Wind River lays off FreeBSD developers; Q&A 397
In the interests of full disclosure. I'm also nik@freebsd.org, 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.. (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you.
Re:preface.. (Score:1)
I already saw troll postings saying BSD is dying.
*sigh*
When will people realise the importance of volunteer based in these projects?
ObSidenote: I wouldn't label OP's post as funny.
Re:preface.. (Score:2, Interesting)
And look at BSD in comparison and it's absolutly nowhere near death (strong (fanatical) user base, fairly open etc.). BSD will pull through, becuase there are still shed loads of people using it (and unlike those dedicated amigans you dont need any exotic hardward to run it). Ok you don't have the media honey status of linux but I really don't think that is going to stop the platform riding this out. Ok so a bunch of the developers need new jobs (I see this as the main problem, trademarks and getting people to press the CDs are really secondary concerns..) but with the likes of apple taking an interest in the BSD codebase I can't see that these coders arn't going to be of interest to someone..
And I AM a linux person.. I have only ever installed it once exclaimed "oh thats nice" and then blatted it to make room for mp3s :). See we are not all that non-understanding.. Although to be quite honest what you guys really need is Debian BSD, see no corperate whoring no getting ripped off...
Re:preface.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, there are more concrete reasons why I don't use Linux as well, but my dislike of the community that I would be forced to deal with is a big part of my allegance to the BSDs. The Debian zealots are by far the worst and I would almost rather watch FBSD die than have it absorbed into the circlejerk.
So, no, I do not need a Debian BSD and, should it happen, I'm moving to Macs.
At this point, you are required to hurl the "wow, you must be really thin-skinned" or "good riddance" remarks my way. Go ahead, it's not as though you can chase me away twice.
Re:preface.. (Score:2)
Along with the alleged security holes in glibc (which most fBSD wonks can't seem to point out, despite saying they're there), the "excessive code bloat" (c'mon, let's get real here. Let's look at hardware support in fBSD, then in Linux, and then we'll talk about the codebase size) the alleged poor performance of Linux 2.4 kernels (Sysadmin showed this to not be the case; Linux systems still outperform fBSD machines overall) and the alleged poor management of Linux development overall.
Call it what you want, but I call it FUD.
I have no interest in being ridiculed for admitting that Linux is not the best choice for every job.
Agreed! However, I don't personally plan to start up a new Yahoo! so I don't need FreeBSD. For desktop machines, Linux outperforms FreeBSD. Sorry, but it's true. And yes, I've been an off-again, on-again FreeBSDer.
Of course, there are more concrete reasons why I don't use Linux as well, but my dislike of the community that I would be forced to deal with is a big part of my allegance to the BSDs. The Debian zealots are by far the worst and I would almost rather watch FBSD die than have it absorbed into the circlejerk.
For a real circlejerk, fire up your favorite IRC client, head for irc.linux.org (Openprojects) and hop into...#freebsd. Bonus if you get a kickban for asking questions about Linux compatibility (FreeBSD is not Linux!)
And it's not just #freebsd on OPN. Daily Daemonnews, FreeBSD Diary, FreeBSDzine...you name it. Many of the stories I've seen either are about "oh look, we're so much l33ter than Linux" or are loaded with comments by people creaming their jeans over FreeBSD.
And I didn't see people running to the press when a FreeBSDer stole code from the Linux kernel recently (bttv?) Apologists have even excused it ex post facto by stating that, hey, a Linux user stole BSD code without putting the required copyright notice on it (which has since been done, BTW.)
Come on. Let's get real here. Community matters . . . to a certain extent. The general attitude of developers is what should matter the most. Heck, I recently became one of those Debian folks after having used FreeBSD for a few months. I don't miss it a bit, to tell you the truth.
Re:You haven't met Theo have you? (Score:2, Funny)
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.)
Re:preface.. (Score:2)
No, but unlike the "dead" systems FreeBSD (and *BSD, and Linux) needs a certain amount of continued development just to keep it running.
Why? Well the hardware keeps changing. Even if you don't care to support the cutting edge the trailing edge moves. ISA cards are nearly gone, so if you refused to support PCI you would be about dead now. AT keyboards are being phased out, so if you can't support USB keyboards you are going to have to soon. Intel recently announced that they want to get rid of floppies (following Apple's lead!), so if you can't boot of CD-ROM of ethernet to do the first install, well you have some work to do.
Of corse FreeBSD can do all that, and there is no reason to believe that FreeBSD isn't going to keep up, but it is a good thing to remember that some effort is needed to keep even with a living hardware platform.
FYI, I think NetBSD was the first to get a USB stack (before Linux), and was one of the first free OS (or the first) to run on x86-64 (under simulation). They have even less manpower then FreeBSD. Of corse their main goal is being "the most portable", so they have frameworks for new busses, and a strong desire to test them out.
P.S. why pick on the amegians? There is still BSD 2.11, a full Unix for PDP-11 systems. That's right, 16 bit Unix shambles on, overlays and all.
Re:preface.. (Score:2)
Please reread what I wrote, not the IA-64, the x86-64. That would be the AMD thing, not the Intel thing.
Re:preface.. (Score:5, Informative)
Who volunteers for FreeBSD anymore?
The numbers are amazing.
FreeBSD developers chase off anyone who doesn't already have extensive experience.
That's definately not true. I have gained most of my experience during my years as part of the developers.
Furthermore, criticism isn't necessarily meant as discouragement, but don't forget that if you mention ideas to the BSD developers (speaking in general, not just the committers) that most of these people have made a living in programming and Unix before most people even heard of Linux or BSD as alternative to Windows.
There is a difference in age and mindset between the BSD community and the Linux community. I often see the BSD community to be geared around 30'ish whilst the Linux community seems to have people around 20'ish in there. Of course, both have their exceptions on the old and young ages.
