Submitted by Pretty cool stuff: the PlayStation 4 apparently runs on a version of FreeBSD 9.0 modified by Sony and renamed to ‘Orbis OS’. Second generation developer kits use GNU GRUB to boot, and allow you to boot into a graphical or a console mode. Not much else is known at this point, but it’s a fun bit of information, and perhaps a boon to homebrew developer and hackers.
PlayStation 4 runs modified FreeBSD 9.0: ‘Orbis OS’
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There was once a GNU/Linux distro with that name:
http://doragonden.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/introducing-orbis-os-now…
I don’t think anything ever became of it, though I wonder if there is any relationship between that project and Sony’s choice of name for their project.
Interesting, very interesting.
I have always thought that the OS in the PS3 was a BSD. Because, what else?
Not Linux, to be sure, it does not mesh with their attitude (though they do use it on TV sets and stuff like that). And not Windows, even more surely: expensive and Microsoft!
It could be something like VxWorks, but why pay a humongous lot of money for licensing and support when you can just grab something that is available free as in beer? Something with good support for internet, encryption, bluetooth, USB, Wifi, audio, the works. And for developers, Unix expertise is widely more available than for weird proprietary RTOS’s; not that they cared much about developers with the PS3, that is true, but still.
Any bets?
I wonder who they’ve got working on that? There’s a fairly active FreeBSD community in Japan, and if it’s any of the active contributors, they might be able to get them to contribute the more useful parts (or at least some of the drivers) back to FreeBSD proper. We’ll see, I guess.
Also, I just noticed that they’re apparently loading the userland libraries (libc/c++/m/pthread/etc) as kernel modules? That’s an … interesting choice, in the “do they want more trouble” sense.
Why?
Well, libpthread and libc++ and such are not bad code, but they are more crash-prone than the kernel; if a problem in one of them starts bringing down the OS that’s kind of inconvenient.
Let’s face it, if a console crashes, it doesn’t matter if it originates in userspace or kernelspace, you’re still going to reboot it, call the entire thing a piece of shit, and probably return it for a console that won’t crash all the time. You’d think that avoiding that sort of thing (as well as having to give back a goddamn thing) would be why they used FreeBSD at all.
Not entirely. Keep in mind that modern consoles run a lot of different programs; if e.g. the netflix viewer crashes, there’s a difference between dropping you to the “desktop” (like a tablet) or rebooting the entire thing. Certain parts can probably be quietly restarted, too – if a background downloader crashes and nobody notices, etc.
Edited 2013-06-25 14:33 UTC
It could just as well be that those libraries are simply being loaded into memory so that they’ll always be there at all times, ie. they don’t get loaded in memory dynamically. Such an approach consumes more RAM initially, but provides one with less disk I/O and more predictable performance.
True, good point.
I’m guessing we’re about to see a major backlash from GPL zealots claiming that BSD license allows Sony to take their FOSS and close it/lock it down so that nobody in the FOSS community can benefit from their changes/enhancements.
Well, obviously, the BSD-license does allow Sony to just rake in stuff and never contribute. Alas, that’s the whole point with the BSD-license and the people who chose the license chose it for a reason. It’s irrelevant what GPL-folks think of the matter, they are not the authors of the software being used here.
Nope, you’re right – but that doesn’t seem to stop them
And yet, you’re the first one to bring license issues to this thread. Projection always leads to such ironic avenues…
I didn’t mean this particular thread in general, I meant “all over the internet”.
I just happen to read a lot of those discussions, so it’s the first thing that came to mind when I read the news.
That’s kind of the point, yeah. As of today, there’s a non-zero chance of Sony contributing something back, while if FreeBSD was GPL they wouldn’t have used it in the first place. It might also benefit the public at large, since it’s a better use of resources than Sony trying to reinvent the wheel again.
Now, Sony might certainly decide to contribute exactly nothing back, but that’s not really a worse outcome than if they’d used an inhouse or commercial+closed OS in the first place.
Edited 2013-06-24 18:37 UTC
There is a discussion on this topic over in the FreeBSD forums and it looks as though some of the code is being contributed back to the FreeBSD project. Which makes sense, rolling the changes back into FreeBSD means Sony doesn’t have to maintain a large fork, contributing means less work for them in the long run.
That’s great news! And it would confirm my (semi-biased) belief that GPL isn’t mandatory for companies to “do the right thing” – since publishing the source modifications benefits everyone, including the original author, when the bugs are squashed and code is improved.
I know there’s a lot of Apple hate on these forums these days, but Apple do keep their BSD code changes open. Granted they don’t actively push the code back upstream, but FreeBSD and co have implemented some of Apple’s code.
Excatly! It’s actually a big shot in the arm for the BSDs, which have always been the poor cousins to Linux in terms of the amount of dev time devoted to them.
It’s good all round. We get to hack the PS3 to within an inch of its life + more dev work for BSD. Nice.
Check the comments section of the linked article, it’s already happening. I threw in my two cents (“kaidenshi”) but most people here already know my ambivalence towards GPL.
