From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 1 00:50:30 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F1A8A16A4A6 for ; Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:50:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@freebsd.org) Received: from igloo.linux.gr (igloo.linux.gr [62.1.205.36]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6D49013C4E7 for ; Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:50:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@freebsd.org) Received: from kobe.laptop (ppp5-162.adsl.forthnet.gr [62.1.228.162]) (authenticated bits=128) by igloo.linux.gr (8.14.1/8.14.1/Debian-9) with ESMTP id m010UfkF020412 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Tue, 1 Jan 2008 02:30:53 +0200 Received: from kobe.laptop (kobe.laptop [127.0.0.1]) by kobe.laptop (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m010Ufr9060245; Tue, 1 Jan 2008 02:30:41 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@freebsd.org) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by kobe.laptop (8.14.2/8.14.2/Submit) id m010Ue5n060235; Tue, 1 Jan 2008 02:30:40 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@freebsd.org) Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 02:30:40 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Pollywog Message-ID: <20080101003040.GB2507@kobe.laptop> References: <10f7864f0712311010x2497409ava350991ccebf3ae2@mail.gmail.com> <200712312314.42749.lists-fbsd@shadypond.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200712312314.42749.lists-fbsd@shadypond.com> X-Hellug-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Hellug-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-4.399, required 5, autolearn=not spam, ALL_TRUSTED -1.80, BAYES_00 -2.60) X-Hellug-MailScanner-From: keramida@freebsd.org X-Spam-Status: No Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: corporate backers of freebsd X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:50:30 -0000 On 2007-12-31 23:14, Pollywog wrote: >On Monday 31 December 2007 18:10:55 Gary Smithe wrote: >> In short, here's my question: >> Canonical, RedHat, IBM, Novell, and a slew of others are funding / >> supporting Linux development and pushing some of that development >> into the free community, so that all can benefit from full-time >> developers and the money that supports them. > > This is true but on the flip side, Linux has become a target of the > patent trolls (Microsoft and SCO to name two) and thus far they have > left FreeBSD alone. This was one thing that prompted me to try > FreeBSD and to not depend exclusively on one OS solution. I am just > an individual user but this was still important to me. > > BTW you may have read that SCO has been delisted by NASDAQ :) This is probably a bit off-topic for the original thread, but SCO has filed for bankruptcy. This is probably related to being delisted by NASDAQ. To help a bit with the original question too: Yes, Gary, there are companies who also fund FreeBSD work in several ways, i.e.: * Paying developers on a per-project basis, to implement features which they need. * Employing developers, and then contributing code back to the FreeBSD Project. * Supporting FreeBSD drivers and subsystems, and working with the Project to keep their hardware support up to date, to implement new features, fix bugs, and so on. Some examples which I recall off the top of my head are: The support of Isilon Systems for VFS locking, which was then 'ported' back to FreeBSD. Jeff Roberson worked with Isilon Systems to bring VFS locking to FreeBSD, and it is not part of the official kernel source tree. NetApp and Isilon systems have made public statements, through the FreeBSD Foundation, about the reasons they like FreeBSD. Advocacy of this sort, from successful companies is also a good contribution to the Project. It may convince other companies to look at FreeBSD too. The hwpmc(4) performance counter work was started by Joseph Koshy, and then sponsored by Google and the FreeBSD foundation. NLNet supports the work of Marko Zec for the Network Stack Virtualization project. Cisco, iXsystems, Chelsio, Intel, Myricom, Neterion and others are actively contributing hardware to our "netperf" cluster. Sentex is hosting the netperf cluster, and has been providing ongoing support to the FreeBSD Project for a very long time now. ISC is hosting FreeBSD Project machines too. Yahoo!, Apple, Juniper, Philips and Cisco are employers of some of the most active FreeBSD developers, and they have contributed in many many ways to the well-being and ongoing development of FreeBSD as we know it today. Cisco has provided, through Randall R. Stewart, a fully functional version of the SCTP protocol, and Randall has done an excellent job both of integrating SCTP into the tree, and supporting / maintaining it later on. Last, but definitely not least, Google, through its wonderful `Summer of Code' projects, has funded the development of a huge number of features which are either already part of the main FreeBSD source tree, or are in the process of being refined, debugged, tested and integrated to the main FreeBSD system. The list of all the Google SoC projects is available through out web site, but here are some of the projects which I remember as I'm typing this: * BSD bintools project (some of the tools which are part of the GNU binutils have been cleanly implemented using only BSD-licensed code). * Improvements to the Ports infrastructure. This was completed and committed to CVS by Gabor Kovesdan, who was fudned by Google for _two_ years in a row. Kudos to both Gabor and Google for all the Ports work they have done :) * SNMP monitoring and a BSD-licensed snmpd daemon has been implemented by Shteryana Shopova and committed to the tree. This is, by far, not an exchaustive list, but just a *few* of the companies which have supported the FreeBSD Project so far. I have undoubtedly forgot many more, since I am both a relatively "new" FreeBSD team member, and I am not involved in *all* the sub-projects which are part of the greater FreeBSD Project "umbrella". There is a lot more information on our web site about companies who contribute to the development of FreeBSD. The quarterly status reports at and the `Newsflash' at are good places to "hunt" for this sort of information. HTH, Giorgos