Furthermore, what I noticed (and I have touched a lot of different Unix systems in my past, including different Linux distributions) is that the mindset in the BSD community seems less focused on hacking up stuff, but more on adding well-tested code -call it more mature code if you like-.
Again, this has its exceptions on both side.
And do note, I am not saying that either is technologically more advanced than the other, I am merely saying that for my wishes and desires BSD was better in that it was a full operating system with a mature way of development behind it. YMMV.
By the time someone has extensive experience, they're usually working on Linux already.
Quite possible. But everyone is allowed to send patches to the BSD projects, just make sure you take all comments merely as sharing of experience on how to approach things. I know my C skillset improved by getting `lectured' time and time again about things. And not just C, but also the ability to develop things as a team, do maintenance work, technical writing, and the list goes on.
It is quite possible that the bar to entering and hacking on Linux might be lower, but does it, in the end, make it more stable or faster or..? Do not forget, most subsystems, VFS, VM, drivers, are pretty specialist kinds of source code which do verge a lot of knowledge. Not to mention designing APIs. That's the beauty of peer review. Either people confirm my idea is sound and solid or they tell me I should recheck my understanding of things. But it is in the human nature to take most criticism as a scolding.
Re:preface.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, there is also a difference between asking How, and asking Why. I for one will always enlighten those seeking to understand, but I tell those looking for additional documented facts to open the damn book.
-WS
Re:preface.. (Score:2)
Regardless, you completely miss the point of what a free OS is, and how it lives and grows. Mindshare in corporate boardrooms is irrelevent. As any Linux fan will tell you, Linux != RedHat (or any other commercial distro). You're making the exact same mistake here.
There are several hundreds developers around the world working on FreeBSD. Only a small number of these are paid to do that development (and, in fact, most of those laid off from WRS were being paid to do other things and not just work on FreeBSD). It's just like Linux was before RedHat, IBM, and others -- and Linux did just fine (some would say better) before it had paid workers. People work on FreeBSD because they want to, and that's hardly changing.
It's the developer community that makes a free OS live. From a money prespective, FreeBSD has always gotten along on a shoestring -- and it will continue to do so. And others who appreciate its goodness will continue to use it. (The percentage may be small, but you neglected to report the fact that it's growing -- maybe not as fast as Linux at the moment, but time will tell.)
OS != web server (Score:2)
I work in Yahoo's infrastructure group, and I've never even heard of iPlant. However, I do know that we use FreeBSD boxes by the thousands
Yahoo use FreeBSD as the OS and iPlanet (which is another name for Netscape Enterprise Server afaicr) as their web server.
The percentage may be small, but you neglected to report the fact that it's growing
Not according to the latest Netcraft survey [netcraft.com]. I personally I like FreeBSD but Linux has so many easy to use tools and so much support which for me is more important than raw performance.
Phillip.
Re:OS != web server (Score:2)
iPlanet doesn't even have a BSD version (at least not according to their download page). Are they running the Linux version on FreeBSD?
Re:OS != web server (Score:2)
Phillip.
Re:preface.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The history part relegates BSD to the Clone Wars era, as it was a participant, and is now a victim of that period.
The license part is related to the Unix Clone Wars. The BSD license is weak and flacid in a very specific sense. It doesn't discourage selfishness. The BSD developers are probably at the height of altruism, where they are willing to literally give away their hard work without to others who are willing to take it, add to it, and refuse to share their additions. BSD developers don't care whether individuals or corporations take their code and make it proprietary.
The GNU license that Linux is under, protects Linux from a vicious Clone War. Even if the Linux codebase should split, either side will always be legally able to add innovations introduced by anyone who's taken the Linux code and attempted to make their own version. In fact, that happens quite often with Linux as different groups create different capabilities for specific purposes. This mechanism propogates innovation. But, everyone still understands that there is only one Linux, and those who change the code are careful to ensure compatibility. If they don't, anyone is capable of making sure that they do by changing the code themselves, since it is not hidden.
Younger people understand that as part of true participation, one needs to share. They've just come out of their 'teens, and growing lessons are fresh in their minds. *BSD has no rules in regards to sharing other than its almost non-existant license requires perpetuity.
Younger programmers distrust corporations, and prefer protection for their code. They don't see anyone as being a part of 'their' team if their hard work is taken and made proprietary. They see that as selfish. Basically, fairness in a game is strong encouragement to continue playing.
This is why Linux is currently fashionable in regards to mindshare and *BSD's mindshare steadily gets older. GNU/Linux is truly an OS for the people, by the people. BSD has a mixed history of altruism, elitism, and proprietism.
= Appi =
Merging BSD with Linux (Score:2)
Looking at the bad (humiliating) treatment of BSD (specially the way the FreeBSD team has been treated) at the hand of the commercial/for-profit world, may I humbly suggest that perhaps it's time to combine the talent pool of BSDs (Net- / Free- / Open-) and merge their effort to Linux, so that their effort will NOT be wasted, or be humiliated again.
I do understand the underlying philosophical differences existing between the BSD and Linux, but that was _before_ the BSD being so humiliated.
The spirit of BSD is such that they produce stuffs for the world and EXPECT NOTHING IN RETURN, so much so that they even ALLOW those for-profit entities to RAKE IN TRUCKLOADS OF MULLAH (read: Apple/Sun) but the irony is that the artruistic spirit of the BSD team (while now only confined to the FreeBSD team, it may spread to the Net- and Open- camp as well in the future, who know?) has not only being violated, they are being totally humiliated by being singled out, given pink slips, and shown the door.
The second irony is that the humiliation is happening EXACTLY at the 10th anniversary of Linux's first code appearing to the world - which took place at 5th, October, 1991.
