Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 06:47:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Linh Pham <lplist@closedsrc.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, Don Wilde <Don@Silver-Lynx.com>, Anders Nordby <anders@fix.no>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, <core@daemonnews.org> Subject: Re: [dn-core] Re: Perens' "Free Software Leaders Stand Together" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.33.0105180638230.24451-100000@q.closedsrc.org> In-Reply-To: <20010518120133.G48909@lpt.ens.fr>
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On 2001-05-18, Rahul Siddharthan scribbled: # Greg Lehey said on May 18, 2001 at 19:01:14: # > # > On Thursday, 17 May 2001 at 21:56:29 -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: # > # > > In BSD-land, you don't have people making millions of dollars # > > primariarly off of repackaging the BSD distribution. # > # > You don't in Linux-land either. That's why the Linux companies are # > going broke. # # As for BSD-land: how about Apple? (They haven't made millions yet but # they're certainly hoping to.) Apple will make some money off of Mac OS X, but the main source of their money is from the hardware (look at the prices of some of the add-ons and upgrades found on their online store... heck... look at the price of the G4 Cube when it first came out). The other product Apple will make money on is the Mach/BSD/Aqua/Carbon/etc-ized Mac OS X Server which will be coming out later this year. Critics have stated that people might still stick with Linux, xBSD, etc rather than going with the next version of Mac OS X server... dunno... guess it's a little too early to tell there. # True, they didn't just repackage, but added a lot to BSD; but Red Hat # added a lot to Linux, too. Red Hat made a point of releasing # everything they did under a free license, but they didn't have to (and # others like SuSE/Caldera don't. And Red Hat doesn't seem to be going # broke, either.) Red Hat makes quite a bit of money off of their additional services and bundling ties with their high-end Linux server packages. They are still bleeding, but not nearly as bad as they were initially. # I think there's only one reason why companies don't "suck in" (as Ted # put it) and repackage the BSD systems, and that is that the BSD # systems didn't get the same mindshare as linux did. It is also # true that unlike linux, the BSD systems are complete systems by # themselves, without the same need of repackaging; but they could still # benefit from some of the end-user polish which linux has been getting, # like the install process, autodetection of hardware, and so on. Although xBSD never took off in the sense if multiple distributions or the media hype generated by free software, open source, the Microsoft destroyer... remember, much of the hype was done during the most heated points in the Microsoft anti-trust case. I think where BSD has it's mindshare is in companies like F5 and Intel (both use a BSD kernel and BSD-like userland in their middle to high-level load balancing units) or with the network appliance market (although Linux has it's stake there too). -- Linh Pham [lplist@closedsrc.org] // 404b - Brain not found To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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