NetBSD seems to be thriving of late: as the Linux world goes pro-AI, some of the AI-averse are turning to this explicitly AI-free project.
The NetBSD project’s Mastodon feed reports that it received a record 120 donations last month, and it has far exceeded its target:
“We received $120,282 USD in total. Naturally, this has completely filled up our donations target bar which was set at $50,000. Time to fund some projects!”
It’s a welcome contrast to the usual stories of under-funded FOSS projects, and it follows a visible uptick in people asking about NetBSD in the FOSS Unix groups we read, ever since Emperor Penguin Torvalds said that Linux was not an anti-AI project back in July, and the following month, the Debian project polled its developers on AI use, and they chose to permit AI-generated contributions.
Unix is a licensing issue. Linux BSD or even Mac OS could likely get Unix certification. Mac OS technically had it even though it shouldn’t have for about a decade. However, none of them are Unix because none are currently paying the hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly. Or have made the niche compliances necessary.
https://www.opengroup.org/certifications/unix
That is like Khronos’s CTS for vulkan. It is still vulkan without it, just not necessarily compliant with the whole standard. Same applies top Unix. macOS 26 and older is certified and 27 probably is in the process of being done.
Yes and no. Kronos doesn’t really care as long as you’re compliant. The open group will come after you for licensing fees and take you to court. That’s the difference. Therefore, Linux and the BSDs are just Unix like and not actual Unix. It may only be a technicality, but it is a significant one.
Sounds super “open” :) . I looked on their site and it used to list macOS under Unix 03, but now it is not. It had a LOT of caveats as you had to turn off a lot of security features. Apple may have decided that security was more important than having the certification.
Note: comment is in part in relation to prior message and the above.
Yes, it’s kind of sad and they’ve largely made themselves irrelevant with those costs and restrictions. I think one of the few only operating systems that still Unix certified is Ibm’s AIX. Which I’m sure some big iron still uses us somewhere, but it’s not very prolific. However, if any group were to have the funds to cover licensing and the need of it, IBM is one.
Unfortunately, the open group has turned Unix into a static, unchanging specification. Not a healthy, flourishing, evolving ecosystem. So I am okay with Unix like and descended from Unix. But not tied down to it or held back by it as opposed to officially Unix.