And by the way, HAPPY 10th Birthday, Linux !
I think that it is time to throw away the philosophical differences between the BSD camp and Linux. Merging the talents from both camps would be a plus, since the Linux camp's adherence to the GPL spirit - you ain't gonna exploit my contribution to the world and MAKE MONEY FOR YOURSELF ONLY - may be the ticket to strike back at the humiliation by those hungry for-profit baddies.
But of course, my humble suggestion will forever remain a suggestion. It's up to y'all to decide what to do.
Thank y'all for reading.
Layoffs. (Score:1)
Seems a waste of some talent, someone here has to have an idea where this level of development team would be headed.
Re:Layoffs. (Score:4, Insightful)
They will not land with gnome, ibm, redhat, or some other branch of BSD. They remain FreeBSD developers, do you really think they will change their aims and goals because they got laid off? They merely had a chance to work on it fulltime compared to the part-time contributions of the majority of us (yes I am a FreeBSD developer too).
They will surely wind up in companies who can use their extensive skills and probably will still be heavily involved in BSD related issues at their next employer.
And then again they may not.
Re:Layoffs. (Score:2)
Serious. :)
Re:Layoffs. (Score:2)
I don't know...
/Brian
Re:Layoffs. (Score:2)
Re:Layoffs. (Score:2)
What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then? (Score:1)
Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems relatively decent, with no obvious problems...
It's somewhat disheartening to see this the same night I upped my box to 5.0...
jeff@boris [2:53am] ~: uname -a
FreeBSD boris.st.hmc.edu 5.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #0: Thu Oct 4 17:49:06 PDT 2001 root@boris.st.hmc.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/BORIS.
Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then? (Score:4, Informative)
It is and will remain a volunteer project.
The matter that corporations decide(d) to employ certain developers full-time to work on FreeBSD was only for the corporation's own benefit.
For god's sake people, it is not like the people they laid off now cease to exist.
Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then? (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm, no.
FreeBSD is still very much alive, and development of both 4-STABLE and -CURRENT continue as ever. AFAIK, none of the people being laid off are core team members or even really active source developers. Most of them work(ed) on documentation and improving the FreeBSD product line (CD box sets, etc.).
At the moment the release date for 5.x has been pushed out until late next year, partly because we've lost a few developers to real work, but also because we bit off more than we could chew... Rewriting the kernel for preemptive fine grain threading is a big task.
Other aspects of the project continue to be very actively developed. The Ports collection [freebsd.org] is almost at 6000 ports.
It is really sad to see people laid off, but this is just a side effect of the dotcom crash.
Regards,
-Jeremy
The bigger question... (Score:2, Flamebait)
The future (Score:1)
But how does this affect to the future of FreeBSD? The FreeBSD is, after all, an open source project and will continue to evolve with or without commercial support. Right?
Re:The future (Score:4, Informative)
We have 5.0 standing for November 2002 [this was changed from November 2001 due to the fact that we weren't quite satisfied with the current state and thought things were missing].
Until we release 5.0 in 2002 we continue to work on 4.x, so we will most likely see 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 and possible 4.8.
Releases will very probably be going through DaemonNews, since it looked like WRS shows no interest of doing so after 4.4.
So possibly all of you subscribers might want to look for a new distributor.
FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development (Score:2)
Re:FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development (Score:2)
There is the main development trunk, known as -CURRENT (or -HEAD and -MAIN in CVS terms). This is where all the really cool new stuff goes and as a result may be unstable at any given moment. Most work goes into this main trunk. This is 5.0 right now.
CVS allows branching of source. -CURRENT _used_ to be 4.0, but it progressed far enough to be -STABLE. A branch occured at that point, but -CURRENT continued growing straight up (becoming 5.0-CURRENT), and 4.X-STABLE started growing out to the side (just like a tree branch.)
When something in -CURRENT has been well tested and is deemed to be stable enough, it's merged into the branch below it. This is how -STABLE continues to grow. The latest -STABLE has reached 4.4 now.
CVS also supports tagging. It's primary use is to mark a snapshot of the CVS repository for -RELEASE.
It's always been done this way, and many, many software projects are developed this way.
This is unlike the Linux kernel development probably because Linus and friends don't use CVS (or if they do it's not public and it's not used in the same fashion.) Linux also has two different streams. The even numbered kernels are "stable", and the odd numbered kernels are "developmental". 2.2 used to be the stable branch, and 2.3 was the dev branch. 2.3 became the 2.4 stable branch, and 2.5 is now the dev branch. I only call them branches because I don't know what else to call them, not knowing how Linus actually manages source.
Re:FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development (Score:2)
It works pretty well, because users and developers have differing and sometimes incompatible needs. Users need a stable operating system whose behavior they can predict. But for the operating system to move forward, sometimes large changes need to be made, and they can't be made stable and predictable without some time for debugging. So the developers need a "sandbox" where they can do what they have to do and not worry about destroying users' expectations of stability.
Re:The future (Score:2)
No. The reasons why the ISOs are available is because the "free" in FreeBSD means "free". As in BOTH gratuis and libre. Download it for no cost then use it with no restriction.
fsck (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'd like WRS to do is this:
In short, if they are *not* interested in FreeBSD, which seems to be the case, they should just let it be. As others have pointed out, Wind River was mainly interested in BSD/OS, the closed-source BSD. They have got what they wanted, so firing people makes sense... Unfortunately.
Re:fsck (Score:1)
Re:fsck (Score:1)
Re:fsck (Score:1)
Re:fsck (Score:2)
The days of Walnut Creek of over. It's sad but it's true. Back when everyone had a 14.4K connection to the internet, downloading FreeBSD, Slackware, CICA, Simtel, Hobbes, etc., was not feasible. They made their money because it was cheaper to buy the CDs than to download the software.
