Wind River lays off FreeBSD developers; Q&A

SidVicious and Intosi both wrote in with news that Wind River Systems (WRS), who had acquired BSDi's software assets earlier this year, including a team of FreeBSD developers, has laid off those developers. This has also been reported in other places, such as DaemonNews. This raises some interesting questions; for example, what happens to the "FreeBSD" trademark, which Wind River currently own. Read on for Wind River's answers to this and other questions.

In the interests of full disclosure. I'm also [e-mail], although not a WRS employee. I was employed by BSDi in Europe, before the European team were laid off as part of the WRS acquisition. These questions were answered by WindRiver's PR department.

Q: WRS has already been through two rounds of layoffs in the recent past. Why this third set of lay offs now? Are the FreeBSD developers the only ones affected?

Wind River has only had two rounds of layoffs. During the second round Wind River decided to divest itself of the FreeBSD project. We spent several weeks looking for a suitable corporate sponsor but did not find any company with sufficient interest and financial capability in this challenging economy. This week's layoff of the FreeBSD employees is therefore Wind River's "final option" in executing the plans set in motion by the second round of layoffs.

Q: WRS currently own the trademark "FreeBSD". Do WRS plan to retain the trademark? If so, why? If not, will WRS let the trademark lapse? Or are there plans to transfer it to a third party, such as the FreeBSD Foundation?

Wind River plans to ensure continuation of the altruistic, open stewardship of the FreeBSD trademark. We feel strongly that the FreeBSD project must be protected and encouraged and that a FreeBSD trademark in the wrong hands could be very detrimental. We continue to search for the best solution. No specific third-party has yet been determined, but transfer to a suitable third-party is the leading option being considered.

Q: WRS own the "bsd.com" domain. Will that be retained?

Possibly. Wind River will continue to invest in BSD/OS and participate as a highly interested member of the *BSD community. As such, the bsd.com domain may be important for Wind River. We are weighing this against the needs of the *BSD community and hope to resolve the issue later this month.

Q: What's happening to the "FreeBSD Mall", at freebsdmall.com?

freebsdmall.com continues to operate and take orders, and all new and existing orders from customers for FreeBSD 4.4 or other products will continue to be fulfilled. Wind River is still evaluating its long term options and strategy for the FreeBSD Mall, but plans to maintain its presence and service either internally or externally.

Q: As part of the BSDi acquisition, WRS will (presumably) have picked up customers who had subscribed to the BSDi CD sets of FreeBSD. Will WRS continue to service those customers, or are their subscriptions now cancelled?

Like all customer contracts, subscription orders will continue to be fulfilled.

Q: BSDi (and, it seemed, WRS) had made some headway in producing additional FreeBSD boxed products to go in to the retail channel. Will WRS continue to do this?

Wind River is currently continuing activities to promote FreeBSD 4.4 through the retail channel. Future FreeBSD releases will probably not be produced or distributed by Wind River.

Q: Will WRS continue to produce the usual 4 disc CD sets of FreeBSD, including one for the recently released FreeBSD 4.4?

Yes, for FreeBSD 4.4.

Q: WRS had been funding work on the FreeBSD Handbook, in order to print the second edition in the near future. [ Disclaimer, I'm co-editor of this work, along with your employee, Murray Stokely ] Will WRS continue with plans to print the second edition of the FreeBSD Handbook?

Wind River will encourage any stewards that emerge to take on FreeBSD publication to complete and publish this work.

Q: WRS houses the "FreeBSD Test Lab" at its Alameda campus. Will WRS continue to host this facility?

No. Some equipment from this lab will be transferred to Yahoo! which hosts much of the build structure equipment for FreeBSD, as well as the primary CVS source repository and main FreeBSD mail server. Wind River does not plan to maintain the FreeBSD test lab at its Alameda, CA headquarters.

preface..

[terpia]

I would like to preface this by saying that *BSD is NOT dying.
Thank you.

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[kkenn]

FreeBSD 4.5

PR Blabber

[rjamestaylor]

Q: WRS had been funding work on the FreeBSD Handbook, in order to print the second edition in the near future. [ Disclaimer, I'm co-editor of this work, along with your employee, Murray Stokely ] Will WRS continue with plans to print the second edition of the FreeBSD Handbook?

Wind River will encourage any stewards that emerge to take on FreeBSD publication to complete and publish this work.

Typical PR blather in the answer to this question, which properly should have been, "No." Here's a translation/exposition:

• Encourage

  Morally, not financially, support. As in, "Go for it! [aside: on your own dime]."

• Stewards

  An unpaid volunteer; this term is used to appeal to ones altruism; see

  Sucker

• that emerge

  The current arrangement is finished, something else will have to be arranged without our intervention (thus, "emerge" as if spontaneous)

• complete and publish

  As far as we're concerned, this project is aborted. Have a nice day.

Wind River: a fitting moniker for a company whose committment has dried up and blown away.

Idiots

[mosch]

Idiots and trolls, please post your 'FreeBSD is dying' messages here, so that they may be summarily ignored.

Re:You haven't met Theo have you?

[skullY]

He's the reason I don't run OpenBSD. I've never met anyone who fell into the "arrogant jackass" category as neatly as he does. The only other person I've taken as immediate a dislike to is DJB

He may be an arrogant jackass, but he's never come across to me as thinking his OS is perfect for anything and everything, which is the attitude I was complaining about. He's just arrogant about how secure his software is.

The funny thing is, that's the sort of arrogance I like, and is one of the reasons I run his software. Then again, I also use a lot of djbware, for the same reason. They're two people who have earned their arrogance, and even though I'v been (indirectly) put down by djb(*), I still respect both of them and will use their software.

(*For those who are curious, DJB once posted to bugtraq saying that there aren't any patches to qmail he will endorse, and that mast of them are shit. I've produced a patch or two for qmail, and he's right. Compared to the quality of code he writes, my stuff and most everyone else's stuff is shit.)