FreeBSD COPYRIGHT in OSX

Hi All,

I have been fixing a friend's Mac ... (freeing up space .. using the command line / terminal)

.. and noticed that Apple have removed all references to FreeBSD Copyright (High Sierra and probably early versions) ... clearly all the UNIX commands / man pages used in OSX have been ported from FreeBSD.

In previous versions of OSX you could bring up man pages, and at the top was a reference to FreeBSD, but not anymore.

There was COPYRIGHT file that reiterated the FreeBSD Copyright notice, but not anymore.

Just an observation.

Thx
 
Yes, and? It only needs to be retained in the source. Besides that, I very much doubt there's anything left of the original sources they imported.
 
... and binaries! My interpretation of the 2nd clause is if you compile the source and redistribute in binary form there must be a Copyright notice also.
 
Yes, like I said, I'm sure they've rewritten everything by now and there's simply nothing left of the original imported source.
 
I'd be surprised actually that they had rewritten every single tool from scratch. Don't forget that modifications also require the copyright.
I am however not so sure the FreeBSD foundation would like to go up against Apple ...

Edit: failed attempt at humor below; not meant to be taken seriously :p
That said, what might have happened is something like this:
Developer 1: Hey, do you know what that FreeBSD thing is in our copyright notices?
Developer 2: No idea dude.
Developer 1 asks clueless manager.
Manager (giving a non-answer): Well, you see, this is a copyright notice. It serves to protect copyright or something. I think it's because otherwise Google can copy MacOS.
Developer 1 decides to remove it since it's in his way. He writes a script using sed, grep and awk to do it as quickly as possible and commits the whole bunch before the next release.
Developer 2 does the peer review and lets it pass since he already was notified by developer 1.

Edit: explaining the 'joke': sed, grep and awk are typical Unix utilities. It was very unlikely that Apple would have rewritten those, which meant that they used BSD licensed code to violate the BSD license.
I'll go take comedy lessons somewhere before I ever attempt this again :)
 
I'd be surprised actually that they had rewritten every single tool from scratch.
They didn't import much to begin with. And they've been developing MacOS for the past 18 years. Plenty of time to rewrite the entire OS from scratch, multiple times.
 
Apple nicely organized and provides the sources of the whole macOS userland of all releases since Mac OS X 10.0 up to the recent releases of macOS 10.14 Mojave here, including iOS and OS X Server.
Maybe I'm going blind with old age but 10.14.6 (Mojave) isn't there.
 
I just did this on my Mac:
uname -a
Darwin rolf-mini.obsigna.com 17.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 17.7.0: Sun Jun 2 20:31:42 PDT 2019; root:xnu-4570.71.46~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

cat /usr/share/man/man1/cp.1
Code:
.\"-
.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994
.\"    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
.\" the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
.\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\"    without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.\"    @(#)cp.1    8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94
.\" $FreeBSD: src/bin/cp/cp.1,v 1.33 2005/02/25 00:40:46 trhodes Exp $
.\"
.Dd February 23, 2005
.Dt CP 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm cp
.Nd copy files
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm cp
...

Who wants to believe goes to the church, who wants to know does a research.
 
Yeah, I suspected something like that. It was released fairly recently. So I suspect this just hasn't been updated yet.
 
I ran ..
cd /; find . -exec fgrep -li freebsd {} \;

.. did not come back with anything... go figure!

Anyway the Copyright notice should be **easily visable to the enduser... e.g. ~/COPYRIGHT
 
That said, what might have happened is something like this:
Developer 1: Hey, do you know what that FreeBSD thing is in our copyright notices?
Developer 2: No idea dude.
Developer 1 asks clueless manager.
Manager (giving a non-answer): Well, you see, this is a copyright notice. It serves to protect copyright or something. I think it's because otherwise Google can copy MacOS.
Developer 1 decides to remove it since it's in his way. He writes a script using sed, grep and awk to do it as quickly as possible and commits the whole bunch before the next release.
Developer 2 does the peer review and lets it pass since he already was notified by developer 1.
I very much doubt something like this could happen by mistake in this day and age, in particular not in a large company that's well organized. Everyone in professional software development is VERY aware of licenses and copyright law. I've worked for several employers in Silicon Valley software development in the last 20 years, and all of them require training every single software engineer in basic copyright/license/open source law. At one employer, we had mandatory annual (!) classes on how to handle open source. Apple is very big, very organized, and aware of lawsuits (they are involved in many, as any big company), and they will want to prevent those by trying to do everything by the book.

