From: Geoffrey Thomas <geofft@mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:58:37 +0000 (-0400)
Subject: cross-OS binary compatibility
X-Git-Url: https://sipb.mit.edu/gitweb.cgi/wiki.git/commitdiff_plain/fe3895fef3bf3df2e0fa8228bc59a4d10fec67f0

cross-OS binary compatibility
---

diff --git a/projects/ideas.mdwn b/projects/ideas.mdwn
index c95bc94..dc97ac4 100644
--- a/projects/ideas.mdwn
+++ b/projects/ideas.mdwn
@@ -268,6 +268,25 @@ _Contact: broder_
 
 _Contact: mostly geofft_
 
+## Binary compatibility between OSes
+
+Help the cause of OS ecumenism! FreeBSD provides [binary
+compatibility](http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/linuxemu.html) with
+Linux operating systems: an add-on module to the kernel knows how to
+interpret Linux-"personality" programs, just like the base kernel can
+interpret FreeBSD-"personality" ones, and a standard component in the
+FreeBSD ports system will install a number of libraries from Fedora 10
+in /compat/linux.
+
+However, the number of people who use FreeBSD as their own OS is limited
+compared to those who use Linux or Mac OS X. Possible projects here
+include BSD binary compatibility on Linux, or porting FreeBSD's Linux
+binary compatibility to Mac OS X (which has a bunch of BSD-like parts,
+but whose core kernel is actually Mach). The latter would allow running
+Linux locker software on [MacAthena](http://macathena.mit.edu).
+
+_Contact: geofft, kaduk_
+
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