...and the claim in the body text: "True, there is Linux under the hood but you have to go out of your way to find it."
So, huzzah for another great victory for Linux (like TiVo, Android...) made possible by hiding Linux as much as possible.
The upside should be that everybody contributes back into the global pool of source code, and that even people who would never buy a chromebook benefit by google's source contributions. I don't know how that works out in practice though.
- Windows 8 (RT/Phone): NT kernel development started in 1989.
- BB OS 10: QNX 4.0 released in 1990.
- OS X 10.8 / iOS 6: NextStep first shipped in 1989.
What is strange to me is how little-used BSD is, given its more permissive license.
And why not BSD? I'd mainly say mindshare, and portability to a degree. You don't have to release your source every time you port BSD to a shiny new platform. BSD code is out there (networking stacks, a handful of the base *nix utils in OSX), but the permissive license cuts both ways.
Apparently, many of your home electronics likey run QNX, and you wouldn't know it.
Every so often I get surprised as to where BSD is when I come across it.