From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 8 18:40:15 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5FDDF16A4CE for ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 18:40:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp3.server.rpi.edu (smtp3.server.rpi.edu [128.113.2.3]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1837643D1D for ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 18:40:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp3.server.rpi.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i092e1AI009006; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:40:03 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:40:00 -0500 To: "Vahric MUHTARYAN" , From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) Subject: Re: What is the end of FreeBSD ?! X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 02:40:15 -0000 At 2:19 AM +0200 1/9/04, Vahric MUHTARYAN wrote: >Hi Everybody , > > I don't know Who can answer it or Do FreeBSD creators >watching this list but I wonder What is the end of FreeBSD OS. > >I mean Does it like RedHat ?! one day will come and FreeBSD will >inform "After this date, We are Not Free" !!!! RedHat is a company, with employees it has to pay, and shareholders that it has to answer to. They *must* have a standalone business model -- one that allows them to make money. FreeBSD is still a group of volunteers, some who work for companies and some who work for fun. The companies do not make money from FreeBSD directly, but by using FreeBSD to get "something else" done, and they make the money from "something else". In my case, I work for a college. The college doesn't actually care at all about FreeBSD, but they pay me to make sure "Printing" works. I happen to do that with some programs from FreeBSD, so any work that I do on "printing" could be given back to FreeBSD without my college caring about it. Note that RedHat is not the only source for linux, so there are still ways to get linux for free. In fact, you can still get it for free from RedHat, but it's called Fedora and it will change at a much faster pace than Redhat used to change. To my mind, Fedora is pretty much the same idea as the freebsd-current branch. A cutting-edge product, appropriate for people who have the time to deal with the constant stream of (possibly incompatible) changes. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu