You think BSDs are next-in-line? Why is that?
I have the distinct impression BSDs will remain niche. Something radical (like MotorOS?) seems more likely.
And thanks to the BSD license, the project is getting zero back from Sony, while those Playstation profits get a big higher thanks to less R&D costs spent on OS code.
Same applies to clang/LLVM port to the Playstation, regarding everything that would expose console implementation details without an NDA.
It is probably for another product but there is at least one Sony email address, and a number email addresses from different corporate entities, on the FreeBSD contributors list. All 3 majors BSD OSes also list donators (can be financially or hardware).
So saying corps that use BSD code never give anything back because of license is not true. And an awful lot don't do any more or even hide their use of gpl licensed code anyway.
When, say, IBM contributed a lot of stuff into the Linux kernel in early 2000s, that stuff became immediately available to anyone. Whatever cool stuff Nintendo or Sony may introduce in their versions of BSD kernels, we don't even know, let alone seeing them contribute it back.
GPL works similarly to a patent pool: every participant sees that openly contributing to the pool is more profitable than being a renegade, as long as everyone else plays by the rules, too. MIT/BSD, while as open as possible, can easily promote a trade-secret type of environment, where any enhancements are never heard of, except under an NDA, and perish if their creators go under or lose interest.
If I'm in the mood for being a little glib... where do you think that Linux distribution that SteamOS is based on got its user-space (or more seriously, its drivers?)
Also: the SteamDeck is by any reasonable standard a console. It just happens to run a windowed environment out of the box. Don't be that guy. If you want to pump Valve, focus instead on their contributions to the Wine project.
No idea why the personal involvement with valve pumping has come from. Atari "VCS All-In Bundle" is debian based, too. They are not playstation popular, of course. Like mentioned "no love for consoles", dont own one, not interested, either.
> but with a huge chunk of user space borrowed from FreeBSD
Any sources on this, and on what parts were borrowed specifically?
I was under the impression that Nintendo did away with most of the Unix layers we know and love and went all-in on custom code and APIs, is that not the case?
This is pretty much a myth. Both run a different kernel. macOS used be known to have a network stack (and maybe some stuff like a virtual file system) from freebsd but I am pretty sure most of the code has been replaced by now.
Having some BSD userland binaries doesn't make your OS a BSD. Otherwise Windows is just a fork of curl.
Last I checked, Darwin sources for tcp still look a lot like FreeBSD circa 2000 plus some Apple patches (MPTCP). No syncookies in 2024, because FreeBSD added those months after Apple forked the stack.
I argue that having a BSD license (in Darwin), BSD heritage (NeXTSTEP, FreeBSD, briefly NetBSD), and a mostly BSD userland 20+ years into the project makes this OS a BSD.
Nintendo is using a custom OS but with a huge chunk of user space borrowed from FreeBSD. Sony on the other hand just went and forked FreeBSD outright.
You might also want to look into what OS are being used for server environments. A lot more BSD there than you might have initially guessed.