A very good point. I think we were all thinking that. My guess? It's a mind-share thing.SirDice said:So, why don't they just use FreeBSD instead?
Not impossible to do of course. Facebook does have very, very deep pockets and can easily afford highly trained engineers. I think the biggest question is, would those changes be allowed to be added to the Linux kernel? They can change whatever they want but Linus (and others) may not agree with their modifications. I think that would be their greatest hurdle.DutchDaemon said:Note that they think they need a couple of years to even match FreeBSD's network proficiency. With a lot of staff.
SirDice said:So, why don't they just use FreeBSD instead?
protocelt said:It still surprises me sometimes how many new startup companies go with Linux given the corporate friendly nature of FreeBSD. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but there are a few places where FreeBSD just makes more sense.
I think you are totally wrong. As somebody who has over 50 Red Hat servers and desktops under my control I find painfully difficult to do most things comparing to OpenBSD (used for network infrastructure) and FreeBSD/DragonFly (file servers). Any serious company have people with enough technical competence to set up any operating system. There are two principle reasons for the success of Linux at least in U.S.NewGuy said:I suspect a lot of companies start off with Linux, not necessarily because it is the best choice long term, but it is something that is easy to set up and get started with. Most of the mainstream Linux distributions are pretty easy to get up and running in just a few minutes.
Oh please. I am not 25 any more. Last time I checked MathWorks officially supported platforms were Red Hat, Ubuntu, Suse, Debian, Windows, and OS X. Oracle supports Solaris as well. Do you think I will jeopardize couple of million dollars worth of grants my Lab has to do real work by running our main tools on unsupported platform via binary compatibility layer :\ ? That is not how real world works. Until IBM, HP, Oracle, Google make the same kind of investment in FreeBSD they made in Linux and until there is Red Hat like entity take the ownership (I am familiar with IX Systems ) FreeBSD will remain to be what FreeBSD is. A great source of a good code for companies like Juniper networks and alike, a great solution for a small busnesses who use generic open source tools, fantasitc playground. No more no less. That is not necessary bad thing. BSDs and in particular FreeBSD would lose a lots of allure by becoming stiff, bloated proprietary OS which needs to run binaries from 25 years ago.pkubaj said:What software do you need that isn't available on FreeBSD? For MATLAB there is math/matlab-installer, there are also ports for Oracle Java in /usr/ports/java/.
You mean companies like Netflix, NetApp and until recently WhatsApp?Oko said:a great solution for a small busnesses who use generic open source tools
Try reading an EULA or two. You cannot sue anybody. Ever.Oko said:1. There is a legal entity you can sue (Red Hat, Novel, Canonical come to mind)
Support is the ONLY reason they're doing this.2. Vendor support. FreeMat, Scilab and GNU Ocatave are nice toys but unless MATLAB runs on FreeBSD my computing nodes will run Red Hat. The same goes with Oracle Java and many other common things.
That's never going to happen. If I was a software company I would simply stop producing software due to the risk of liability.pkubaj said:He proposes that companies be responsible financially for money losses due to software they create. Every software creator would be responsible, unless they opensource their software.
Well, the solution is to opensource you software and only sell paid support for it. Take a look at what Red Hat takes money for. Canonical also wants to go the same way.SirDice said:That's never going to happen. If I was a software company I would simply stop producing software due to the risk of liability.pkubaj said:He proposes that companies be responsible financially for money losses due to software they create. Every software creator would be responsible, unless they opensource their software.
You may not be allowed to do this. You may be using intellectual properties from some other company and not be allowed to open source it.pkubaj said:Well, the solution is to opensource you software and only sell paid support for it.
For a commercial product, I agree. I give you my product, you give me your money, and my product's value must match your money's value. So if my product is flawed, I am responsible.pkubaj said:Every software creator would be responsible, unless they opensource their software.
SirDice said:So, why don't they just use FreeBSD instead?