# So, Nintendo Switch works on FreeBSD?



## BachiloDmitry (Mar 3, 2017)

It's no secret that Sony Playstation 4 works on FreeBSD 9.0, it was never a secret, even userland software that came with FreeBSD and was ported to PS4 was listed before the console even was out. And today Nintendo Switch was released. Nobody actually reads licence agreement that much, everyone just click "I agree" and move to games. But if you read carefully like some of us do, you can see this:


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## lostpacket (Mar 3, 2017)

That's pretty awesome, wonder how long system updates take


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## -Snake- (Mar 4, 2017)

Yes, It's cool.

Currently both ps4 and nintendo switch use a system based on FreeBSD, ps3 is also known to have used FreeBSD and NetBSD code.
I think this is quite positive, in the sense of making clear the quality and flexibility of *BSD systems (well, in that case FreeBSD)


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## bushido95 (Mar 5, 2017)

I'm not really surprised. With the permissive licensing and such it's great for corporations to hack it into what they need and then package it up close off the source and sell it.


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## tingo (Mar 5, 2017)

Note the mis-spelling: "Free BSD Kernel". If they can't spell right, how can we assume that anything else they write is correct?


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## usdmatt (Mar 5, 2017)

> I'm not really surprised. With the permissive licensing and such it's great for corporations to hack it into what they need and then package it up close off the source and sell it.



Yeah, it's great that Sony/Nintendo are using FreeBSD, getting it more well known and showing how capable it is. However is does mainly come down to the fact that they can use a solid OS that's already established as a base, then modify it for their own use without having to give out a big chunk of their proprietary source code. If it wasn't for the GPL they'd probably all use Linux, just because it has more street cred to the general masses to say something is running Linux.


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## bushido95 (Mar 6, 2017)

usdmatt said:


> Yeah, it's great that Sony/Nintendo are using FreeBSD, getting it more well known and showing how capable it is. However is does mainly come down to the fact that they can use a solid OS that's already established as a base, then modify it for their own use without having to give out a big chunk of their proprietary source code. If it wasn't for the GPL they'd probably all use Linux, just because it has more street cred to the general masses to say something is running Linux.



It's funny because I used to have a big hard on for the GPL.  But I'm finding the BSD License to be alot better just for the fact that it gives you total choice on how you want to license your code whether you want your code out there and open for people to contribute too or closed and proprietary. Some projects are better suited for Open Source while others in my view are best kept closed source. Just really depends on what you are doing.


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## Tabs (Mar 6, 2017)

Very cool indeed, good find! My FreeBSD porting efforts may be down slightly until I finish playing breath of the wild


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