I think this is great news for the BSD community, even if Sony doesn’t contribute back anything. It still increases mind share in a time where so many eyes are on Linux. BTW, I’m still positive there will be code contributions by Sony developers, at least that is my guess.
Regarding the license, yes, that is interesting too. In many new development frameworks there is a trend in opting for a more liberal license (MIT, BSD, Apache) than GPL. While still somewhat dominant, GPLs influence among FOSS is shrinking steadily. And, may I say, I like that trend.
I’d rather be a BSD zealot complaining about the GNU bootloader being employed, but that’s just me =P
I must admit I was surprised to see GRUB there. I’m guessing that will be gone by the time consumer devices hit the shelves though (or at least modded so it doesn’t look fugly and can’t be (accidentally) tampered with by end users).
Phoronix ran this story as well, and the comments are people trashing the BSD license and a DirectX vs OpenGL flamewar. There are some people trying to defend the BSD license, but they’re out numbered by the GPL trolls.
These really are trolls. There is one account that keeps getting banned for posting nothing but crap whenever anything BSD related is mentioned.
We seem to have managed to avoid that here, amazingly. A couple of years ago the flamewars would have been raging hard by now.
Maybe we grew up or the stupid fools moved elsewhere. Either way it’s a positive development.
I’ve never quite understood the whole GPL vs BSD license war. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit too logical. If you make code and you decide “Hey maybe someone would like this and I really don’t give a crap what becomes of it” then BSD. If you’re more of the opinion that “Hey, I want to give this away, but I want to see where people take it.” then GPL.
GPL is like that page where you track a dollar. Put a number on a dollar, check it every few months to see if people have entered it’s location and see where it’s travelled.
BSD is more like “Hey bum, I realize you’re probably just going to buy booze with this, but I don’t care, I’m in a giving mood.” then the bum goes on to start Facebook with the money. (which then gets spied on by the NSA).
I cannot agree with that statement. Choosing the BSD-license is not about not caring what’s done with it, it’s quite the contrary: you DO care about what’s done with it so much that you do not want to impose any restrictions on it whatsoever.
Even that seems… off. I see GPL as being all about ensuring the survival of the code.
Someone at the Phoronix forums mentioned something that is actually a very good point – GRUB 2 is GPLv3. They can’t ship it in the finished product, so either they:
(a) change the bootloader for the release console or
(b) allow people to replace the bootloader on a release console with one of their own.
Given their leaning towards BSD (if this is legit) – I suspect they will go for (a) (although (b) would be awesome!).
This is a screenshot of the DevKit booting not the PS4.
I realise that, but given the whole BSD discussion I thought it was worth pointing out.
I’m not a lawyer but….why not?
Does GPLV3 prohibit commercial use?
No, the GPLv3 has an anti-tivoization clause. You need to give people access to the build-system and any signing keys used to sign the software. The guess here is that Sony wouldn’t want to ship the PS4 with an unlockable bootloader.
Although they could use the BSD licensed OS parts to check if the GRUB bootloader has been altered and then refuse to load the rest of the system. That would technically satisfy the licensing stipulations on GRUB2. It probably would really mess up RMS’s day though…
Uh…say what? Sorry, my brain didn’t comprehend that due to how incredibly stupid it sounded. The signing keys? The private keys? The very core of how the security works and how it won’t work if everyone has the keys?
Correct – the GPLv3 rightly or wrongly is designed to keep the platforms on which its software runs as open as possible. It doesn’t necessarily mandate handing over of private keys though – it could mean enabling a ‘boot-anything’ switch similar to how Secure Boot can be disabled on UEFI firmwares.
If they did, they would have to include the keys necessary to sign and run your own version, ergo – complete control of the platform. GPLv3 doesn’t exclude commercial projects per say, but this is a big limitation if a company’s aim is to sell a locked down box.
We all remember the PS3, right? How Sony sold it as a “computer”, then crippled the feature with an update? Will anyone be foolish enough to trust Sony on this again?
Well, they haven’t been advertising the PS4 as anything more than a locked-down console this time around.
So it’s going to be in essence a overblown and overpriced BlueRay Player.
No Thanks.
It’s going to be a game console. You know, the thing they designed it to be and will sell it as.
What do you mean by “this”?
And what does it have to do with the article?
Is there anyone dumb enough other than the losers in the BSD Crowd who thinks you’ll actually be able to *DO* anything with this thing?
Sony is going to *KILL* any 3rd software that trys to run on this thing like DNLA servers and the like. You can also forget about about 3rd party video players and the like which won’t comply with Sony’s copy protection schemes.
This thing is going to be just an overpriced version of the FreeAgent Theater+ and The WD Live products which really can’t be effectively modded either because of their crippled hardware
Let the buyer beware.
Hopefully this will run Debian at some point like the original Xbox did. I guess the PlayStation parts will be proprietary but hopefully they leave it hackable AND restoreable.
