Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?

[Freminlins]

"But in December, Yahoo started to port its homegrown infrastructure
applications from its custom operating system to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 4.0, which was in beta at the time and was released last week.
Plans call for a gradual migration of more applications to Linux, but
the timing and number will depend on how successfully the early work
goes, Ng said."

[url]http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,99901,00.html[/url]

[Jorn Argelo]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:00:31 +0000, Freminlins wrote

> "But in December, Yahoo started to port its homegrown infrastructure
> applications from its custom operating system to Red Hat Enterprise
> Linux 4.0, which was in beta at the time and was released last week.
> Plans call for a gradual migration of more applications to Linux, but
> the timing and number will depend on how successfully the early work
> goes, Ng said."
>
> [url]http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801[/url],
> 99901,00.html

I don't think that they would. That'll be a massive migration involving lots
and lots of costs. They have to pay for RedHat Enterprise too. The only reason
I can think off is that they want support.Perhaps I missed a part, but I don't
see the word FreeBSD in that article.

Besides, the point of the article is not regarding a migration of Yahoo, but
Linux and IT in general. It has nothing to do with Yahoo or FreeBSD. I think
that the author of the article is simply mistaking.

Jorn.

[Freminlins]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:36:36 +0100, Jorn Argelo <jorn@wcborstel.nl> wrote:

> I don't think that they would. That'll be a massive migration involving lots
> and lots of costs. They have to pay for RedHat Enterprise too. The only reason
> I can think off is that they want support.Perhaps I missed a part, but I don't
> see the word FreeBSD in that article.

Although it doesn't state FreeBSD, I understand that Yahoo! runs stuff
on FreeBSD.

> Besides, the point of the article is not regarding a migration of Yahoo, but
> Linux and IT in general. It has nothing to do with Yahoo or FreeBSD. I think
> that the author of the article is simply mistaking.

I'n not sure I agree with that. The author stated "But in December,
Yahoo started to port ... to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0" That would
suggest that Yahoo! is moving to Linux.

I am very interested in this as I have for several years used the
argument "we use the same OS as Yahoo!". We're not going to migrate to
Linux if Yahoo! does.

> Jorn.

Frem.

[Jorn Argelo]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 15:42:14 +0000, Freminlins wrote

> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:36:36 +0100, Jorn Argelo <jorn@wcborstel.nl> wrote:
>

> > I don't think that they would. That'll be a massive migration involving lots
> > and lots of costs. They have to pay for RedHat Enterprise too. The only reason
> > I can think off is that they want support.Perhaps I missed a part, but I don't
> > see the word FreeBSD in that article.

>
> Although it doesn't state FreeBSD, I understand that Yahoo! runs
> stuff on FreeBSD.

Yes, I was aware of that :-)

>

> > Besides, the point of the article is not regarding a migration of Yahoo, but
> > Linux and IT in general. It has nothing to do with Yahoo or FreeBSD. I think
> > that the author of the article is simply mistaking.

>
> I'n not sure I agree with that. The author stated "But in December,
> Yahoo started to port ... to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0" That would
> suggest that Yahoo! is moving to Linux.

Well, I can say that Microsoft is using illegal Warez stuff in their WMA
extension, but who would believe me? I don't have any proof right? Point is,
the author can say something like that, but I've never heard that Yahoo is
migrating. If they would it would definitely be in the news if they would. I'd
like to see a source where the author has gathered information.

>
> I am very interested in this as I have for several years used the
> argument "we use the same OS as Yahoo!". We're not going to migrate
> to Linux if Yahoo! does.

No, of course not :-)

I vaguely recall a discussion like this on the list in the past. I'll look it
up on Google if I have time.

>

> > Jorn.

>
> Frem.
> _______________________________________________
> [email]freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email] mailing list
> [url]http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions[/url]
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"

[Anthony Atkielski]

Jorn Argelo writes:

> I don't think that they would. That'll be a massive migration involving lots
> and lots of costs. They have to pay for RedHat Enterprise too. The only reason
> I can think off is that they want support.

