BTW, do you know why they chose BSD rather than Linux for the basis of OS X?
> > I'd suggest that it has to do with Nextstep, which was the previous
>attempt to put Mac over unix. Apparently there are a lot of extensions to Unix underneath OSX prefaced with "ns". Linux is sort of a mismash of SysV and BSD unix, with more SysV in general, so it might not have worked as well for apple as pure BSD.
It may also have to do with the fact that Linux is distributed under the GPL and copyright to Linus Torvalds, both of which may have been some
legal issue somehow.
To be totally accurate, Linux is copyright to all the people who have ever contributed to it, of whom Linus Torvalds is obviously one. I think you're right about it being a licensing issue though - if Apple had based OS X on Linux they'd have had to have released all their modifications and enhancements for free under the terms of the GPL. The BSD license allows you to take code released under it and not give anything back, a fact that has been exploited by practically everyone, including Linux and Microsoft...
S
