Wind River lays off FreeBSD developers; Q&A

SidVicious and Intosi both wrote in with news that Wind River Systems (WRS), who had acquired BSDi's software assets earlier this year, including a team of FreeBSD developers, has laid off those developers. This has also been reported in other places, such as DaemonNews. This raises some interesting questions; for example, what happens to the "FreeBSD" trademark, which Wind River currently own. Read on for Wind River's answers to this and other questions.

In the interests of full disclosure. I'm also nik@freebsd.org, although not a WRS employee. I was employed by BSDi in Europe, before the European team were laid off as part of the WRS acquisition. These questions were answered by WindRiver's PR department.

Q: WRS has already been through two rounds of layoffs in the recent past. Why this third set of lay offs now? Are the FreeBSD developers the only ones affected?

Wind River has only had two rounds of layoffs. During the second round Wind River decided to divest itself of the FreeBSD project. We spent several weeks looking for a suitable corporate sponsor but did not find any company with sufficient interest and financial capability in this challenging economy. This week's layoff of the FreeBSD employees is therefore Wind River's "final option" in executing the plans set in motion by the second round of layoffs.

Q: WRS currently own the trademark "FreeBSD". Do WRS plan to retain the trademark? If so, why? If not, will WRS let the trademark lapse? Or are there plans to transfer it to a third party, such as the FreeBSD Foundation?

Wind River plans to ensure continuation of the altruistic, open stewardship of the FreeBSD trademark. We feel strongly that the FreeBSD project must be protected and encouraged and that a FreeBSD trademark in the wrong hands could be very detrimental. We continue to search for the best solution. No specific third-party has yet been determined, but transfer to a suitable third-party is the leading option being considered.

Q: WRS own the "bsd.com" domain. Will that be retained?

Possibly. Wind River will continue to invest in BSD/OS and participate as a highly interested member of the *BSD community. As such, the bsd.com domain may be important for Wind River. We are weighing this against the needs of the *BSD community and hope to resolve the issue later this month.

Q: What's happening to the "FreeBSD Mall", at freebsdmall.com?

freebsdmall.com continues to operate and take orders, and all new and existing orders from customers for FreeBSD 4.4 or other products will continue to be fulfilled. Wind River is still evaluating its long term options and strategy for the FreeBSD Mall, but plans to maintain its presence and service either internally or externally.

Q: As part of the BSDi acquisition, WRS will (presumably) have picked up customers who had subscribed to the BSDi CD sets of FreeBSD. Will WRS continue to service those customers, or are their subscriptions now cancelled?

Like all customer contracts, subscription orders will continue to be fulfilled.

Q: BSDi (and, it seemed, WRS) had made some headway in producing additional FreeBSD boxed products to go in to the retail channel. Will WRS continue to do this?

Wind River is currently continuing activities to promote FreeBSD 4.4 through the retail channel. Future FreeBSD releases will probably not be produced or distributed by Wind River.

Q: Will WRS continue to produce the usual 4 disc CD sets of FreeBSD, including one for the recently released FreeBSD 4.4?

Yes, for FreeBSD 4.4.

Q: WRS had been funding work on the FreeBSD Handbook, in order to print the second edition in the near future. [ Disclaimer, I'm co-editor of this work, along with your employee, Murray Stokely ] Will WRS continue with plans to print the second edition of the FreeBSD Handbook?

Wind River will encourage any stewards that emerge to take on FreeBSD publication to complete and publish this work.

Q: WRS houses the "FreeBSD Test Lab" at its Alameda campus. Will WRS continue to host this facility?

No. Some equipment from this lab will be transferred to Yahoo! which hosts much of the build structure equipment for FreeBSD, as well as the primary CVS source repository and main FreeBSD mail server. Wind River does not plan to maintain the FreeBSD test lab at its Alameda, CA headquarters.

Comments

Re:preface..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, you're saying its not "dying"...

If history teaches us a lesson - then lets look back few years...

We had DOS based machines when Windows came out - most of the professional people said something like "eh, who needs windows" and ignored it... come back to the present time and oops - Windows takes 85-95% of PC's (depends if you include NT servers, workstations etc)...

Now you probably say "he's nut - he's comparing apples to oranges" - so, lets look at the non-windows server market.. ok?

Ask any professional unix developer who knows *BSD and knows linux who's got better multitasking, and better VM - and you'll find that *BSD is much better then Linux for example...

Yet Linux seems to be spreading so much more then *BSD (combine all versions of BSD and Linux still wins), even corporates today knows what is Linux, what is RedHat. Go ahead and ask them if they know what is FreeBSD, what is the difference between NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, BSDi...

Another proof? call IDC and ask them how much percentages *BSD is being used. Current number is %3.035 (from IDC figures, April 2001)..

Conclusion - is BSD better then others technically speaking? yes, I don't have any problem admitting that. Is it spreading more and more? if you count out Apple (which took BSD as a life saver after their attempt with MicroKernel) then it's more then declining - it's fading.

Oh - and regarding Yahoo - you might want to update yourself - they're using iPlant for a very long time now.

ThE BiTcH

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[dohcvtec]

No, the Cobra was *not* a Ford. Modified customized Ford? No. Carroll Shelby used some Ford parts to build _HIS OWN_ cars from the ground up; he didn't start with a Ford and modify it, as you say. Come on, these cars were hand-built and then registered as Shelby cars. If you owned one of these cars, your registration would have Shelby American on it, not Ford Motor Company. How about another example? Panoz uses a Ford drivetrain with the rest of the car being purely Panoz. And it's not a Ford either. I could keep on going, but I think I've made my point. BTW, just because everybody refers to Linux as a complete OS (as we both stated) it doesn't mean it's true. That's what my point was. People just say Linux when they are actually talking about a Linux distribution. There is a difference. Do you believe everything you hear? 8^)