just general questions about fbsd

[Kevin Kinsey]

Anton Galitch wrote:
> Hi
> Im writing an article about FreeBSD and want to ask some few question:
> 
> - Do the FBSD developers work for free?

Heh, you mean, at what job?  Most of them work somewhere for
money, I'm pretty sure. ;-) Occasionally companies will "grant" money
to a certain developer to remain "unemployed" by others and spend more
time on FreeBSD.  IIRC, Poul Henning-Kamp got a good portion of a year's
salary in a fund-raising campaign last year, mostly from some of
the larger companies listed below.

Some companies pay an employee a regular salary, but allow or 
even encourage them to work on FreeBSD as part of their job.

However, the majority of developers work on FreeBSD in their free time,
for the love of the system, without much more compensation than the
satisfaction of a job well done.

At least, that is what I think/hope/sincerely want to believe.... :-)

> - What advanced features it has that for example Windows, or MacOS 
dont
> have?

"advanced features" should be defined.  Stability and security are
apparently "advanced features", judging by my 10 years experience
with those products from Redmond.  FBSD's got a truckload of stuff
Windows doesn't see the need for that should be standard issue on any
operating system where Real Work needs to be done; starting with "cat"
and "grep" and ending who knows where ... Windows uses *BSD code in
their network stack ... IANAE, but maybe ACLs, MAC, software RAID (I 
guess Win has that now?), multiple virtual terminals, real shells are
just a few things that come to mind.

And, Mac OS X uses a non-BSD kernel, but most of the userland programs
were taken from FreeBSD 4.X. some time back.  The GUI stuff is original
Apple, I believe....

The real issue, though, is that FreeBSD is about as modern a 
"Unix[like]" as
you can get, and Windows and "Unix like" aren't apples and apples.  With
a BSD you get historically sound, useful software, along with other 
stuff.

With other systems, you get sexy GUI apps that do some stuff, but 
doesn't
jive with most of the UNIX paradigm, and, really, was mostly developed 
for
reasons no one knows anymore and marketed in order that some executive 
could buy another house in Tuscany or on the Riviera.  Or, something 
like
that.

> - What well knows companies use FreeBSD as servers? (I know that 
Hotmails
> used fbsd servers like 5 years ago).

Well, you missed Yahoo!, for certain.

Pair Networks, New York Internet, Verio, are big in hosting, also 
serverpath.com, inetu.com, velcom.com, existhosting.com and lots more,
as a Google search would show you.  Check www.netcraft.com for more 
on the hosting business, including some reports on FreeBSD's stature
as a top-notch hosting platform and record-setting high-availability
leader.

Some ISP's are listed at:
	http://www.freebsd.org/commercial/isp.html
						   --- along
with lots of other companies in software development, systems 
integration,
and lots more underneath the "/commercial/" folder.

Then there's a lot of little companies.  And probably some people who
don't want you to know about them, with black helicopters and big white
trucks and hidden laboratories under mountains or cactus or something.

> Thanks for help.

It's not much, but you're welcome to it, of course.  Oh, and
"Google is your friend." ;-)

Kevin Kinsey