The situation is much different now. The abundance of broadband connections and CD burners has changed the CDROM market. From the reports before the BSDi sale, Walnut Creek had been generating less and less revenue over the previous few years.
There is still a market of "official" FreeBSD and Slackware sets, but I don't see that market driving a viable business. There needs to be other things driving revenue as well.
Re:fsck (Score:2, Informative)
And to ansewr nvrrobx's question of Apple buying up the FreeBSD crew; Let me point out, Jordan Hubord, now works at apple, and let me also point out he cares about the people who worked under him at WC CDROM/BSDi/WRS, and I know of at least one possable "offer" there. Im sure there were others made also. I think its officaly under the Darwin Project, I donno, I don't keep tabs that much.
I'm just a blabber mouth
PR Blabber (Score:5, Funny)
Wind River: a fitting moniker for a company whose committment has dried up and blown away.
merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, a silly question from somebody who doesn't really follow *BSD:
Is there any chance of some consolidation in the *BSDs? I always thought it strange that there were three of them, but then I don't really know the history behind it.
I'm all in favour of competition, but four free Unix-like OSs (Linux + 3 * BSD) does some a little much to me.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:5, Informative)
FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are operating systems and split off for various reasons and now serve their own niches.
Linux is only a kernel. It becomes an operating system only due to the fact that people created their own distributions.
And if we look at the distributions, there are over 100 distributions (at least).
So ask yourself, which part is more ripe for consolidation then?
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
Yeah and a hacker is only a skillful coder. Maybe in the strictest sense that's true, but do to popular use Linux is now an operating system. Although I agree with your point, there's no reason for consolidation, choice is the operative word, the more OS's that are available the better. And IMHO the more *nix OS's the better, 'specially since they're, for the most part, compatible with one another.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is an operating system, the word has passed into the language with that definition due to use.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
This is all obviously an exercise in sematics, at the root I agree with you Linux is just the kernel, but due to the nature of language it means a lot more now.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
So, it's legally and technically correct to refer to the "RedHat Linux OS". Furthermore, anyone not named Linus Torvalds who tells you "Linux is only the Kernel!" is speaking without authority.
In fact, if he wanted to, Linus could licence his trademark to the "Corel Linux WordProcessor" or the "3Com Linux PCMCIA modem", and those things could properly be called Linux. Well, no sane corporation would dillute their brandname like this, but Linus already has (see VA Linux) and probably will continue to do so.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
So Linux is still technically only a kernel. Sure, Linux has pervaded our vernacular as being a complete OS
What the hell did I just get done saying im my first post. You just repeated exactly what I said.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:1)
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
If we'll take Apple which have OS X which is based of FreeBSD, should we call it BSX-OS X?
Most of those distributions (190, whatever) are simply a spin of Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE or Debian with few tweaks, more/less packages. You csn use the packages yourself on your favorite linux distributions without any problem. It's not like when you're moving from Windows to Linux or vice versa...
So whats your point?
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the most basic reason is that there are three different objectives, which aren't easily met in a single operating system:
BSD/OS is a proprietary implementation of BSD by Berkeley Software Design, who's name coincidentally enough has the same initials as Berkeley Standard Distribution. They're a commercial organization, so you get support etc. from them, whereas the others are ad-hoc. This doesn't mean there's no support and no product upgrading of course, just that they tend to proceed according to the developer's wishes rather than contractual obligations.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? + emBSD (Score:3, Informative)
There is another small BSD offshoot in the name of emBSD [embsd.org]. It is a stripped down version of OpenBSD and its primary objective is to create a firewall and/or router using as little hardware as possible (ideally with not moving parts like a hard drive).
Re:In which case the chosen names are inappropriat (Score:2)
I think the names were chosen long before anyone considered what the public might find confusing, and long before they were catchwords
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
Sorry, there are 190+ Linuxes.
The BSDs have carved out specific purposes for each other. OpenBSD wants 'security'. NetBSD wants portability. And FreeBSD wants to be the most useable on X86 processors via a combination of speed and a large number of packages.
To get security, you have to limit what you run, and that is counter to useability. (Microsoft claims to be the most useable, and look at all their secuity problems) Portability can be an issue with a large number of packages.
So:
1) No merger of Net/Open/Free
2) there is no Linux, there is over 190+ linuxes.
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
Except they may choose different official kernel versions, and different unofficial patches. They also might choose to have proprietary binary modules (I don't believe that is the least bit common).
That said the Linux kernels tend to be more similar then the *BSD kernels. That is both a good and bad thing.
I would have to say the Redhat userland and the Debian userland are no more similar then the NetBSD and FreeBSD userlands. Somewhat farther apart even.
I'm not a big Linux user (one Linux box at home, two BSDs), so I don't know if any are as far apart as OpenBSD and FreeBSD, but I don't find it hard to believe that there are at least two that far apart.
Again, this is both good and bad (in this case, more good then bad though).
Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? (Score:2)
FreeBSD will survive (Score:1)
As i look through the commits, it seems development is even going faster than ever
Cheer up guys, FreeBSD will overcome
Hmm, this again. (Score:4, Interesting)
- Company of bright people gets bought by larger company.
- Larger company fires everyone from smaller company.
- Smaller company no longer exists, nor does their product nor whatever research they were doing.
