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Nikolai Bezroukov. Portraits of Open Source Pioneers
For readers with high sensitivity to grammar errors access to this page is explicitly prohibited :-)
After Apple successful attack on desktop Unix-like systems marketshare, Linux in embedded market got a strong opponent too. Not everybody was happy with Linux in the embedded space. GPL has played an inhibitor role in keeping Linux from being adopted by some major players: in embedded systems, vendors usually don't want to be forced to make their code changes available. And you usually have to adapt the kernel to work with your hardware and peripherals. In this case the viral nature of GPL can make keeping your intellectual property more difficult, although not impossible.
Still BSD license had a potential edge in embedded space and Wind River, an well known player in the embedded systems market, announced in April, 2001 the purchase of BSD/OS from BSDi (not the company, just the rights to the software). The remainder of what was BSDi was spun off into a hardware company called iXsystems. Inc. The new company sells high-end server machines pre-loaded with FreeBSD. More information on that is available here.
However, the license isn't the only reason BSD was chosen. Wind River executives said there were two other reasons. First, that BSD has unparalleled technology. Second, that they love the way the open source BSD is organized compared to the disarray of the multitude of Linux Distributions.
As part of the deal, Wind River has hired Jordan Hubbard to become their principal technologist for FreeBSD. Jordan was one of founders of FreeBSD and has been the chief PR representative for the project. According to Jordan, FreeBSD development would continue under WindRiver umbrella; however, Wind River abandoned FreeBSD in less then a year. This snafu damaged his reputation and he eventually resigned from the FreeBSD core team (see Daily Daemon News for details):
Guys,
After giving it a fair bit of thought over the last few weeks, I have decided to step down from core. I am doing this for a variety of reasons, any one of which would probably be sufficient grounds in and of its own and, taken in combination, certainly constitute ample justification for doing so:
The first and certainly foremost reason is a lack of time and energy. I simply no longer have the time to devote to doing what I would consider an adequate job of being a responsible core member and the "honorable" thing to do in such case is clearly to step down and let the next election hopefully sweep someone else with more time and energy into the position.
Another reason, and I hate to say this but it probably needs saying, is that being in core is honestly not what it once was. For a old-timer like myself, who was used to a core team that was far more cohesive and generally on the same page, it's simply a painful experience a lot of the time. Perhaps this is due to overly rose-colored recollections of the old core on my part, and I do certainly recall us having more than our share of disagreement and inefficiency in the past, but on the balance core still feels too much like the pre-WWII Polish Parliment sometimes, where we're fully capable of arguing some issue right up to the point where tanks are rolling through the front door and rendering the whole debate somewhat moot. I'm also not blaming this on the democratic model we've adopted, a stance which would be hypocritical at best since I'm one of the folks who argued strongly in favor of it, but I guess it's going to take a few more iterations before we get it right. It will also probably be a lot easier for truly new people who don't have a lot of preconceived notions of what core is to make that happen.
Finally, it also bears noting that while being part of the FreeBSD project is many things, it should always be "fun" to at least some degree for its participants or there's really not much point in being involved. Being in core, where one gets to deal almost solely with conflict resolution and bureaucracy, is not fun in any sense of the word and while being in core constitutes the bulk of my involvement, without any cool development work (which I also haven't had time for) to counter-balance it, it simply leaves me with less and less enthusiasm for FreeBSD. Better to pull the ejection handle now than to let things get to the point to where I'm simply bitter and annoyed ALL of the time vs merely some of the time. :-)
While my time has been very limited lately, I hope to get back to a point where I can start actively contributing to FreeBSD again, and the best place for me to make those contributions is not in core. I would therefore like to officially tender my resignation and request that I be removed from the core mailing list at the earliest opportunity. Thanks!
- Jordan
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Last modified: August 27, 2008