Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 02:11:49 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Dale Chulhan" <dchulhan@uwi.tt>, "FreeBSD Questions" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Future And Direction Of FreeBSD Project Message-ID: <002901c15ad9$94f3e720$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3BD224E7.77D12ECE@uwi.tt>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Dale Chulhan >Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 6:29 PM >To: FreeBSD Questions >Subject: Future And Direction Of FreeBSD Project > > >Hello, > >To my shock and horror, I read that FreeBSD is now without corporate >sponsorship and that there are now plans by daemonNews to take over that >role. > This depends on your point of view. If your a Jordan, or a core member, or even someone knowlegable of FreeBSD's history, you will probably say that it never really had corporate sponsorship. In short, the modern FreeBSD of today draws it's roots from BSD Lite (a non-bootable, reference operating system) and a tremendous amount of work and rework by many members of the community. While it originally was mainly distributed by Walnut Creek CDROM, most of the people that did the work on it did not work directly for Walnut Creek. This got a bit blurry with BSDI and later WindRiver as many of the major players on FreeBSD went to work for that entity. It's now back the way it used to, with the vast majority of people contributing code not actually working for WindRiver or DaemonNews Howver, the problem is that the PERCEPTION of the general computing community of FreeBSD (those members that knew what it is, that is) was very much colored by the close association of the FreeBSD Project and Walnut Creek, followed by the acquisition of Walnut Creek by BSDI, then followed by the acquisition of BSDI by WindRiver. This is because the FreeBSD project never in the past took great pains to distance itself from the "designated host fish" as it were. Of course, now it's very much in vogue for the core team members that care about such things (not many of them do, actually) to yell at the top of their lungs "we aren't affected by what [insert designated host fish here] is doing" but this is a comparatively new development. It's also very convenient when dealing with the typical corporate suits in a corporation to slap out [designated host fishie's name] when the question is raised "This FreeBSD stuff is all well and good but who did you say the name of the vendor was?" instead of taking a half-hour explaining how support on Free Software _really_ works. I mean, you can hardly tell a corporate businessman that is considering running his operations on FreeBSD that if there's a problem with it "I'll just post the problem to this mailing list, see..." That kind of has to come later - AFTER he's seen the stuff running solid and stable for 6 months and has a little faith in it. So, the upshot is that there are some fundamental reasons that HAVEN'T GONE AWAY for many FreeBSD users to "pretend" that there's a designated flagship corporate sponsor. Right now, that's WindRiver, in the future it may be Daemon News or both, for that matter. >So I am here sitting wondering what's the real scoop with the project >and can we say definitely that this project is independant of corporate >sponsorship? > This depends on what consists of corporate sponsorship. Is it support? Well, for a short time BSDI and WindRiver were selling support contracts for FreeBSD. I don't see that listed anywhere on WindRiver's site today, the only FreeBSD support they seem to be offering anymore is installation technical support on FreeBSD CD's that are sold with their name on it. In short - for the $40 price of the CD you get a 800 number to call for a support tech to help you get the OS loaded. This is not to say that there aren't lots of companies out there offering technical consulting of FreeBSD. (there are) On the other hand, if your definition of corporate sponsorship is paying money for things the project needs (like hosting) well they seem to have a lot of fingers in that pie now. Last I heard Qwest.net was footing the bill for the central repository servers. Since most of FreeBSD distribution servers are mirrors of the central one, those mirrors are supported by the ISP's and companies that maintain them. Or, if your definition of corporate sponsorship is an entity that is paying money out for salaries of developers - well that only happened for a short time when BSDI had announced they would shift the entire commercial BSDI codebase over to FreeBSD. But that never happened and Wind River won't do it of course. And even during the heyday of BSDI they certainly wern't paying salaries of more than probably 1% of all FreeBSD developers. >What about the fired workers are they still willing to work for the >project? And people like Jordan etc. are they still actively involved or >is the project being gradually deserted? > The project is always constantly adding new developers and shedding old ones that decide to go off and do something else. It's not being deserted. >What has Linux have that we don't? > A bunch of developers that are running around with ego's the size of Manhattan, who cannot resist at spouting off at the least little thing that they think impacts them, even when it has nothing whatsover to do with them. By and large the FreeBSD developers are more pragmatic, and don't tend to shoot off their mouths too much (and the ones that did got burned in the BSDI collapse and are now more gun-shy) While this is great if the idea is to build an OS that's strong and stable, it isn't very good for grabbing press. And if your goal is a Linux in every pot, you gotta grab a lot of press to do it. >Hell, If I had even half the talent of some of you guys I'd be more than >willing to give up my free time to this cause, but right now I don't >feel that I have enough to contribute. > There's a very important thing you can do to contribute - and it's probably the most important thing that anyone who uses and likes FreeBSD can do - tell as many people about it as you know and who might be interested. People will eat what's set down in front of them if there's no other choice. But, if given a choice they will always pick the best quality. It's only when things like pricing, support, and political salability are considered that they will cave in (ie: compromise) and take the worse-tasting dog food. If a colleage of yours in the business only knows Microsoft, if YOU never tell him about FreeBSD, then he can't help but continue to eat the dog food. >So please what's going on with my favourite OS? > look in the mirror and ask the question - whoever you see in the mirror is the only one that can answer that. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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