Support is a pretty big reason for most companies.

In a few years, RedHat and its ilk are going to cost just as much as
Microsoft software, and they'll have all the same disadvantages (but
without all the advantages). It will be hard to tell them apart.

--
Anthony

[RW]

On Wednesday 23 February 2005 14:00, Freminlins wrote:

> "But in December, Yahoo started to port its homegrown infrastructure
> applications from its custom operating system to Red Hat Enterprise
> Linux 4.0, which was in beta at the time and was released last week.
> Plans call for a gradual migration of more applications to Linux, but
> the timing and number will depend on how successfully the early work
> goes, Ng said."
>
> [url]http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,99901,00[/url]
>.html _______________________________________________

One of the thing they mention is performance and scalability improving on
Linux, which suggests they aren't talking about it replacing FreeBSD. My
understanding is that they use FreeBSD 4.x on cheap interchangeable low-end
webservers. I think they use Solaris on higher-end machines.

Having said that, once they start using Linux, I wonder how long they will
want to keep both FreeBSD and Linux.

[Anthony Atkielski]

RW writes:

> Having said that, once they start using Linux, I wonder how long they will
> want to keep both FreeBSD and Linux.

Probably not forever. But it could go either way. They might tire of
FreeBSD and switch entirely to Linux ... or they might tire of Linux and
switch entirely to FreeBSD.

--
Anthony

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email]owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Freminlins
> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 7:42 AM
> To: Jorn Argelo
> Cc: [email]questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> Subject: Re: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
>
>
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:36:36 +0100, Jorn Argelo
> <jorn@wcborstel.nl> wrote:
>

> > I don't think that they would. That'll be a massive

> migration involving lots

> > and lots of costs. They have to pay for RedHat Enterprise

> too. The only reason

> > I can think off is that they want support.Perhaps I missed a

> part, but I don't

> > see the word FreeBSD in that article.

>
> Although it doesn't state FreeBSD, I understand that Yahoo! runs stuff
> on FreeBSD.
>

> > Besides, the point of the article is not regarding a

> migration of Yahoo, but

> > Linux and IT in general. It has nothing to do with Yahoo or

> FreeBSD. I think

> > that the author of the article is simply mistaking.

>
> I'n not sure I agree with that. The author stated "But in December,
> Yahoo started to port ... to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0" That would
> suggest that Yahoo! is moving to Linux.
>
> I am very interested in this as I have for several years used the
> argument "we use the same OS as Yahoo!". We're not going to migrate to
> Linux if Yahoo! does.
>

The speaker cited in the article is a "Mason Ng, Yahoo's director of
engineering operations"

However I found a "Kevin Timmons, director, engineering operations,
Yahoo"
when I googled this up.

[url]http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2004/040112b.html[/url]
[url]http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=1106[/url]

I've found numerous references to him in conjunction with Yahoo.

Interestingly, I also found Mason Ng listed as well - here:

[url]http://www.oracle.com/technology/oracleworld/ow_j2ee.html[/url]

as an Oracle Group Product manager. But, very few other references to
that
name. As it's a rather unique name, I would suspect that the Mason Ng in
the article and the one listed as an Oracle employee last year are one
and the same person.

I would presume that if the article in Computerworld was in fact an
accurate quote, that what has happened is that Yahoo has decided to
move to using Oracle as a backend database, and they stole an Oracle
manager away from Oracle to oversee the move. As Linux is the only open
source OS that Oracle ships on, and Yahoo obviously wants to keep using
open
source, it gets elected as the platform.

Keep in mind that in 2004, Yahoo stopped using google results, see here:

[url]http://www.infotoday.com/online/jul04/OnTheNet.shtml[/url]

This represented a return to their roots. Back in 1995 when Yahoo first
got going, it was only their own links on a cobbled-together software
database. Then later on in 1998 they switched
to the Inktomi database, see here:

[url]http://notess.com/write/archive/9904.html[/url]

Obviously then sometime later than that, when the search
market started these large monster OEM search providers, Yahoo started
using Google, as did may other search engines. Then once the users
started
noticing that they were getting the same results no matter what search
engine was being used, sites like Yahoo realized they better
differentiate
their products and so they went back to developing their own database.

