FreeBSD the most distributed Linux in the World

I know, I know, FreeBSD is not Linux. And for those who don't know here is a Wikipedia primer on FreeBSD.

Now that I’ve gotten your attention think about the following numbers: they are often known in the community but seldom really discussed.

By the end of the year FreeBSD(1) will be from far the most distributed UNIX-like OS in the world.

• The most distributed UNIX-like operating system for personal computer (10% of PC sales)
• The most used UNIX-like operating system embedded into portable devices (10 M)

Thanks to Apple who made FreeBSD-based OS X an incredible success through the Mac and the iPhone.

Now, look at those domains where Linux is traditionally doing well:

• LAMP: despite the L in LAMP, many high-availability server farms prefer FreeBSD. MySQL itself benchmarks often substantially better with FreeBSD
• ISPs: Large all purpose ISPs like Verio/NTT or Financial Industry ISPs like New York Internet (99.999% uptime guaranteed according to the brochure) are all running on FreeBSD.
• Security companies: Nokia (Firewalls) or TrendMicro (I know) for instance trust FreeBSD.
• Network appliances: From Juniper to NetApp or IronPort many providers run FreeBSD into their boxes. Addendum: apparently Cisco too is switching to FreeBSD (Thanks Oz)
• Largest web operation: Yahoo!, the largest world traffic according to Alexa, is built on FreeBSD.

Anent the development community, it’s all working fine and dandy. FreeBSD has near 300 core committers (many thousands more contributors), organized in a pretty flat organization (unlike Linux with its 3 or 4 hierarchical levels) relying heavily on mentorship. The entire project is under the supervision of an elected board of 9 members giving heavy delegation to specialty committers (security, release etc.)

The FreeBSD developer community has a median age of 33. This is especially interesting for companies hiring sysadmin talents since if BSD resources are rarer than Linux, there are far less chances to hire a guy who claims to be a sysadmin just because he re-installed Ubuntu twice while in junior high.

But FreeBSD people also have a not so hidden problem: they don't seem to know that they are part of the FOSS community.

On their website you can find a monument erected to FUD and bad faith attacking here and there the Linux community and the GPL (most used open source license).

• [about the GPL] you can charge as much as you want for distributing, supporting, or documenting the software, but you cannot sell the software itself.

• The GPL attempts to prevent orphaning by severing the link to proprietary intellectual property

• The GPL is an attempt to keep efforts, regardless of demand, at the research and development stages. This maximizes the benefits to researchers and developers, at an unknown cost to those who would benefit from wider distribution.

• Due in part to its complexity, in many parts of the world today the legalities of the GPL are being ignored in regard to Linux and related software.

• In other words, the BSD license [as opposed to the GPL] does not become a legal time-bomb at any point in the development process.

That might be the main drawback of having a completely decentralized and really democratic development process. Since nobody is really in charge, a few have taken advantage of the entire community to push some misguided agenda.

No wonder Apple, the largest FreeBSD success, don't even bother contributing financially to the FreeBSD foundation: that would be ...a PR time bomb? BTW FOSS enthusiasts apparently feel more and more comfortable on Mac.

 
How does it feel Beastie to be somewhat better than Tux and yet to behave like Microsoft 10 years ago?
 

(1) Actually the Mac OS X kernel is more of a Mach / BSD kernel functioning like the hosting OS of a VM setup. But it does contain substantial FreeBSD code: Darwin's source code is here and although some files and posts are sometimes not clear, unlike the previous version, the APL 2.0 license is free software.

Addendum: Just to be clear about  FreeBSD part into Darwin (in addition to the detailed "Mach / BSD kernel" paper quoted above)

If you like open source development, you'll love Mac OS X. This fully-conformant UNIX operating system—built on Mach 3.0 and FreeBSD 5—bundles over a hundred of the most popular Open Source. From Apple's developer site

Addendum: Some of you have asked links and references about Apple's market shares

• At any rate, sometime in 2008, Mac market share—and by that we mean growth, not installed base—will exceed 10 percent. That's right: according to the metrics derived from web usage as indicated above, one in 10 PCs will be a Mac. From Ars Technica.

