> This struck me as a potentially mind-blowing win for NetBSD. Why isn't every RTOS, embedded system OS, toy OS,experimental OS etc. based on NetBSD?
I think it is used a lot as a starting point for porting other OS, but it doesn't necessarily persist.
Supposedly Apple started with NetBSD when porting OS X to x86, not that x86 is exactly esoteric, but NetBSD lends itself to being a starting point. From what I read nothing remains of NetBSD in OSX, the current BSD userland is from FreeBSD but is pretty old still.
Apple Base Station and related firmwares (e.g. Extreme) ran NetBSD.
BSD-based products are more common than believed, but because of the liberal licensing they seem to mostly fly under the radar, not unlike various proprietary options like VxWorks and TRON.
Just to be clear vxworks is not bsd based that I could tell from Wikipedia. I work with Schneider electric plcs and sometimes vxworks errors bubble up.
I think they meant to say that BSD-based stuff is common but unknown to most, and that the same goes for VxWorks and TRON, in that both open source BSD and proprietary solutions have licenses that make their inclusion in other software products not noticed by many people.
I think it is used a lot as a starting point for porting other OS, but it doesn't necessarily persist.
Supposedly Apple started with NetBSD when porting OS X to x86, not that x86 is exactly esoteric, but NetBSD lends itself to being a starting point. From what I read nothing remains of NetBSD in OSX, the current BSD userland is from FreeBSD but is pretty old still.