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FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices
BSDForums writes "FreeBSD is hoping to move beyond the server and desktop market by providing expanded wireless support. FreeBSD developer Scott Long said that 'one of the primary reasons for improving wireless support is to give companies the tools to put FreeBSD into their wireless devices. The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.'"
This is an interesting development. Companies have been using Linux in their wireless boxes due to the lack of any viable alternative. Due to the GPL, these companies were forced to publish their changes to the kernel, which has allowed the number of cool hacks we've been seing. Clearly, those companies would rather keep their changes proprietary, so BSD based systems are much more attractive to them. While it's nice to see improved hardware support to another free operating system, this might bring adverse consequences in the long run. We'll see...
The filesystem is the package manager
as someone who works for a company that uses many variants of linux in their products, i can tell you that most companies dont have a clue about the GPL and the parts about giving away _their_ code comes as a shock to them.
i see more and more companies turn to BSD licensed stuff, such as the *BSD OSes
(no linux vs BSD flame, please)
There's still issues with FreeBSD that make it unsuitable for desktop use (I realize that's probably going to be modded a troll, so I'd like to point out the following example: http://support.daemonnews.org/viewtopic.php?p=995
). These need to be addressed before it can even really come out of the server corner, if that's their intention.
(Note: The page might be down at the moment, but try again and it should eventually come up)
The beautiful part is that OpenBSD is NOT in a competition with anybody despite what your post asserts. The OpenBSD developers have goals that are in line with their ideals and they haven't strayed from them and the developers certainly aren't out to "corner wireless development."
You make it sound like 2 companies competing against each other when it's just FreeBSD's developers losing sight of their ideals and doing thing the easy, non-OpenSource way.
This guy is way out there
You mean like secure, reliable wireless devices?
That would be a damn shame.
Yes, God forbid we have working software. Who'd want that? Probably some Microsoft fanboy. They always want stuff that "works" and doesn't break when you upgrade your system, etc. What is wrong with these people? I'm glad we have people like you who can keep the remaining sane folks from straying from the path of broken, hard to use software.
In other words, the use of the Linux kernel allows free software users can pressure these would-be proprietors into helping them maintain our software freedom for derivative works so long as one leverages their laziness. That is, as long as one doesn't distribute proprietary kernel modifications.
Given FreeBSD's willingness to include proprietary software (see discussions between FreeBSD and OpenBSD developers and advocates surrounding technical specifications for cards -- FreeBSD is happy to include whatever the proprietor delivers, OpenBSD wants specs so they can write and maintain their own drivers), this "improved" hardware support may end up being nothing more than a means to deliver more proprietary software to users.
Digital Citizen
Each license type has advantages and disadvantages. To me, living in a world where only GPL is used for open source projects is about as appealing as having only MS Windows as an operating system.
If you think non-GPL projects fail, look at the massive success of Apache, Perl, and many other projects.
One would think that the massive size of Perl's CPAN would give a clue to people that non-GPL code isn't going to fail in receiving contributions from the users.
You ask who benefits?
1. The consumers benefit by having a high quality open source OS with a good reputation for being more secure than other, more well-known, operating systems.
2. The FreeBSD project benefits.
3. And yes, the manufacturer benefits too.
4. I'd even say similar GPL projects benefit too from the competition.
Sure, some manufacturers who use FreeBSD don't contribute to the project but some of them do.
Look at Yahoo's contributions to the FreeBSD project despite not being required to do so. Many contributions have come in the form of cash donations, equipment, and code despite there being no requirement to do so.
The word "Free" in "FreeBSD" actually means exactly what it says. As a user of FreeBSD, I am personally given more freedom than I get as a user of Debian Sarge (I use both).
I'll be frank, I value the freedoms *I* receive more highly than the freedom someone else's software receives. And that means I'll contribute much more to FreeBSD than to Sarge to show my support.
I respect the fact that others feel completely opposite and will choose to contribute more to GPL projects than non-GPL projects. I wish them the best (especially since I also contribute to GPL projects too--I just don't contribute to GPL projects as frequently as non-GPL projects that give me more personal freedom).
Like many articles about BSD, this one will surely have a ton of comments along the lines of "Oh no, companies don't want to give away their code, so they're all going to use BSD licensed software and the world is going to end!". This arguement is, in almost all cases, bullshit. Why? Because usually it's not the operating system that matters so much as the software on top of it, and Company X has just as much control of their own program with Linux as with BSD (or Windows, etc.). Most products do not require significant changes to the OS, if any at all, and even in those products that do, far more of the products value comes from the company's own software.
So stop it people, the sky isn't falling.
Umm... I think you got the point reversed. The poster was talking about the fact that you can take BSD licensed code, make changes to it to support your product, and not be forced to give your work to anyone else (for example your competition).
While we all understand the idea behind the GPL, many businesses will simply not even consider using OS's based on it because of the forced nature of it. FreeBSD stands to get a lot of users because of this in the embedded space.
Now, the gamble with the BSD license is that people might use the code without ever contributing back. But the bet is that the big companies will give some sort of kickback to the projects, even if it is not the complete solution.
