I'm not sure where you're getting the "Apple holds soft power over FreeBSD" thing from. Netflix is probably at the top of the list given all their performance and stability work -- and, you know, the fact they push a large chunk of all Internet traffic using FreeBSD -- and NetApp and Juniper are somewhere up there, but I'm not convinced Apple would even be in the top 10.
> I'm not sure where you're getting the "Apple holds soft power over FreeBSD" thing from.
The only thing I've ever heard from FreeBSD-land, not paying attention to users, but the maintainers and the tools. Apple comes up. In the same manner that RedHat and others come up for Linux. How to explain? It's an abstract pattern. Transparent, understandable.
I mentioned somewhere about the connection through ix systems. And honestly to project, if I was a maintainer of something used between Netflix and Apple, I'd prioritize Apple. Apple has outlived IBM. If you know your history, you know how serious that is. If you've got authority over something as large as FreeBSD? Yeah, you don't ignore that kind of actual power especially when it's personal. Like I say, all based on guesses. But some things are hard to mistake.
Apple did very important work making LLVM happen, but that was a long time ago. At this point there are lots of companies involved in that project.
As far as "power" is concerned... speaking as release engineer, I don't give special treatment to anyone; nor have I even been asked to. If anyone has a special relationship it's Netflix but if anything that's the opposite way around: "Can you please throw 10% of all Internet traffic at this TCP stack patch and let us know if anything breaks" is a thing. They're incredibly helpful with Q/A.
Consider me convinced. Like I say, it was never anything but empirical skepticism. Neither for or against until sufficient evidence has been collected, as painful as that can be. Thank you for your work on scrypt.
Just to give another data point. LLVM is a good example. Where FreeBSD and Apple may still interface quiet a bit, and this isn't exclusive to FreeBSD, I think Apple is still a primary contributor/maintainer of CUPS and a few other systems like that.
I know some maintainers of the userland and apple never comes up. Most maintainers have no commercial ties to anyone so they don't really care abour corporate influence anyway. They just maintain the software because they like using it. This is exactly the kind of thing I like, in Linux there are too many companies putting money into it because they want to make money back (usually not from normal users but from cloud instances, steering the project in a direction away from its grassroots origins).
I'm sure if Apple wants something it would be considered but there would be a strong validation of "what's in it for us" on the freebsd side. There's also some pretty bad experiences with corporate influence and this is reviewed a lot more independently since the netgate wireguard disaster. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-lice...
Unlike in the Linux world where RedHat and canonical are so embedded due to most of the devs working for them that there will be a lot less questions. And not just those two, also companies like Huawei are heavy kernel contributors.
I'm not saying it's bad to have such commercial influence. But it's not what I want for the OS I run.
