Selling FreeBSD-preloaded Computers

[Beastie7]

I heard from one of the FreeBSD Office Hour episodes that George Neville Neil inherited some cellular code from a source. RISC-V Hardware would be a perfect match for it.

 

[birbignano]

I've been toying with the idea of partnering with a local company which makes custom gaming computers, seeing if they'd be interested in making FreeBSD-preloaded computers with specific software and configurations I would specify like a custom distribution.

I hope you don't have in mind to sell FreeBSD gaming machines ?

to promote several game development software that not many people know about, it would be a product very similar to the Pinebook Pro as it would be very experimental and generally only appeal to the FOSS and other game/software development communities.

Keep in mind current limitations on the FreeBSD side in regard to Vulkan support and the drm-code to support latest open-friendly GPUs. Thanks Nvidia cards are fully supported except for CUDA.

My questions are: 1) Do I need permission to use FreeBSD as the base system?

Nope. BSD gives you every right to use it however you see fit. Trademarks ( the name FreeBSD for example ) are another question.

I'd like to have GPL software and possibly even some software that is patented, such as ffmpeg just so it can have OBS studio and a basic video player built-in. Do i need to package the source code along with the OS itself, or is linking to the source where it is available sufficient in the case of a custom distro?

Luckily, BSD is very compatible with the open and closed source worlds. You can use GPL software ( linking GPL libraries in a BSD, or even worse proprietary, software cannot be done without redistributing the source code of the program ) freely. The same with closed source. Patented software means you need to see what rights the patent holder gives you. Often you cannot redistribute it without having a license to do so. Obviously patents are handled differently in various countries. The US is the stricter country. The EU is good. It is a question better answered by a lawyer!

I created a Virtual Machine of the OS i'd like to be preinstalled. Is that a license or patent violation on its own?

If you live in the EU and you are using it for yourself, no. If you live in the US, things change for the worse. If you sell the product, you must absolutely ask the patent holders. There are patents that are made "free", but others are not. It is a minefield sadly.

 

[Samuel Venable]

I can see this was a dumb idea that was doomed from the start.

If you live in the EU and you are using it for yourself, no. If you live in the US, things change for the worse. If you sell the product, you must absolutely ask the patent holders. There are patents that are made "free", but others are not. It is a minefield sadly.

I'm not selling my VM, so it sounds like I'm fine? I live in the US though, so perhaps not. I'm going to contact the FreeBSD Foundation about that one question in particular. If they don't get back to me, I'll check it out with a lawyer.

 

[obsigna]

If you want to avoid GPL issues, you must not distribute GPL'ed software. This however does not bind your customers not to use GPL'ed software. For example, the downloads of the FreeBSD operating system are almost free of GPL software, nonetheless do we as the FreeBSD users install a lot of GPL'ed stuff by the way of the ports for example, or from other sources. This has no legal significance to whom distributes FreeBSD since this happens outside of theirs responsibility.

That said, you could do the same. You would prepare your distribution completely with RIGHTLY FREE software (i.e. BSD like stuff) which then upon the first start shows a screen where the customer is informed, that it is left to him to push the big button for downloading and installing the LEFTLY FREE software, in order to make the system complete. Your script which responses to said button could essentially be a list of packages to be installed by the pkg install -fy command. You would have no problems with the GPL, because anything GPL happens outside of your responsibility.

 

[Samuel Venable]

If you want to avoid GPL issues, you must not distribute GPL'ed software. This however does not bind your customers not to use GPL'ed software. For example, the downloads of the FreeBSD operating system are almost free of GPL software, nonetheless do we as the FreeBSD users install a lot of GPL'ed stuff by the way of the ports for example, or from other sources. This has no legal significance to whom distributes FreeBSD since this happens outside of theirs responsibility.

That said, you could do the same. You would prepare your distribution completely with RIGHTLY FREE software (i.e. BSD like stuff) which then upon the first start shows a screen where the customer is informed, that it is left to him to push the big button for downloading and installing the LEFTLY FREE software, in order to make the system complete. Your script which responses to said button could essentially be a list of packages to be installed by the pkg install -fy command. You would have no problems with the GPL, because anything GPL happens outside of your responsibility.

That was something I had asked about earlier, was whether an automated script would have the same issues, and I figured it didn't so that's very good to know. I'd like to take game development out of the equation at this point. The only issue with the automated script approach is that in my experience some packages over time get removed due to lack of maintenance, so I would need a means to force install while ignoring package names that can't be installed for that reason.

