Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 17:41:48 -0500 (EST) From: James Howard <howardjp@wam.umd.edu> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: InformationWeek Proposal, revised Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0001301737410.12661-100000@sun15pg2.wam.umd.edu>
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Below is my final draft of the proposed column for InformationWeek. I have incorporated every change given. Briefly, they are: Wes's split of the development paragraph Chris's plug for DaemonNews (I chose to hype his new site:) Numerous smaller changes in the final paragraph Paragraph on security stolen from www.freebsd.org/security Picked a title, "Serving the World", I want a tee-shirt with this complete with the Daemon holding the Earth Bugs introduced by the above Check it out, send me some more changes. Otherwise, I'll send this to InformationWeek on Tuesday morning. Jamie Serving the World James Howard howardjp@glue.umd.edu With the recent hype surrounding open source software, an important project has gone unnoticed in the media. This project, FreeBSD, aims to create a rock-solid UNIX clone based on the 4BSD work from the University of California at Berkeley. Begun in 1977 , the BSD tradition of outstanding software design and innovation continues with FreeBSD. Today, FreeBSD supports a wide array of enterprise class components for the Intel x86 and Compaq Alpha architectures and is available at not cost via the Internet or for only $39.95 on CD from Walnut Creek. FreeBSD looks and feels like UNIX offering industry standard tools including a best of breed TCP/IP stack, the standard TCP/IP services, the X Windows System, the Perl scripting language, a C/C++ compiler and related development tools, an NFS client and server, and the customary array of UNIX utilities. The developers aim for POSIX compliance and maintaining compatibility with traditional UNIX environments. FreeBSD has clearly shown its strength as an industrial web server platform. Yahoo! uses FreeBSD to deliver XX million page hits a week, to its customers. Microsoft's Hotmail service uses FreeBSD as the front end to service XX million users. Walnut Creek's FreeBSD powered FTP server, ftp.cdrom.com, serves 750,000 users daily and set an Internet record transferring 1.39 terabytes of data in one day. FreeBSD also supports a wide array of applications software. FreeBSD maintains a database of over 3000 applications which can be optionally installed. This database, called the Ports Collection, contains just enough information that with a simple ``make install'' the application is downloaded, configured, built, and installed without user intervention. The Ports Collection contains applications like the web server Apache, the SQL database PostgreSQL, the web application server PHP, Sun Microsystem's Java Development Kit, Netscape Communicator, and Corel WordPerfect. The Ports Collection also contains traditional UNIX add-ons including Emacs, Tcl/Tk, tcsh, along with modern UNIX additions such as GNOME, KDE, MySQL, and AbiWord. Also included are many tools translated for Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese speakers. And if that is not enough, most UNIX programs available in source form will compile on FreeBSD with little or no modification. To better coordinate information exchange with others in the security community, FreeBSD has a focal point for security related communications: The FreeBSD security officer. The position is actually staffed by a team of dedicated security officers, their main tasks being to send out advisories when there are known security holes and to act on reports of possible security problems with FreeBSD. The Security Officers also communicate with the various CERT and FIRST teams around the world, sharing information about possible vulnerabilities in FreeBSD or utilities commonly used by FreeBSD. The Security Officers are also active members of those organizations. FreeBSD is developed by a group of nearly 200 volunteers who work on an ongoing basis to ensure its reliability and stability. Two separate versions or ``branches'' are developed simultaneously. The FreeBSD-STABLE branch is targeted at end users and professionals. The FreeBSD-CURRENT branch where the leading edge development occurs, and is intended for developers and testers. Important changes made to the CURRENT branch migrate to the STABLE branch after significant testing and review. With over 100 updates, additions, and bug fixes made to the two branches each day, several easy and simple means of keeping a FreeBSD installation updated have been developed, each with a distinct niche. Additionally, daily snapshots of both branches are released via the Internet for testing and usage, as well as regularly scheduled releases. FreeBSD consistently meets the needs of large and industrial servers for its users. The enormous number of available applications makes it attractive as a workstation as well. The rapid and stable development of FreeBSD to support new hardware, fix bugs, and improve performance shows no signs of slowing down. At sites like Yahoo! and Hotmail, FreeBSD is serving the world and already meeting your needs. For more information about FreeBSD or to download it for free, point your web browser to http://www.freebsd.org. For a listing of FreeBSD resources on the web, please visit http://search.daemonnews.org. -- Jamie Howard To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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