Linux kernel compatability

Garrett Cooper gcooper at FreeBSD.org
Thu Jan 6 04:08:31 UTC 2011


On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 6:53 PM, Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Jan 2011, Andrey Chernov wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 05:17:21PM -0700, Scott Long wrote:
>>>>
>>>> We have not been marginalized in this space because we have an emulator.
>>>> We just don't have the marketshare in many areas.  If anything, these
>>>> emulators improve our marketshare.
>>>
>>> I agree entirely.  Companies look at marketshare and ability to turn more
>>> revenue than costs (i.e. profit).  Like Jeff, I've had my share of dealing
>>> with companies who have made a conscious to support or not support FreeBSD
>>> based on those factors.  Petitions and letters sound great on Slashdot, but
>>> don't work in the real world.  Emulation increases marketshare.
>>
>> Emulation decreases our marketshare, presenting us like
>> not-so-good-but-trying Linux clone, so, for this reason alone, every
>> serious company will put its money on Linux product running on real Linux
>> instead of thinking about porting it into FreeBSD.
>
> Has anyone asked, instead of putting Linux shims into FreeBSD,
> why aren't FreeBSD shims put into Linux?  If the FreeBSD ABI/KPI
> is supposedly more stable than Linux, then wouldn't it make
> more sense to do it that way?
>
> And I suppose part of the answer to that question is, it would
> not be acceptible to the Linux folks.

    Pretty sure it's because many hardcore Linux folks don't like the
BSD license (and the fact that it's business friendly, i.e. closed
source drivers are ok?). The OSS soundsystem was a prime example of
what happens when code that's BSD licensed gets put in the Linux
kernel (well, ok... there were other reasons but as I was reading that
was a big source of contention with the Linux crowd and that system,
despite the fact that it was better than ALSA for a long time, and is
still better in some ways [1]).
-Garrett

1. http://4front-tech.com/hannublog/?p=5


More information about the freebsd-arch mailing list