My new job

[Jordan Hubbard]

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 Apple 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 this 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

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