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Wind River To Stop Selling BSD/OS
David writes "According to an article on Bsdnewsletter.com, OS company Wind River has said it will be stopping sales of BSD/OS on this December 31st, and product support exactly one year thereafter. Only 15 more weeks to grab the final 5.1 update before this piece of history might be gone forever..."
Before we all go off on the *bsd is dying trip, let's look at the actual statistics, from Netcraft. This survey is current. Thanks.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
BSD/OS was the commercial version of the BSD world. A few years ago there was a push to bring it up to date with the current FreeBSD at the time. Hopefully this will allow more focus on the *BSDs. I'm a real *BSD fan, but I wasn't even aware that this was still around, or even being actively developed.
-- Charles A. Plater
you can find the full announcement here. Alan Clegg -- Formerly abc@bsdi.com
Whatever.
Primarily an embedded OS and tools company. They sell VxWorks (OS), the Vision* (...Probe, ...ICE, ...Click) products, SNiFF+ (A code management/editor/analysis package that rocks and runs on Linux), and Diab (embedded compiler).
We use several of their products at my company to develop MCF5407 systems. Not that I'd buy WR products again though...
Actually, they're really a "aquire and kill" company...over the last several years they've gone on a major aqusions binge, and many of the products of companies they've aquired (mostly competitors, and often with superior products) they've either let stagnate or killed outright.
This is a running joke that has been going on for a very long time. BSD's imminent death has been greatly exaggerated more than once, and this joke is poking fun at that fact.
On Slashdot, this has evolved into a troll, which you can find information about in quite a few places.
Everything2 has some general information on "BSD is dying".
Wikipedia has this to say about BSD is dying:
These sites claim that "BSD is dying" is purely a Slashdot trolling phenomenom.I'm not convinced that this is the case, however, because there are some earlier examples of this joke (not the troll necessarily, but off-color remarks).
The earliest reference I can find was in 1992, and may be one explaniation of the phenomenom: Responses to survey on the death of BSD
There was an article in an online magazine in 1999 that said some disparaging things about BSD's license that may have something to do with phenomenom.
I could not find the article, but it is mentioned here: Debian wants to use FreeBSD kernel
There is also a * is dying page.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I guess it's time to say a few words as a past member of the BSD/OS development team.
Wind River had trouble dealing with the BSD thing for a long time. Keep in mind that their aim was *embedded* stuff, not the UNIX we all know and love.
In that regard, their announcement is just a move back to a market Wind has been more successful in.
I, too, knew the end was coming when I was one of the five people that received a pink slip in January, and I was (and I still am) worried about what happens to the people left behind. I hope they do well; some have troube dealing with the loss of something they've worked on for a decade or more.
Of the five that have left, many have found a new place, but some are still looking. If you're looking for some *real* good folk, ping them. (I work at a leading Dutch security company now).
I've had a *wonderful* 6 years at BSDI/Wind, and would like to thank the people I've worked with (including customers) for making it happen.
BSD development will continue, it will just happen elsewhere. May the source be with you.
Geert Jan