Yahoo still uses FreeBSD according to this FAQ:

[url]http://www.ystoreclick.com/yahoo-store-faqs.html[/url]

And I would assume that they will probably only use Red Hat where they
want to field Oracle.

Note also that Yahoo is moving to Red Hat Linux according to the article.
NOT moving to "Linux" Red Hat is not free, it is a commercial server
product just like Microsoft's operating systems. Fedora - that is free.
But they aren't moving to Fedora, they are moving to Red Hat.

I think that there is enough circumstantial evidence of what is really
going on for educated guesses to be drawn. Doubtless further googling
will reveal more info about Yahoo to anyone interested. But clearly,
Yahoo has correctly realized that it's database is the real valuable
part of the company, and they have decided to get out of the
roll-your-own
database software business. Oracle is the obvious choice as it's
designed for large scale operations, exactly what Yahoo is running.
But if your going to run Oracle, you won't get any support from Oracle
unless you run it on a supported operating system.

I also seriously question that Yahoo's database was ever in the past
running
on FreeBSD. I suspect their model was an identical model to Hotmail's -
a small core of strange database servers (Yahoo originally ran indy's,
see [url]http://www.sun.com/950523/yahoostory.html[/url] for their very first
database)
surrounded by a bunch of cheap Pentiums running
FreeBSD as front end servers. Now they are moving to replace that core
with an Oracle core. But there's no indication that they are going to
replace the shell of FreeBSD servers with RedHat.

Quite obviously Yahoo regards the internal workings of their technology
as
trade secrets, that is why there's not a lot of documentation out on the
web on it.

Now, I will address one other point, the "we use the same OS as Yahoo!"
argument.

First of all, 99.9999% of business customers that are out there are NOT
anywhere near the size of Yahoo and never will be. I am quite sure that
anyone who owns a business dreams of growing to be big and rich. But
how many small business are there in the world compared to large ones?

A business must be run realistically. It is a huge waste of money to go
spend a pile of it on a big "large company" software just in the
assumption that
your going to grow into it. It is also a waste of money to run out and
buy
a Sun cluster just in the assumption your going to grow into it.

FreeBSD does not have some of the things - such as distributed management
of hundreds to thousands of FreeBSD servers over a large enterprise -
that
are a requirement for big companies. So, if you have a company even if
they
are the most pro-FreeBSD company in the world, if they happen to grow to
that size, no matter how much they like FreeBSD they can't use it. Yahoo
is presumably finding this out - they want to use Oracle, so that brings
all the baggage of having to run a platform that Oracle tells you to run
so they will support you.

But here is my main objection to the "we use the same OS as yahoo"
argument.
Small companies are not big companies, and big company solutions seldom
are a good fit for them. FreeBSD is an excellent small to medium sized
organization solution. So is Slackware, Debian, Fedora, and a host of
other
Linuxes. A big company solution is Solaris, or Red Hat (at least, that
is
what Red Hat is rapidly progressing to) You would not use a small to
medium sized company solution where you need a big company solution - and
you would also not use a big company solution where a small to medium
sized company solution is needed. That doesen't mean of course that it's
impossible to do it - you can for example use Solaris for a small company
server - but the effort required to go against the grain is much higher.
Solaris for example comes with no compiler and you must compile by hand
all the applications you need, and often you must recompile the complier
just before you can even start doing that. It takes days - whereas the
FreeBSD ports system takes a few hours for the largest and most complex
packages.

Ted

[Julien Gabel]

> That doesen't mean of course that it's impossible to do it - you can for

> example use Solaris for a small company server - but the effort required
> to go against the grain is much higher. Solaris for example comes with no
> compiler and you must compile by hand all the applications you need, and
> often you must recompile the complier just before you can even start
> doing that. It takes days - whereas the FreeBSD ports system takes a few
> hours for the largest and most complex packages.

