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.'"

Comments

The reluctant adoption of Linux

[HishamMuhammad]

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...

Re:The reluctant adoption of Linux

[iamdrscience]

That's bull really. I can do the GPL zealotry bit like the best of them, but most of the cool hacks with wireless devices do not come as a result of kernel changes released by companies. Most of them come from the fact that these devices simply are small, cheap systems that are able to run linux.

this is really big

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:FreeBSD on routers? I hope not...

[stox]

God help us if someone ran FreeBSD on routers, oops, oh wait, someone does. Some little company known as Juniper. JunOS is derived from FreeBSD.

Juniper

[RT Alec]

Juniper uses FreeBSD (they call it 'JunOS'). Their routers have become quite popular for very high traffic installations, due in no small part to the efficient networking code of the FreeBSD kernel. Also, don't forget that the f-root name server (actualy a distributed network of servers) is exclusively FreeBSD.

Can we stop this?

[iamdrscience]

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.

Re:Can we stop this?

[The Vulture]

To some extent that is true, but not always. The sticky issue is that of device drivers. Device drivers hook into the kernel, and their licensing as such has never really been clear. The general consensus seems to be that as long as you mark your module as non-GPL in the declaration, which excludes your use of some GPL'd code, your module is okay.

Userspace applications don't suffer from these restrictions - glibc is LGPLd, as is uClibc for these reasons - you don't have to abide by the GPL in order to have a C runtime library.

Where I see this going (as I stated in another post) is that whether Linux or BSD is used will likely depend on the hardware designers (companies like Broadcom, who make the reference designs, not companies like Linksys, D-Link or Netgear, who just base their work on reference designs).

The sky is not falling, I agree. We'll continue see substandard products from el-cheapo manufacturers no matter what underlying OS is used. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if FreeBSD can be used in these low-power, slower CPU, small RAM/flash footprint devices, and it performs as well as Linux, then the designers will do so. It gives them that much more protection against violations of the GPL (accidental or not).

-- Joe

OpenBSD

[cyberkahn]

This is not intended to be a flame as I really like FreeBSD as well. FreeBSD could learn a lot from the OpenBSD project in this area. I have been absolutely amazed at OpenBSD's out of the box wireless detection configuration. I installed OpenBSD on my laptop over my WPC11 wireless NIC without effort. I also had the same results with the WMP54G.

Proprietary source is not the reason..

[willy_me]

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

Re:Proprietary source is not the reason..

[daeley]

First of all: why are those 'remote', legal possibilities not existant in FreeBSD?

Because BSD has already been through a clarifying legal process, one that Linux has yet to go through -- or rather it's in the middle of a big honkin' legal process right now. See for more info 4.4BSD and descendants in the BSD article on wikipedia. You are correct that one prime BSD advantage is the lack of GPL lock-in, but it is not the only advantage in the current Linux legal climate -- no matter what the validity of SCO claims, as we all know the FUD is the point.

Re:Why lose a stepping stone to freedom preservati

[SillyNickName4me]

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.