This just seems awfully wierd to me. It seems to me like you still have the same bunch of people open, aand they collectively have whatever money was used to buy them out; Why don't they just immediately reform back into the company they were? Sometimes there are intellectual property concerns, true, but not if the company subsisted primarily on research or if (like dynamix) they just got completely finished with a product and it was time to start on something else, or if their product is *cough* available under the BSD license. (Except it looks like what happened here was that there was a company that existed to create funding for FreeBSD, and a larger company bought it, took the bits that created funding, and stranded FreeBSD without either funding from them or funding from the funding mechanisms FreeBSD had created.. is this accurate?)I'm not sure what my question was. I'm just looking for comments on what seems like an odd issue to me, and wondering if anyone could try to show me why that if you're a small company with something actually sellable, it wouldn't at this point be a really foolish idea to trust another company enough to let them buy you. Given that you seem to have little proof that you're doing anything other than quietly signing your company out of existence after a three month grace period. I mean, if you just want to get rid of your products and logo, you could sell those things independently of the company itself.
Unless the reason these companies actually get bought is that some larger company wants to destroy a smaller company before they innovate themselves into being a competitor.
Unless the reason these companies get sold is that the CEO wants to quit, and he can get more money by steering the company into being sold than he can in a severance package.
Someone closer to the industry want to explain to me what is happening here?
Re:Hmm, this again. (Score:2, Interesting)
BSDi, having financial troubles (my opinion), tried to get on the open-source bandwagon by buying out Walnut Creak. This was, of course, in the time when having Linux in your product line allowed for huge market valuations. It didn't help them, though it tried.
WRS decided it wanted more technology, and bought BSDi. I think they were interested more in embeded side of BSD/OS, as well as enlarging their customer base. Either way, the FreeBSD side of the house never fit their profile. At least, with BSDi, FreeBSD was based on the same source-base as BSD/OS. Namely, BSD. (Of course.
Either way, this won't stop development of FreeBSD, so it's not exactly what you described. Rather, this cause logisitical problems for a bit until a) the FreeBSD trademark issue is solved, and b) the future of their core servers and how the core members will continue their development is dealt with.
Remember, the different is that this is still an open-source, community involved development project. If transmetal got bought-out and they fired Linus, it would not stop Linux. It would just change some of Linus's logistics. The principle is very similar here. (Except that core distributions were done by BSDi and Walnut creak. Core distributions are not done by Transmetal I believe.)
The "cash" has disappeared (Score:2)
There are other such buy-outs that were virtually all-stock. With 1-year lock-ins so that the founders can't sell stock. With non-compete clauses in the contract. Etc. There's one word for those small company founders now that the stocks they were paid with are worthless: SCREWED.
Does FreeBSD Foundation get a cut? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, WRS has divested the majority of its expenses related to FreeBSD, but will still sell merchandise and profit from it. Anyone know if they plan to contribute financially to the project based upon revenues/profits from the CD sales? Let's Hope...
Re:Does FreeBSD Foundation get a cut? (Score:2)
Re:Does FreeBSD Foundation get a cut? (Score:2)
HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:1)
100 or so unix gurus laid of at HP labs in NJ. X developers laid off from Wind River Systems. FreeBSD is dead and/or dying, HP/UX is dying, what is going to happen of the rest? Are these new employees skilled in unix-like OS programming going to move to other unix-likes? Windows? Mac (I guess technically a unix now)? Or will the the tumble merely continue, taking Solaris and linux, leaving Windows and the toy (Macintosh) standing?
As an unemployed unix C programmer, I'm worried.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:1)
First of all, BSD is not dying. In contrary it is growing.
Personally having used HP-UX I found it a shame HP is moving to Linux instead of HP-UX [I thought progress was based on technical merit? Seems hype is winning. =( ].
At this telco I work for our back-end systems will never switch to something like Windows. We have major uptimes on the Unix systems which the Windows machines cannot guarantee.
I still foresee a very bright future since a lot of the people around me start to complain more and more about Windows and where we can push Unix by proclaiming its stability and less idiotic licensing costs, we often win the debate...
Don't worry.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:1, Interesting)
Get a grip. :)
Merely questions. Living in New Jersey and watching the market get flooded with really intelligent people who have the exact same skillset as I is scary.
First of all, BSD is not dying. In contrary it is growing.
My comment was that FreeBSD was dead and dying. It started when the lead programmer and cofounder left to go work for Apple. It continued when 5.0 was pushed back by a year. Now with this news, I think it's impossible to say that FreeBSD is not dying, and personally I consider it dead.
Personally having used HP-UX I found it a shame HP is moving to Linux instead of HP-UX.
Personally having seen the source code and defect lists of HP-UX, I disagree. HP-UX died when they went SMP. They fucked it up big time, and it took years to get it back under control. Years which were wasted as other unixes went ahead. Actually this was largely due to the BSD-style code which was in the kernel (Sys V was much easier to SMPize), but from the little I know about the FreeBSD kernel they didn't have nearly the same problems as HP-UX.
At this telco I work for our back-end systems will never switch to something like Windows.
Your telco could probably use FreeBSD 1.0. I'm talking about the future.
I still foresee a very bright future since a lot of the people around me start to complain more and more about Windows and where we can push Unix by proclaiming its stability and less idiotic licensing costs, we often win the debate...
NT is getting there. I completely agree that unix is a much better product, but so was Beta (vs. VHS). I'm sure that unix will stick around in some form or another. I know nothing about the NT kernel, but I would assume it has a more tightly coupled GUI, for instance, which would pretty much guarantee that unix will always perform better and be more stable. But I don't even know if that assumption is true, and performance at the kernel level is becoming less and less of an issue with these faster and faster machines.
Don't worry. :)
I'm not worried about unix so much as my own personal career. I'm confident that unix will be around for many many many years to come, but how big of a market it will have and how many people will be hired in it. Where are all these laid off people going to go? Let me know at least that so I can put in my application!
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:2)
>easier to SMPize), but from the little I know
>about the FreeBSD kernel they didn't have nearly
>the same problems as HP-UX.
