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Facebook Seeks Devs To Make Linux Network Stack As Good As FreeBSD's

Posted by timothy on from the high-praise-all-around dept.

An anonymous reader writes Facebook posted a career application which, in their own words is 'seeking a Linux Kernel Software Engineer to join our Kernel team, with a primary focus on the networking subsystem. Our goal over the next few years is for the Linux kernel network stack to rival or exceed that of FreeBSD.' Two interesting bullet points listing "responsibilities": Improve IPv6 support in the kernel, and eliminate perf and stability issues. FB is one of the worlds largest IPv6 deployments; Investigate and participate in emerging protocols (MPTCP, QUIC, etc) discussions,implementation, experimentation, tooling, etc.

6 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. LOL, so why not use theirs? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look, this is FreeBSD ... why not just take their damned code?

    It's not like you're not allowed to do that. That's what is great about the BSD license.

    If FreeBSD's network stack is what you aspire to, why reinvent the wheel?

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    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:LOL, so why not use theirs? by Bengie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can't just copy/paste code and expect it to work, it must be refactored, and may not even be compatible until completely new features are added in the current code to allow the new code to function. It's like saying "that fusion reactor is an open design, why not just place that in our coal power plant?". You may need to make some changes to your current power plant before you change its core.

    2. Re:LOL, so why not use theirs? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Licensing? Can code released under the BSD license be re-released under the GPL?

      Been years since I read the license, but the BSD licenses are pretty permissive, to the extent you can take BSD stuff and use it as a basis for commercial products.

      BSD has always been about writing awesome code, and letting people do what they want with it, as opposed to imposing ideology on people.

      I'd be surprised if Linux doesn't already have code from FreeBSD in it.

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      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. FreeBSD network stack by CadentOrange · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What makes the FreeBSD network stack superior?

  3. Corporate Contributions to OSS by phizi0n · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand why there's all these comments saying they should just use FreeBSD. There are many reasons to despise Facebook but their desire to improve the Linux networking stack is admirable. We should be encouraging corporations to contribute to OSS, not telling them to just use that other thing that is better in some ways but not others. Kudos to them for contributing back to the projects they use.

  4. Re:This does pose the question: by Pieroxy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't you think it's easier and cheaper to optimize the network stack of Linux rather than writing tons of hardware drivers for FreeBSD? Hardware which, most of the time, will be undocumented. Furthermore, when you change your servers, yay, more drivers to write...

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    Write boring code, not shiny code!