FreeBSD Founder Leaves Apple to Return to the BSD Camp

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs attempted to recruit Linux creator Linus Torvalds, but was turned down. Not long after, Apple hired Jordan Hubbard, the founder of the open-source operating system FreeBSD. Hubbard worked at Apple for 12 years before recently resigning to join iXsystems as their CTO. iXsystems specializes in providing hardware for data centers and servers that run FreeBSD.

Hubbard's time at Apple greatly influenced his perspective. He believes that most open-source developers focus on building tools rather than perfect products, and he feels that open-source operating systems should also be perceived as flawless products. During his tenure at Apple, Hubbard did not contribute code back to FreeBSD, yet Apple’s Mac OS X open-source kernel Darwin incorporated a significant amount of code from FreeBSD. Today, FreeBSD operates under the shadow of Linux but continues to be widely used as a server operating system; Google has contributed a great deal of code to the project. Hubbard believes that FreeBSD can still compete with Linux, arguing that FreeBSD is more transparent and cohesive than most Linux distributions.