• Apple is currently trying to reach a target of 10 million iPhones sold by the end of 2008, while industry analysts currently predict that Macs will be Apple's major source of revenue in the coming year. From MacNN reporting on analysts' projections

Comments

[Curt]

Are you kidding me? There is a reason why FreeBSD continues to use the BSD license...it's because they believe it is the better license. This is why they promote it. Part of promotion is showing the advantages over the competition. Many will say Linux isn't competition, and mostly they'd be right, but from a donation stand point they'd be wrong.

True freedom, viva la BSD license.

[mtg]

Hi Curt,

Thanks for your comment. Well, I'm all for comparing but stating things that are blatantly false and relying on FUD is not helping either the FOSS community or FreeBSD.

[rtend]

While Apple doesn't seem to support FreeBSD directly, they have employed Jordan Hubbard for years and I'll bet he's making a decent salary.. I don't know of any other cases of FreeBSD commiters that are employed by Apple, but I'd be willing to bet there are more than just Jordan.

Not that I'd give Apple a complete pass in regard to their FOSS practices and policies, but I think you've muddied the waters in regard to their return to the FreeBSD community by stating that they contribute nothing.

[mtg]

@rtend

Yes Apple do employ FreeBSD contributors and committers. But as I mentioned they don't contribute to fund the FreeBSD foundation however they do contribute by releasing large chunk of their BSD/Mach code. Of course, they're not forced to. Pretty cool though.

[Robert]

Mac OS X is significantly different from FreeBSD, and never was based on it; it just uses some of the same libraries (it also uses code from the OpenBSD and NetBSD projects). From its Mach microkernel core, to the IOKit device driver system, not to mention filesystems and above all the huge Carbon/Cocoa layers, etc. the architecture is completely different.

Also, Mac OS X is now officially a UNIX, under the UINX 03 standard, not just UNIX-like.

So I'd amend your post to be that OS X is the most widely distributed UNIX.

[mtg]

Hello Robert,

The detailed description of the kernel figures in the link of the note (1).

you write: "So I'd amend your post to be that OS X is the most widely distributed UNIX."

If I were to do that it would miss the point that Apple doesn't need anybody's marketing when FreeBSD deserves more exposure.

BTW: UNIX yes but only for i386 32 bits architecture (and only since Leopard)

[Oz]

Add Cisco to your list of companies. IIRC, last year, they announced on the FreeBSD mailing list that the next generation of their products will be based on FreeBSD.

[mtg]

@Oz

Many thanks, I've added it in the post.

[Source Inspector]

Cite some god damn sources.

[mtg]

@source inspector

Source about what? Apple's projections/sales? Done. But would help to be more explicit when you want to report a bug :-)

[Garrett Cooper]

- Cisco doesn't use FreeBSD; they abandoned it for Linux because of internal politics (can't go more in depth because of the NDA I signed). Juniper uses FreeBSD for JunOS though, and Ironport (an acquired Cisco subsidiary) uses FreeBSD.
- FreeBSD is comprised of many GNU apps, but many of those core apps are being phased out for BSD licensed equivalents (GNU grep -> BSD grep, libreadline -> editline, gcc / binutils -> llvm / various tools). My guess is that eventually only CVS will remain in the base system because it's a widely used tool for distributing source, but then again CVS is far from perfect as an SCM tool, and will most likely be completely obsolete in a few years.
- From a developers point of view, the fact that the Linux vs FSF group lag in terms of libraries and headers, and are driven by political goals (FSF) vs code (Linux) leads to a lot of contention between both camps. Take Stallman with GNU/Hurd vs Torvalds with GNU/Linux; Stallman says Hurd is the best thing since sliced bread (because he is the God of GNU), but Torvalds rightfully so calls it a PoS because it can't run anything without Linux code. Etc, etc. At least the BSD groups align themselves along common goals (Free => general usability in server / desktop, Net => porting / tinkering, Open => security, PC => desktop usability market, ...).
- From a user's perspective, I haven't found a decent distro that gets customization vs optimization quite right. I don't want Fedora or Ubuntu (Gnome bloat for touchy feeling UI's), Gentoo takes too long to compile, Fedora and Slackware don't have any real software support, etc etc. At least I have a fairly wide range of hardware support with FreeBSD and a nice selection of packages and ports to choose from...

Oh yeah, and installation only takes 15 mins to perform 8-).

HTH.

Cheers,
-Garrett