Why is it every source I've ever seen are under the impression that HP-UX is (and has been) based on the AT&T codebase (originally SVR2 iirc, currently SVR3.2 with SVR4 extentions)? I would think that the HP/UX instructors and engineers wouldn't lie to me about such things.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
That's really only relevant for simple desktop boxes; there's a limit on how much power you can really use to run office software. For heavy-duty, interesting applications, more machine speed gets eaten up by more load. CPUs are getting faster, but that increase gets eaten up by projects getting larger. And faster CPUs don't help that an OS is unstable, insecure, and/or unsupportable.
I'm pretty much a pure Unix geek [infamous.net]; I've never written a program on a Windows box. But even in this slow market, I get calls from recruiters a few times a month. Not as many as I did a year ago, but they're still calling. (Three times this week, in fact. If you're in Maryland, somebody's looking for a couple of AIX developers for a contract in Hunt Valley.) Unix is alive and well.
Yes, many Unix developers are getting laid off. Guess what? So are Windows developers. So are chip designers, grocery clerks, and auto workers. The economy's in "bust" phase. Welcome to capitalism.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:5, Insightful)
Merely questions.
I know, and my comment was semi-joking, hence the smiley.
My comment was that FreeBSD was dead and dying. It started when the lead programmer and cofounder left to go work for Apple. It continued when 5.0 was pushed back by a year. Now with this news, I think it's impossible to say that FreeBSD is not dying, and personally I consider it dead.
If you think that one person is the thing which lets FreeBSD live or die then I must sadly conclude you have been comparing FreeBSD too much with Linux.
FreeBSD, ever since I joined it about 2-3 years ago, and probably before that, the project didn't fall or rise with the come or leaving of one person.
5.0 was pushed back because of a lot of the developers, including myself, requested this since we didn't believe in releasing a `product' which we found was not what we wanted it to be yet. And we now added KSE to the kernel, which is a major step forward.
Your telco could probably use FreeBSD 1.0. I'm talking about the future.
Funny remark. I foresee a wonderful career for you as psychic instead, since you are able to conjure up the systems we use here. :)
NT is getting there.
Out of there yes. At least in Europe I see less and less usage of Windows systems and the replacing of Windows systems --which ironically first replaced Unix systems-- by Unix systems again.
Stability remains an issue and with the current licensing scheme introduced...
I know nothing about the NT kernel, but I would assume it has a more tightly coupled GUI, for instance, which would pretty much guarantee that unix will always perform better and be more stable.
Yes, NT has its graphical subsystem/driver in the kernel. Performance gain, likely, stability gain, not so likely.
[...]and performance at the kernel level is becoming less and less of an issue with these faster and faster machines.
If I can buy less state of the art hardware, speedwise, by having a kernel which is better designed and optimised and thus making good use of that hardware, I will. I am not going to counter a sloppy non-optimised kernel by buying mega-expensive hardware.
I'm not worried about unix so much as my own personal career. I'm confident that unix will be around for many many many years to come, but how big of a market it will have and how many people will be hired in it.
I think it will remain big. I have had no problems finding new Unix related jobs in the last year (switched jobs twice). Granted, that's Europe.
Where are all these laid off people going to go? Let me know at least that so I can put in my application!
Assuming you are referring to the, now, ex-WRS employees. I know some are busy on their own businesses, already heard some other FreeBSD developers offering them jobs since they know their skillset and the company they work for can use people like that. And others are just looking through the wanted ads. So it basically looks like whatever any person does when they get fired/laid off.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that one person is the thing which lets FreeBSD live or die then I must sadly conclude you have been comparing FreeBSD too much with Linux.
I don't believe that projects can survive without a strong central leader. I think there needs to be a central vision, and a decision maker to stop the differences of opinion from being something which is battled out over time. When 50% of the developers want to see FreeBSD go in one direction, and 50% of the developers want to see something else, you need a leader to tell 50% of the people to submit to the other 50% for the sake of the project.
Yes, NT has its graphical subsystem/driver in the kernel. Performance gain, likely, stability gain, not so likely.
Performance gain for the graphical applications, perhaps, but at best no effect on nongraphical applications, and more likely a detriment in performance on nongraphical applications. I'm on your side on that one.
Funny remark. I foresee a wonderful career for you as psychic instead, since you are able to conjure up the systems we use here. :)
True, true. But I can't let you get away with saying "unix works better for my telco" if you're not going to back up why. :)
If I can buy less state of the art hardware, speedwise, by having a kernel which is better designed and optimised and thus making good use of that hardware, I will. I am not going to counter a sloppy non-optimised kernel by buying mega-expensive hardware.
I'm not talking about mega-expensive hardware. Most mega-expensive hardware is built for non-microsoft operating systems anyway. And my point is that most of the performance gains in your low-end hardware is used by the applications, not by the kernel. Kernel CPU usage is growing linearly while CPU speeds are growing exponentially. As a result it is becoming much more important how well your applications are written, and much less important how the kernel is written. The most important factor in this is probably going to be marketing related. What OS system calls are the really smart programmers learning in college? Right now it's probably unix, but this could change, and that would be devestating.
Assuming you are referring to the, now, ex-WRS employees [....] it basically looks like whatever any person does when they get fired/laid off.
