSD. The ext2 file system, for example, was a tweaked UFS. A bunch of utilities too found their way into Linux. Actually, Windows borrowed from BSD (their FTP is a straight port to Windows). SSH came from OpenBSD and is used by every modern OS. Hey, almost forgot, MS-DOS 6.0 even borrowed from BSD, and ditto for FreeDOS.
So, we can conclude that pretty much everything is BSD.
Or, we can conclude that some of the BSD folks suffer from a sort of inferiority complex that makes them insist OSX is BSD, thus giving their favorite OS a larger market share than Linux. In other words, they just can’t get over the fact that their OS has a tiny market share that continues to decline.
NOTE: I’m a former FreeBSD user. I have much respect for the developers and don’t criticize them. I just wish some of the users would grow up and recognize that the world has moved on. On the desktop, I’d be surprised if FreeBSD even has 1/10 of 1% market share, no doubt much more on the server side but that too is declining, plus unknown but possibly significant percentage of routers. OpenBSD, NetBSD, Dragonfly, etc – combined, less than 1/1000 of 1% of desktop users, 0% on the server side, probably 0% of routers, but they are nice research projects.
Edited 2011-08-11 01:49 UTC
Or we can conclude that many Linux users fail to realize that Linux is not the be-all-end-all solution for every computing problem. Many also seem to have a problem accepting that BSD is still alive and well.
The author (Lawrence Latif) consistently writes what seem to me to be stupid opinion pieces with nonsensical conclusions (his straight news stuff seems ok though).
Whether you think OSX is BSD or not really isn’t the issue – it is the conclusion that OSX’s growing use by developers has anything at all to do with it’s BSD userland – or Linux for that matter…
If you don’t believe me – read another of his works of mental gymnastics:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/1601134/apple-macbook-p…
The title doesn’t even make sense… The whole (rather long) article reads like an attempt to deny reality by simply not including anything relevant to the premise – he could have simply said “I think iPads cost too much” and saved the reader a lot of time.
He has also been nailed for plagiarism at least once:
http://semiaccurate.com/2011/06/23/the-inquirer-plagiarizes-semiacc…
Anyway, I don’t know the guy – maybe he is nice in person and well meaning, so I don’t want to be too harsh. His work is, well, somewhat lacking imho.
If you want to follow him on Twitter the handle is @illiteratehack – I’m sure this was an attempt at self-deprecating humor, but the irony is thick…
Anyone here used Mac OS X at a fairly low level, for instance, recovering someone’s computer from a command-line?
In low-level operation, it’s no BSD. It doesn’t behave or work like BSD.
In high-level operation with the GUI, of course it’s nothing like BSD.
The kernel may be derived from BSD, but I’m pretty sure the kernel Apple ships with its computers is not the compiled version of the source code Apple distributes. Knowing Apple, it probably has very little BSD content still left in it.
Android uses the Linux kernel, but Android is not “the Linux platform”. Because it doesn’t work like a Linux distro. Well, OS X is not the BSD platform – it doesn’t work like BSD and it’s certainly not developed from BSD culture.
I think you mean that Android is not “the Gnu platform”.
Linux is just a kernel, nothing more, and Android as currently shipped most certainly uses it. But since the userland is Java rather than Gnu, Android apps run under Gnu only as in an emulator. Same kernel, but different apps.
Same with freeBSD et. al. and OS/X, practical app portability pretty much doesn’t exist, even though they both use BSD-derived kernels. And if BSD fans want to claim OS/X as part of their family, even if you believe it’s just a third cousin’s brother-in-law twice removed, why argue with them?
So many people laughed at rms for wanting to distinguish Gnu/Linux from the kernel. Got to be annoying to find out he was right. Again.
It doesn’t matter how it “acts”. The fact of the matter is that it’s running BSD code under the covers. I’m not sure how long you’ve been in the *nix community, but you seem to be forgetting the rule of seperation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
The mechanisms are the same, even if the policies are not.
Did netcraft confirm this?
(Oops.. wrong forum)