And people here know stories of software developers who were fired for violating the rules. One case I know of involves a young engineer wanting to install the free version of Solaris (before there was OpenSolaris, there was a freely installable but closed-source version of Solaris for Sparc). He downloaded it, ran the installer, and clicked one too many "accept license" buttons, which back then was the infectious and dangerous Sun Java license. Our lawyers found out, and he was terminated. The other case is a senior developer who had access to the AT&T Unix source code. He needed a little bit of code for his (non-OS) project, and cut-and-pasted it from AT&T into his project. He even put a comment there: "this bit of code is from the AT&T Unix source code, and we need to remove it before shipping, and replace it with our own code". Again, when management found it, the lawyers were notified, and it was a big crisis. The problem is that once he had read the Unix source code, his brain was polluted, and he could no longer work on that area of the code. Instead, a different engineer who had never seen the Unix source developed a replacement for that bit of code (it was maybe 100 lines). Unfortunately, the original developer now has a lifetime ban on working on a certain type of software, for fear of violating AT&T's copyright.
 
I find this wholly comical. All of the open source advocates preach about freedom to use code, and they then get their panties in a bunch about not getting credit on something that no longer is anything like the original work. Everyone who delves so deep into their iMac that they can view the copyrights already know that OSX is derived from 'BSD. So NeXt used parts of FreeBSD in the MACH Kernel 100 years ago . Who cares?

Ralph is referring to a time when ATT and SCO and BSD were battling for ownership of "unix" and the whole open source thing was fairly new. Now there are a millions products that use linux and 'Bsd derivatives and don't "properly" display every copyright. Nobody cares.
 
Now there are a millions products that use linux and 'Bsd derivatives and don't "properly" display every copyright. Nobody cares.

Exactly. And I pirate the heck out of all their products and I don't care!

* That was a joke. I find their products broken and would never use them even if they were free.
 
In previous versions of OSX you could bring up man pages, and at the top was a reference to FreeBSD, but not anymore.
That is simply the section title and can be and should have been "fixed" long ago, likely they just changed the program rendering the manual pages.
 
Exactly. And I pirate the heck out of all their products and I don't care!

* That was a joke. I find their products broken and would never use them even if they were free.

This is the dumbest thing I've seen here yet. Maybe a language problem? All products that don't properly display copyright notices are broken? :rolleyes:
 
This is the dumbest thing I've seen here yet. Maybe a language problem? All products that don't properly display copyright notices are broken? :rolleyes:

I was more referring to the fact that they are closed-source (thus big portability / lifespan issues) and in most cases have no respect for user privacy (thus big security issues). Scummy software is broken regardless of if their little copyright notices are correct or not. ;)
 
I pirate the heck out of all their products and I don't care!
That was me until I converted to FreeBSD.
I got some scary lawsuit letters for downloading torrents too. Ignored them and nothing further came from them.
Now I have washed my hands clean of that mess.

I am trying my darndest to get my company to dial back their AutoCad licenses.
Recently I installed LibreCAD and FreeCAD on some work computers without licensed ACAD seats.
Hands on help from me has made that a seamless conversion from previous pirate-ware adventures.
These people are not CAD experts but occasionally need to sketch. LibreCAD seems more liked so far.
I had to bypass our clueless IT guy and go to the owner for cooperation.
Next up get them to drop Office365 and use LibreOffice.
Can you imagine all you sensitive work documents held in the MS cloud.
Fools. IT guys are lazy and choose the simplist kool-aid being pimped by Gates and Co.
Outlook365, are you kidding me?
Internet is down so now we can't work? Who thought up this crap?

Next rant: Timekeeping program connected to the internet.......
 
Oh but NovaTime connects to Great Plains....
Great now not only is your time keeping system vulnerable but so is accounting.

When I first started working on business systems all accounting systems were AIRGAPED.
Then along came Quickbooks and you eventually had to be connected to the internet.
Why?
To get updated tax charts. But didn't they used to do that by CD-ROM?
Why yes, they did. Welcome to the world of dumbness.
 
Now there are a millions products that use linux and 'Bsd derivatives and don't "properly" display every copyright. Nobody cares.
Dude have you actually read the BSD 2-Clause license.
Copyright retention is only needed in the source code.
Plus one file with the copyright in binary distributions.

Windows used to have an ACK for NetBSD TCP/IP stack in IE. i dunno if they still do.
It was not required but a nice gesture from the beast.
 
Copyright retention is ONLY NEEDED IN SOURCE CODE. Period.
Incorrect. Here is the exact wording from the 2-clause BSD license and from the "new BSD" a.k.a. 3-clause license (they are the same as far as this is concerned):
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
So even if you do not distribute source (meaning you distribute binary), the copyright notice must be shipped with the product.
 
Internet is down so now we can't work? Who thought up this crap?

Hah so true. Absolute idiocy.

Being artificially tied to the internet is basically the easiest way to "damage" a consumer. So naturally that is why 99% of commercial software does its best to tie a consumer to the internet.

It is getting very close to Stockholm Syndrome for consumers. The more they are treated like absolute dirt by these (effectively criminal) corporations, the more they respect, revere and almost worship them.

Either way, Apple not displaying a copyright correctly is the least of our concerns. What is a little bit sad is that if the FreeBSD Foundation did try to fight them, they possibly would not win, even if Apple had actually broken a license agreement.
 
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