Slashdot: Robert Watson on FreeBSD and TrustedBSD

“OS X’s Darwin is based on FreeBSD. How good a member of the
Open Source movement has Apple been? Have they contributed anything
back to the FreeBSD project (code/money/t-shirts/etc…)? …”

“While perusing the mailing lists for -hackers, -stable,
-current, etc. etc., I often wonder what people like yourself, Mike
Smith, Greg Lehey, and the other core members do to pay the
bills….”

“How does TrustedBSD compare with NSA secured linux
(http://www.nsa.gov/selinux) in terms of new and or improved
security features? And are there any plans to eventually integrate
the rest of the TrustedBSD features back into the shared BSD source
tree (the extended attributes already have been committed)? How
would using TrustedBSD instead of FreeBSD impact clustering
applications?…”

“I am both aware of and familiar with the NSA Secure Linux work
— a fair amount of the work is being done at NAI Labs under
contract from NSA. Stephen Smalley, one of the lead developers on
the project, actually works just upstairs from me in the Glenwood,
Maryland office of NAI Labs. As such, I’ve had a number of
opportunities to talk with him about the work. One of the
advantages of working at NAI Labs is the ability to get wide
exposure for a variety of security-related research on many
platforms, and relating to many topics.”

“TrustedBSD and SELinux are similar in many ways, and also
differ in many ways. The similarities lie in overlapping
functionality and architectural goals; the differences only begin
with the choice of operating systems. TrustedBSD introduces a
number of features into the FreeBSD operating system including
Mandatory Access Control (MAC)….”

Complete
Story