corporate backers of freebsd

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Gary Smithe
> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 10:11 AM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: corporate backers of freebsd
>
>
> Good Day All and Happy New Year,
>
> I'm not looking to incite anyone, but here comes a BSD vs Linux
> question.  Yes, I tried searching the archives and found nothing.
>
> I used FreeBSD back in 2000 for a few firewalls, but due to certain
> influences I switched to Linux after a couple of years.
>
> I'm interested in getting back to the BSD's but have just one big concern.
>
> As most users Unix and it's clones, I prefer the "free as in beer"
> licensing model, but want to know that someone else is paying the big
> bills.
>
> 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.
>
> I've seen where Cisco and Juniper are using FreeBSD, and assuming
> there are other big names, do they directly fund or contribute to the
> community?
>

Gary,

  FreeBSD USED TO HAVE a single large corporate sponsor.  Walnut Creek.
Well, while the upside of this is that you have a pot of money that
can be used to fund advertising ventures, fund a position to act as
the "public" face of the project, etc.  the downside is that this ties
the project to the fortunes of that big money pot.

  When Walnut Creek went downhill it caused a LOT of people who were
using FreeBSD very much consternation.

  This is why today the project basically operates as a completely
distributed project.

  You might as well ask who the corporate sponsor of the Gnutella
network is.  Nobody, and Everybody.  Yet, that network carries
billions of bytes of pirat... I mean, valuable video data, and is
dependended on by many bootleggers.. I mean enterprenuers.  ;-)

  People look at Linux and say "how great it is that Linux has RedHat
to make Linux look "legitimate" to the corporate world.  They forget
that as RedHat is a corporation, it is under a mandate to make a
profit every year.  Well, what happens if the day ever comes that
RedHat starts losing money?  Don't you think that people will suddenly
start thinking that Linux has run out of steam?  I do.

  There is no single corporation that is ever guarenteed to exist
forever, last forever, and remain profitable forever.  History is
littered with large, rich companies that people once upon a time
thought would never ever go out of business - yet they did anyway.

  By contrast, MOVEMENTS in history NEVER run out of steam.  There are
still, today, billions of people dumping billions of dollars every year
into the Catholic Church - despite it's sordid history and current
coverups of pedophiles - and that particular religious movement has been
around more than 2000 years.

  We want to keep FreeBSD operating as a movement.  As long as 1 person
still believes and maintains it, it won't die.  No matter how profitable
or unprofitable it is to run.

Ted