An example of this is practice would be Apple and KHTML. While Apple has not completely given everything it could have given, the KHTML project has benefited from Apple using a derivative of KHTML. We can argue about whether it is enough, but it is benefit that Apple would not have contributed if KHTML were GPL rather than BSD. Management would not have touched it with a 10 foot pole.
Well, it might be for some, but I think that most companies would be fine with publishing any minor kernel modifications made to Linux. The real reason why companies are a little afraid of the GPL is that there is always the potential for lawsuits. Granted, it's a remote possibility, but a possibility all the same; most companies would rather not be bothered with the GPL if given a choice.
And this is where FreeBSD can give people a choice. And assuming it's just as good as Linux, it's a better choice due to legal issues.
One last thing about the GPL is that most companies don't see distributing changes as a free endeavor. Someone has to be in charge of overseeing the process - and labour isn't free. In addition, distributing the changes requires other resources (like bandwidth) which, while not very expensive, just add to the complexity of using Linux. While this might be a minor issue, it's still an issue that companies would rather avoid.
And what happens when the slashdot community burns a company for forgetting to post something, or posting modifications that are difficult to utilize. Remember Apple and Konqueror?
Oh well, but to respond to your last point, I don't think there will be many adverse consequences. The work currently being paid for by these companies is under the BSD license and I don't see them being that protective of the kernel. The GUI however is another story.
Willy
thats because theo as a personality disorder. saying "oh no we can't include closed binaries they are evil" is stupid. people/companies have the right to release their software under any license they want to, and it's insane to think people will choose a lesser product because it has a closed license, they will choose it because it has teh features and price they want. freebsd including those closed drivers doesn't make it any less free, it just means you don't have to go fishing for it when you purchase that device. and YES i am aware of all the arguments under the sun "we must pressure hardware vendors with our spending $" blah blah. at the end of the day bsd is grateful just to have damn drivers for it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And who said they didn't? Theo and the OpenBSD guys also have every right to not include binary-only software in their OS if they don't want to.
at the end of the day bsd is grateful just to have damn drivers for it.
Make that FreeBSD is grateful just to have the damn drivers. You don't speek for all *BSD varient users.
Just because a company wants to release unusable binary crud does not mean that OpenBSD needs to use them.
At the end of the day, OpenBSD ends up a more stable and useable system because the developers can actually fix problems in their system - what can FreeBSD developers do when their is a problem with a binary CLI they have no access to?
There are always problems in software, by accepting garbage in the manner that FreeBSD has chosen to all they do is encourage companies to continue giving them more binaries that they cannot effect changes in.
What do you think the end result will be if a company only makes binary drivers and goes out of business? Those drivers will never be updated again and your system will become less and less likely to run with your hardware because any problems that are caused by changes in the way FreeBSD runs cannot be effectively troubleshot.
FreeBSD chooses function over stability, ease over security and closed over open - hardly something I want. At the end of the day, I'd rather get something that is properly supported and not waste my time and money.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Doesn't matter if he's installed any OS at all. You're skirting the point, which is that broken but free code is not useful. Working, non-free code is.
And the HAL has nothing to do with the FCC, that's the firmware on the card that deals with FCC regulated channels and frequencies. This is about paranoia and intellectual property.
These are the kinds of things that should be added into the system, not things like Project Evil.
Scott does in fact accept the AAC CLI (which was ported to FreeBSD by Scott) - he told the OpenBSD team that it was perfectly acceptable and that the OpenBSD developers should be happy with and for it. He also said that had the developers asked when he worked at Adaptec, he may have ported it for them.
Your opinion mirrors Scott's: "But why is it so important to go around screaming and yelling about it and alientating those who do try to help?" and "Why is it so important to drag your users into your political fights by depriving them of stuff that works now but isn't exactly everything that you want?"
I like the saying "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." I like to apply it to other concepts, like giving up control for usability, which makes me feel that FreeBSD project deserves neither control nor usability. But I suppose that's Windows.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
These are very real solutions to your imaginary issue, since it's damn hard to buy flash that small, most companies don't make smaller than 16 MBs unless you are special ordering massive bulk. Often, this kind of special ordering has additional costs involved. I don't see any problem with crunching the system down into flash and using virtual memory filesystems.
But they (embedded develoeprs) will fork it because that is how they get it to do what they want. That is the whole point of this article. Proprietary developers WILL fork the code and the advantage BSD offers is that they don't have to release their fork back to the public. It is about licensing, not which one is more "stable."
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
You may have your doubts but history simply proves that they do (not all of them, but quite a few still)
FreeBSD has a thing called netgraph, from its manpage:
HISTORY
The netgraph system was designed and first implemented at Whistle Commu-
nications, Inc. in a version of FreeBSD 2.2 customized for the Whistle
InterJet.
Then, from man jail:
AUTHORS
The jail feature was written by Poul-Henning Kamp for R&D Associates
http://www.rndassociates.com/ who contributed it to FreeBSD.
Of course PHK is a core member of the fbsd team, but that doesn't change that it was written and payed for by a commercial user of the system and then contributed to it.
There is a simple very good reason for companies to contribute their changes, given that they get accepted:
It saves them the cost on maintaining such a component and keeping up with the development of the system.