Joe Maloney

Open-source contributor · github.com/pkgdemon

Blog

The 50th Floor Porting launchd to FreeBSD — and why FreeNAS Corral is next. On the phases of a software life, AI as a paintbrush, vibe coding honestly, and the rabbit hole that led to a standalone Mach kernel module.
How a Computer Should Work The case for an offline-first appliance, simple enough for a mere mortal. A quiet boot, login without the internet, applications you actually own, upgrades that don't erase your disk, and a desktop that runs on refurbished hardware.

A System 7 Workalike on Devuan Feasibility study for a graphical-only Devuan ISO: mlvwm on XLibre, a System Folder over bind-mounted FHS paths, AppImages dropped into /Applications, .sit extraction straight into HFS volumes, and classic Mac software via Executor and Advanced Mac Substitute — no Apple ROM, no redistribution problem. With mockups and diagrams throughout.
A GNUstep Front End for Executor Porting plan from a code review of both Executor trees — ARDI's 1993 NeXTSTEP front end and autc04's modern C++17 fork. Four pure virtuals, ~1,000–2,000 lines of Objective-C++, and the traps that cost someone a day each in 1993: the update deadlock, the bitmap format flag, the XOR cursor. Why per-window NSWindows are impossible and rootless works anyway.
Executor, Read Twice — Code Review Findings The evidence behind the porting plan, with file and line citations throughout. The VideoDriver contract, the threading and deadlock rules, pixel formats, the libobjc2 toolchain traps, the GNUstep API gap tables, why the nibs can't be opened, and why HFS_XFer's HFS engine is dead code. Includes what could not be verified.

SquashFS Setup Guide for Gershwin Workspace Building a SquashFS-based workspace on Debian/Linux.
Setting Chromium as the Default Web Browser Configuring the default browser under GNUstep.
Fixing .local (mDNS) Resolution Getting mDNS name resolution working on Debian/Devuan.
Zsh System-Wide Setup Configuring zsh as a system-wide shell environment.
ALSA + dmix + apulse Setup Sharing the sound card via ALSA dmix with apulse, no PulseAudio/PipeWire.
NFS Locking Freeze Investigation Why Chromium screen-share freezes the X session when $HOME is on NFS: the server doesn't register NLM, SQLite POSIX locks block in fcntl(), and the main thread stops servicing X events. Evidence, root cause, and fix.

GNUstep Research Menu rendering (macOS vs GNUstep), menu-bar ownership, the WindowServer.app display-server plan, and the Gershwin WindowManager QA plan.
FreeBSD Research Live ISO / livecd architecture, SquashFS on FreeBSD, gunion/unionfs reroot, and the native Copier.framework installer backend.
Launchd Research Porting Apple’s launchd to FreeBSD — the AF_UNIX sockets track and the Mach track (mach.ko, libdispatch, XPC, configd, IOKit, and the userland command ports).
NextBSD CI pipelines, native cross-build, the Gershwin live-ISO pipeline, kernel syscall-slot work, and the .ko→.kext conversion for the NextBSD base.
Gershwin Research The Gershwin desktop — installer backends (Linux/FreeBSD/NextBSD), live-ISO architecture, and component/CI plans for gershwin-desktop.

NextBSD 2026–present — Commits, Pull Requests Reviving NextBSD — macOS system technologies (launchd, Mach IPC, libdispatch) on a modern FreeBSD base, with a CI-built kernel, modules, and live ISO.
HexBSD 2025–present — Commits A native macOS application, written in Swift, for managing FreeBSD servers.
Gershwin 2025–present — Commits, Pull Requests A GNUstep-based desktop environment.
GNUstep 2024–present — Commits, Pull Requests Open-source implementation of the OpenStep / Cocoa frameworks — Foundation, AppKit, and the Objective-C runtime.
GhostBSD 2015–present — Commits, Pull Requests Desktop-focused FreeBSD distribution with a ready-to-use graphical environment.
FreeNAS/TrueNAS 2015–2022 — Commits, Pull Requests FreeBSD-based network-attached storage operating system, with ZFS at its core.
HelloSystem 2019–2020 — Commits FreeBSD-based desktop system designed for simplicity and a Mac-like experience.
NextBSD 2015–2016 — Pull Requests Effort to bring macOS system technologies — launchd, Mach IPC, libdispatch — to a FreeBSD base.
PCBSD/TrueOS 2013–2018 — Commits, Pull Requests Desktop-oriented FreeBSD distribution (later TrueOS), focused on ease of installation and use.

More examples, including forks I've contributed fixes to, can be found on my GitHub.