NextBSD Returns to Port Apple Source Onto FreeBSD (theregister.com) 9
"One of the most interesting BSD variants of the 2010s, NextBSD, has come back to life under new management," reports The Register:
Aside from the homepage, there's a GitHub repository — but beware, this is separate from the old one, whose repo is still there although the most recent changes were seven years ago. The new project also has a project history giving credit where it's due. The main man behind the revival is Joe Maloney, known on GitHub as pkgdemon. In case his name rings a bell, we've mentioned him before: he put together the Gershwin desktop in GhostBSD. Soon after we covered Gershwin on GhostBSD, he asked the maintainers if he could take over the NextBSD project. He did have a relatively minor role in the original — you can see his list of commits.
The original NextBSD project was started by FreeBSD co-founder Jordan Hubbard in 2015 — its Wikipedia article has some of the history. The plan was to port some of the components of Apple's Darwin OS to FreeBSD... [T]he NextBSD plan is to take the FreeBSD kernel, the most capable of the FOSS BSD kernels, but replace FreeBSD's traditional and server-focused userland with the relevant parts of the publicly available Apple code. The rebooted NextBSD-redux is not based on a fork of the decade-old code. FreeBSD has moved on substantially in that time, and so have macOS and Darwin. This is a new project by a new developer, but it picks up the same overall plan, aims to assemble the same puzzle pieces, and shares the same intended goal.
In places, it does draw on a little of the same code, though. The NextBSD-redux README describes what's working so far, with a lot more detail in the porting notes. Although there's no graphical desktop yet, that's underway as well.... For us, perhaps the key aspect of NextBSD — both the original version and NextBSD-redux — is that it isn't an effort to build something completely new from scratch. It's an effort to cherry-pick and combine elements of existing separate FOSS projects, and assemble them into a useful whole.
The Team section of the homepage lists two core developers: Maloney and Anthropic's Claude Code. "From my perspective, AI is a force multiplier here," Maloney told The Register. "It is my team of developers, but I am steering the entire thing."
The original NextBSD project was started by FreeBSD co-founder Jordan Hubbard in 2015 — its Wikipedia article has some of the history. The plan was to port some of the components of Apple's Darwin OS to FreeBSD... [T]he NextBSD plan is to take the FreeBSD kernel, the most capable of the FOSS BSD kernels, but replace FreeBSD's traditional and server-focused userland with the relevant parts of the publicly available Apple code. The rebooted NextBSD-redux is not based on a fork of the decade-old code. FreeBSD has moved on substantially in that time, and so have macOS and Darwin. This is a new project by a new developer, but it picks up the same overall plan, aims to assemble the same puzzle pieces, and shares the same intended goal.
In places, it does draw on a little of the same code, though. The NextBSD-redux README describes what's working so far, with a lot more detail in the porting notes. Although there's no graphical desktop yet, that's underway as well.... For us, perhaps the key aspect of NextBSD — both the original version and NextBSD-redux — is that it isn't an effort to build something completely new from scratch. It's an effort to cherry-pick and combine elements of existing separate FOSS projects, and assemble them into a useful whole.
The Team section of the homepage lists two core developers: Maloney and Anthropic's Claude Code. "From my perspective, AI is a force multiplier here," Maloney told The Register. "It is my team of developers, but I am steering the entire thing."
One guy and Claude Code? (Score:3)
Best to note this down as a non serious hobby project and move on.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
bet it turns out better than everything you have ever done
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't seen what Claude is capable of.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: One guy and Claude Code? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, AI is useful here for a lot of the mechanical bits.
Darwin is BSD userland so most of the porting for the NetBSD would be just mechanical bits of changing Makefiles and other things. And AI is really, really, really good at that. Anything that really is just a mechanical transformation is a good candidate for AI assistance. It can mean you can easily port most of the Darwin userspace over with very little effort.
And the parts that aren't so easy can be assisted or done by humans. If you have 1000
Re: (Score:2)
Netcraft confirms it: BSD is dying.
Previous attempt (Score:2)
"Hey, Claude, [...] (Score:1)
[...] congrats on becoming a comaintainer of NextBSD! Now, can you do me a solid and look into fresh name options for the project that, oh, I don't know, don't seem virtually indistinguishable on print from the name of your cousin project, NetBSD? How about NeXTBSD? Make sure to run everything by your lawyer buddy, Claude, Esq., to make sure we don't find ourselves in any trademark disputes. Thanks!"
I'm half-kidding. I think I'm grumpy because every. single. instance. of "NextBSD" on this story initially re