Well, I was more referring to the ex-HP employees, since I happen to live in NJ myself. And looking through job listings in this area, there is very little in the way of software companies using C/Unix. There are plenty of financial companies and other specific uses, and of course there are a ton of sysadmin openings, but personally I'm not so interested in writing software that's only going to be used by a single company. I'll do it for a few years, while the economy is tight, if I must, but if this is more permanent I'm going to have to consider either moving cross country, reeducating myself in Windows programming, or changing careers even more dramatically. I'm only a few years out of college, so starting my own business (presumably consulting) is not really an option. There's too much fear of us younger folk in these crazy economic times.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:2)
Apparently much of the open source community has no idea how open source projects actually function. Anyone who reads the FreeBSD mailing lists has seen major FreeBSD developers change jobs many times without losing their commitment to the project.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:2, Insightful)
With Apple adopting OSX (which I'm pretty damn sure is pronounced oh-ess-ecks), they've somewhat changed the playing field. One can now have a fairly decent UNIX OS behind the pretty graphics, and never actually have to touch the harder stuff IF one doesn't want to. I had the opportunity to play with the Darwin core for x86 for quite a while at my previous job, and it was not a bad piece of work. There were several things that were a pain, but I never had anything actually crash or die, as well it shouldn't.
I think that the smartest thing that Apple could do would be to release a full version of OSX for the PC. Granted, it would require a lot of work to get it to work with all of the PC hardware that is on the market at the moment, but at the same time, if they could work things out with a large vendor, like Dell or Compaq or HP or something, they could build a standard configuration that would be easily supported, and they could release lists of verified hardware. It would take a lot of work to get that far, but I think it would be worth it, and with the success that I've had with Linux as my desktop, I'd be more than willing to test out another UNIX (functionality-wise) for a different desktop, especially one that was designed for easy to use features. Hopefully, someone will realise this and do it.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:2)
Apple is a profitable hardware manufacturer. It's no coincidence that none of the people calling for them to port OS X to the PC are Apple stockholders. It would be fiscal suicide.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:2)
Smartest thing for whom?
Keep in mind that Darwin/x86 currently doesn't support VIA or AMD motherboards, and doesn't support IDE hard drives. They've got a loooong way to go before it's ready for the market.
Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD (Score:2)
Regarding Linux, probably 60-75% of Linux originates overseas with part-time developers. Virtually all of KDE, QT, major subsystems of the Linux kernel, etc. were developed overseas. These people are unlikely to quit developing Linux just because a few American dot-coms go bust. For that matter, I no longer work for a Linux company myself, and still fix the occasional bugs that are found with the software I support (or with hardware that it drives, which sometimes requires the software to be hacked to make a certain piece of brain dead hardware work :-(. )
Stability (Score:2, Insightful)
This makes little sense to me. The whole beauty of FreeBSD vs. Linux (to me) was the simplicity. I didn't want distros and rpms and a gui install and all the other crap that came with Linux when I was installing a server. How hard would it be to just maintain the current tree and work only on the really important server features, bug fixes, and essential drivers?
I suggest the FreeBSD community forks FreeBSD, GPLs it (possibly with a modified GPL to support the advertising clause, where necessary), and then continues to maintain FreeBSD by porting new Linux drivers, fixing bugs, and if there's enough manpower, adding server-only features/performance enhancements. Yahoo used to run a lot of FreeBSD machines. I assume they still do. Yahoo combining efforts with the FreeBSD community (utilizing the GPL to try to coax a little more sharing) could do it.
I'm going to look into how realistic this (forking and GPLing) would be right after I finish hitting submit.
Re:Stability (Score:3, Insightful)
And GPLing is not at all necessary. Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?
This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.
Re:Stability (Score:2)
Pretty trivial, since over 99% of the people working on FreeBSD were not WRS employees, and thus are still working wherever they were working last week.
The hardest part would be getting them to stop work on 5.0, halting work on less important features, and giving up on making the nonessential drivers work. :-)
That would be a lot harder. Legally it is easy, however many of the current developers would not be interested since they like the existing license for business reasons, or moral reasons, or just plain stuburness. Loss of those people would hurt a lot.
P.S. the advertising clause has been gone for quite a while.
Re:Stability (Score:2)
Some parts uses the FreeBSD, and some parts are using iPlanet...
www.yahoo.com, mail.yahoo.com runs on FreeBSD, but vision.yahoo.com, radio.yahoo.com gives sometimes OS as "unknown" on Netcraft...
Re:Yea! (Score:2)
Considering you said "GPL on the otherhand is the best of both free and proprietary," I would wager good money that it's you who are the idiot. Why in hell would I wish to use a license you claim is the best of proprietary?
What about APPLE!? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Ummm Isnt Apple's OSX built on FreeBSD?
Ahhh the trappings of the BSD license, you do the work - someone else makes money by stealing it.
Re:What about APPLE!? (Score:3)
The point of the license is that it *wasn't* stolen.
You many not agree with the author's choices in licenses but please don't accuse others or make up stories. The authors determined what license best fit their needs and goals and Apple used it accordingly.
It's to Apple's credit that they've since maintained an Open Source distribution [apple.com] of this along with paying for engineers to port it to a platform they're not on, hosting the web-site, and keeping it current with their commercial distribution.
Disagreement is a fair thing, misinformation and calumny are not.
Note: You are perfectly free to choose whatever license you like when/if you produce something.
Re:What about APPLE!? (Score:2, Insightful)
*shrug* Some people just believe that freedom shouldn't come at the cost of coercion. They believe that their code is as free as it can ever be; and they are right. The code they have written is, indeed, freely available to the entire world. Does that necessarily have to mean that the code someone else writes has to be as well? Should it not be that other person's choice as to whether they want to release their own sweat and blood upon the world in whatever form they choose?
You see, to put it very simply, it boils down to where you want your freedoms to lay. People who choose licenses such as the GNU's General Public License believe that the code should be free, as though it somehow has rights. Or maybe it's just a control issue. "I wrote that code and you have to do what I say if you want to use it! Don't like it? TOUGH! Write you own code then, infidel!"