Never used a bsd before but I’m all in favour of any Unix like operating system over Windows. As long as they don’t start thinking they’re Apple it should be a nice boost to the freebsd community.
You’re very close to winning Sony, now I’m just waiting to see what retarded thing they do to stuff it up.
If they make software easily portable to Linux/regular freebsd I’ll buy one just to support that.
Best case scenario: Sony contributes massively to OpenGL and drivers for BSD.
Worst case scenario: Sony pulls effort from developers towards developing code specifically for their console’s variation of BSD, only to ditch it in the next generation.
Likely scenario: Support for Playstation controllers is improved for BSD.
I don’t know anything about console development, but atleast PS3 didn’t used OpenGL, I doubt they will use OpenGL on PS4 too.
It depends on what you mean by OpenGL.
There is OpenGL ES support on PS3. It just is not a very efficient implementation. There is also PSGL.
http://www.ps3devwiki.com/wiki/RSX#RSX_Libraries
Edited 2013-06-24 23:17 UTC
True. They announced only D11 (directx 11) support. The GPU can have support for both, as most does, but as this is a custom, made only for the PS4, it is likely it won’t have, as is not needed and will only “waste space”.
Having selected an AMD64 CPU, an AMD GPU and a Unix O/S they can now take advantage of the years of effort of AMD in perfecting their Open GL drivers, and the years of effort of thousands of programmers learning Open GL; or they can spend a ton of money and a long, long time to end up, late, with a half baked POS.
Seeing how the PS architecture has jumped from freaky to almost standard PC, I would be very surprised if they did not cash in on all of the advantages of standardization.
Why wouldn’t Sony just keep using the graphics libraries they already have and invested so many years expertise?
Professional game developers don’t care about APIs, they use whatever is required to deliver a product.
I think because they have the whole opengl for free, maintained for them by AMD, with procedural shaders, gl computing language and the whole works. And because there is a much larger pool of programmers that can take advantage of that.
You have so much to learn how the game industry works.
All. You, some.
True, I learn every day, but contrary to most here I was part of it for some brief time in my life.
Because there is a bunch of stuff that comes along with OpenGL that isn’t necessary. Remember that OpenGL is designed as an abstraction layer to separate the graphics implementation from the hardware implementation, so the hardware can change and the software remain the same. An example are shaders, which are compiled on demand for the target graphics card. This is completely unnecessary on a console.
It is much better to design an API that is much more in line with how the hardware functions, and abstracts less of it away. It’ll provide much more predictable and reliable results.
Right.
The PS3 had an implementation of OpenGL ES available. Nobody used it. Instead, they used Sony’s API, which was closer to the hardware, and had much less overhead.
Even on the Xbox 360, the API used isn’t really Direct3D 9. It’s very similar, but again, it’s closer to the hardware with less overhead than the desktop version.
While it’s possible that Sony might provide an OpenGL implementation, they would only do so for the sake of portability. Most games would still use Sony’s API instead, because portability isn’t a big deal. Most game engines already abstract the rendering API away, so they can support D3D 9, D3D 11, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and proprietary APIs on consoles. Very few games are written directly on top of one of those APIs anymore.
Nice description.
I really don’t get how this legend that everyone else in the games industry besides Microsoft uses OpenGL got started in the FOSS world.
Perhaps because OpenGL is widespread in mobile devices, and even though it is not the API of choice in the PS3 it’s still available as an option there as well.
Edited 2013-06-26 08:51 UTC
Only thanks to Apple. Before the iPhone, it only existed in a few selected Symbian devices implemented as a software render. If you wanted performance you needed to use something else.
An option that nobody actually uses when they care about performance and the PS3 is just one console among many.
Yes, at some point there were almost no OpenGL devices. But that’s true for anything else as well.
OpenGLish rendering libraries are used by iOS, Android, and Blackberry (I think it’s also used for the Wii U and DS?). A substantial share of mobile gaming. Perhaps that’s what led to the perception of GL’s widespread adoption.
Edited 2013-06-26 18:13 UTC
OpenGL was already considered dead by the gaming industry with only the CAD industry keeping the standard alive.
When OpenGL 3.0 came out, the very few that still had hopes, felt that the OpenGL ARB betrayed the whole API design to the desired of CAD/CAM companies.
Around this time several things happened more or less at the same time, that contributed in some form or the other, to the OpenGL revival:
– Apple made a native SDK using OpenGL ES with proper hardware support
– Games on iPhones started selling really well
– Khronos took over OpenGL steering board
– A few AAA game studios joined Khronos, thus bringing the message that it was worth investing into OpenGL
– The subsequent OpenGL standards really improved the situation and were well received.
However how things look in the standard game consoles look different, specially because developers want a more fine grained control over the hardware.
For example, on the PS2 you prepare command buffers that are sent via DMA to the emotion engine. Those of us that bought PS2Linux had partial access to the documentation.
Just some information from the archived web site, the PS2 Linux kit DVDs have much more documentation.
http://web.archive.org/web/20091212133339/