 

[GoNeFast_01]

I'd like to take game development out of the equation at this point. The only issue with the automated script approach is that in my experience some packages over time get removed due to lack of maintenance, so I would need a means to force install while ignoring package names that can't be installed for that reason.

I like the automatic or even MANUAL software installer... I was thinking the same way as you of trying to build something, but I was tackling first from the other side creating compelling BADASS hardware and I am not talking about what we have on the market now...
Just look at the SKUNKWORKS spec I am toying with:
128Core / 256v Core = 2 EPYC 64 CORE
2048 GB RAM / 16 x 128GB, I think there are x256GB sticks now but will have to look
5-20TB of NVME

These specs will be server blades for enterprise client as I am also toying in the unknown and doing 2 step immersion cooling making it little outside of a normal user's budget...

 

[kpedersen]

I have had a further think on this and I wonder if there could be another kind of niche.

Basically a fairly consumer machine like a laptop but with a tiny Linux layer, basically like a slightly fatter OpenBMC that allows you to benefit from good proprietary driver support (i.e CUDA, Nvidia) but then provides via a well integrated Xen / KVM a standard and stable virtual computer for the OS that you actually want to run. Not just useful for FreeBSD but also operating systems that are also interesting but really don't have the driver support for 100% usage. Think Plan 9, DragonflyBSD, MS-DOS, etc.

If you could make the Linux so hidden that it basically just feels like an extended BIOS, this could solve a lot of the problems that people have with FreeBSD not supporting their hardware.

In many ways, FreeBSD has decent enough hardware support that doesn't quite justify this, but if things change in the future, it could be a useful product. Generally if I have a non-compatible hardware, it doesn't tend to work any better on Linux either and I would use Windows as the "compatibility layer" (Hyper-V is oddly good).

 

[Jose]

If you could make the Linux so hidden that it basically just feels like an extended BIOS, this could solve a lot of the problems that people have with FreeBSD not supporting their hardware...

Sounds like the Coreboot Linux payload.

 

[kpedersen]

Sounds like the Coreboot Linux payload.

Pretty much. I was also having a scan through what OpenBMC is for the Raptor POWER9 machines. Again, a very small Linux shim.

However, I don't think these guys provide a range of hardware drivers, they require the main OS that runs after them to still interact with the hardware directly (retaining full performance / flexibility etc). This is where one of these but with some virtualization on top could be interesting.

 

[Jose]

Pretty much. I was also having a scan through what OpenBMC is for the Raptor POWER9 machines. Again, a very small Linux shim.

However, I don't think these guys provide a range of hardware drivers, they require the main OS that runs after them to still interact with the hardware directly (retaining full performance / flexibility etc). This is where one of these but with some virtualization on top could be interesting.

A real hardware abstraction layer? Folks have been trying for about 20 years, so maybe it's due to finally happen.

 

[kpedersen]

A real hardware abstraction layer? Folks have been trying for about 20 years, so maybe it's due to finally happen.

Hopefully. I suppose why it hasn't thus far is because people want as much power as possible and the abstraction layer will unfortunately take a little bit of a hit.

However for my purposes, often I am just happy having a native resolution console and this abstraction layer would provide that

 

[Deleted member 30996]

I'd like to help out in selling FreeBSD pre-loaded computers. What I would do is create an automated installer script allowing the user to have the option of selecting a Desktop Environment, and have everything auto-configured to "just work" out of the box, and the script would be optionally run by the user the first power on of the machine. Since they would technically be prompted and would activate installation by their choice, this will avoid any legal concerns related to GPL'd and patented software, they would be downloading and installing it themselves.

That would be great till they had to Admin it. Unless I'm missing something.

Is there a script you can write to check for base system and 3rd party program vulnerabilities on a regular basis? Something like Windows "Wizard" that will take root command of the machine as needed from the user and do what only root privileges allow done?

A thingy that can step in when ports-mgmt/portmaster fails, or whatever method you use to handle the situation balks and needs human interaction and experience to solve. Experience they won't have to begin with and it be broke as far as they are concerned?

Just some concerns off the top of my head.

 

[Samuel Venable]

I've been thInking about this more, and what's wrong with including GPL software as long as it includes the exact unmodified source code via ports? Solaris does this despite being proprietary has a lot of GPL and similarly licensed components iirc. I mean if I didn't do the script approach. I'd like to know the technical reasons behind it.