However, people who choose less restrictive licenses like the BSD license care more about the freedom of the people who write the code. Those folks believe that if you write code, you should get to say what can be done with it, even if that code cannot stand on it's own as part of a separate program. Their code is their gift to the world, and nothing can lessen that gift -- no, not even incorporating their code into a proprietary, closed program. They're glad that that person or company could make good use of what they had written. (And who knows; when the money starts getting thin and the coder needs employment, how much do you want to bet the company who used her code will be a little more eager to give her a job?)
So, is your free software truly free?
Re:What about APPLE!? (Score:4, Insightful)
And releases it as Darwin. But otherwise, yeah you're right. Look at what happened to Apache and X without the protection of the GPL, they're just in the dustbin of history now, aren't they?
Re:What about APPLE!? (Score:2)
As others pointed out, the whole point of the BSD license is that the contributors are philosophically happy with having their code used in commercial products.
Man, the clueless Linux bigots are really out in force today.
Re:What about APPLE!? (Score:2)
Re:Think Mach (Score:2, Interesting)
Mach is a microkernel. You do not know what a microkernel is.
Mach is meant to float between your OS kernel and your hardware. It is there to let your OS kernel interface with the hardware. It is there to provide a layer of abstraction so that os x, and things developed for os x, are less hardware-dependent.
Those are not "BSD compatibility libraries" sitting on top of mach. They are actual BSD code. They were originally a version of FreeBSD, but NeXT/apple has (like with the xMach and mkLinux projects) tweaked the system from being a monolithic kernel to using mach.
If you really care whether what you're talking about makes any sense or not, maybe you should go read some of the excellent developer documentation at apple's website. I suggest you don't listen to anything i've said, as some of what i've said above may have been slightly innacurate and instead find out for yourself what is happening, starting with here [apple.com], which is an overview of the kernel environment of os x and appears to go into the relationship between the mach and bsd portions of the system. There is also lots of helpful low-level documentation linked from Apple's roadmap to Darwin documentation. [apple.com] Had you spent three minutes using search engines, you could have found these documents yourselves.
I'm going back to bed.
Idiots (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Idiots (Score:2)
I wish I could say I was surprised.... (Score:2)
When they bought BSD I really wondered what they were thinking, as I was at a loss to see how BSD fit into their corporate strategy. The BSD kernel is much more competent than the VxWorks kernel, but being Free Software there is little value added from WRS - I can just embed BSD and avoid dealing with WRS. If they had a good history of decent board support packages I might see where they would be of value to me, but given how poorly they've supported VxWorks with BSPs, I have little confidence they would really have a benefit for their support.
Now, had WRS been able to buy Cygnus before RedHat, that would have made sense - Tornado (Wind River's VxWorks development package) uses the GCC toolchain, so owning the primary developers for GCC would have made sense. But I cannot see where the advantage to owning BSD is to WRS.
However, this just goes to show the power of Free Software - while WRS may screw up BSD.COM, they can never kill BSD.
#include <std-disclaimer.h>
The views expressed here are mine, not my employer.
Re:I wish I could say I was surprised.... (Score:2)
Re:I wish I could say I was surprised.... (Score:2)
Re:Differences (Score:4, Informative)
NetBSD grew out of FreeBSD during an uncomfortable time when the FreeBSD regents, the individuals who guide FreeBSD's growth in a kind of guiding council, were focussed on ix86, and only ix86 for their OS. The NetBSD team's goal has been portability above all else, and can be likened to rabbits. You name the platform, the NetBSD guys are already installed there, or working on a distro for it.
OpenBSD grew out of NetBSD, as certain individuals wanted a stronger emphasis on security. OpenBSD inherited a fairly wide platform base from its NetBSD foundation, but their primary goal is security by default.
If you needed a system to sit exposed to the internet, I cannot recommend OpenBSD strongly enough. If you need a system to serve data quickly using inexpensive hardware, FreeBSD has many performance advantages, even over the linux 2.4 tree. And, if you want Unix on your Atari Falcon, go grab NetBSD, you nutcase. =)
Oh, and if you want a Unix your grandmother can be comfortable with, go get OS X.
Re:Differences (Score:4, Informative)
NetBSD and FreeBSD simultaneously grew out of the 386BSD project which was headed by Bill Jolitz. It was a project that ported 4.4BSD to the i386.
There's no such thing as "FreeBSD regents". You're thinking of the Regents of the University of California, who owned the (open source) license to BSD. They're a bunch of university administrators and have nothing to do with operating system development.
In fact, NetBSD is technically older than "FreeBSD", as FreeBSD was then just a handful of people (4 or 5) who started releasing patches to 386BSD called the "386BSD Patchkit".
You're right about the rest.
For your (and anyone reading this) review, see
Re:Differences (Score:2, Informative)
Though true, it also was due in part to a conflict of personalities. Pretty much anyone who knows (or of him, I've never met him personally) Theo de Raadt see him as immensely talented, but also fairly abrasive. This had about as much to do with him leaving and forming OpenBSD as anything else.
This is not to disparage Theo. He has contributed a lot to not only OpenBSD, but other systems as well. There is a lot more code sharing among the BSDs than most people realize. Any holes found in OpenBSD get notified elsewhere. I know that the USB stack is fairly common across all systems, in facet the code has CVS ident strings for both FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Re:Differences (Score:2, Informative)
FreeBSD runs on i386, and Alpha.
Btw, just for information: Sparc64, PPC and IA-64 are being worked on and committed to the sourcetree.
Re:FreeBSD and BSDI (Score:2)
s/FreeBSD/AvailableBSD/g
or
s/FreeBSD/BestBSD/g
The first is a suggestion of stability, openness, etc. The problems are that available is too long, and the acronym looks strange -- ABSD (but perhaps all acronyms look starnge at first).
The second seems a bit vainglorious. Perhaps you could just call it BBSD and hint that it was used for bulletin boards.
(I like Linux, but you've got great names.)