Just as a side notes here:

1/ Solaris does come with 'gcc' on Compagnion CD as can be seen on a fresh
Solaris 10 installation:
# pkginfo -l SUNWgcc | egrep "PKGINST|NAME|ARCH|VERSION|VENDOR|DESC"
PKGINST: SUNWgcc
NAME: gcc - The GNU C compiler
ARCH: sparc
VERSION: 11.10.0,REV=2005.01.08.05.16
VENDOR: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
DESC: GNU C - The GNU C compiler 3.4.3

2/ You can always use the pkgsrc (the NetBSD Packages Collection) as the
FreeBSD ports system replacement for use on Sun Solaris. We do it here
already for some software for Solaris 2.6, 8, 9 and soon for 10.

I don't say i disagree with your global point of view, just that the last
two points may be slightly... moderated :)

--
-jpeg.

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email]owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Julien Gabel
> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 2:22 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: [email]questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> Subject: RE: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
>
>

> > That doesen't mean of course that it's impossible to do it -

> you can for

> > example use Solaris for a small company server - but the

> effort required

> > to go against the grain is much higher. Solaris for example

> comes with no

> > compiler and you must compile by hand all the applications

> you need, and

> > often you must recompile the complier just before you can even start
> > doing that. It takes days - whereas the FreeBSD ports

> system takes a few

> > hours for the largest and most complex packages.

>
>
> Just as a side notes here:
>
> 1/ Solaris does come with 'gcc' on Compagnion CD as can be
> seen on a fresh
> Solaris 10 installation:
> # pkginfo -l SUNWgcc | egrep "PKGINST|NAME|ARCH|VERSION|VENDOR|DESC"
> PKGINST: SUNWgcc
> NAME: gcc - The GNU C compiler
> ARCH: sparc
> VERSION: 11.10.0,REV=2005.01.08.05.16
> VENDOR: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
> DESC: GNU C - The GNU C compiler 3.4.3
>
> 2/ You can always use the pkgsrc (the NetBSD Packages
> Collection) as the
> FreeBSD ports system replacement for use on Sun Solaris.
> We do it here
> already for some software for Solaris 2.6, 8, 9 and soon for 10.
>

What possible benefit does that give for Solaris which already has
it's own package manager? Your certainly not advocating using the
NetBSD presets for compiling packages on Solaris?

> I don't say i disagree with your global point of view, just
> that the last
> two points may be slightly... moderated :)
>

Solaris 2.6, 8, 9, 10 don't run on EISA. They also got rid of the
alt-F keys for the multiple consoles. I think they were looking
for ways to be degenerate. ;-) 2.6 also included it's own perl,
and I think later versions did too. Blech on that if you needed
a later version of perl on the system. It also didn't help that
Sun for several years was FUDing the industry claiming they
wern't going to support the Intel 64 bit chips. And check out the
lack of /dev/random, /dev/urandom on 2.6 and 8 if I recall -
problem for OpenSSL even though a Sun patch adds them. Although
the Sun-supplied random devices blow chunks when running ENT
or other PRNG testers. I kind of expect crappy entropy from
a hacked up ripoff of the linux random driver, but I really
expected a lot better entropy from a driver distributed from
the maunfacturer. After all, Sun can look at interrupts at the
network card and all kinds of other icky nonportable but
highly unpredictable fantastic randomness sources - just what
the heck are they doing in that driver of theirs? Calculating
pi? Unless perhaps the NSA got to them and told them they
better not release a decent random device because they want to
keep spying on all of us.

Seriously, the later versions of Solaris after 2.6 were big
disappointments,
It took years and years for hardware to catch up. Big, poky and slow.
I don't know what they did but a 2.51 or 2.6 system on the same
hardware kicked the crap out of 8 even with full patch sets
applied. And the Companion CD didn't start supplying gcc for Solaris x86
until Solaris 8 I believe. These Solaris versions were fine for
big companies with lots of money to buy brand new Sun boxes (which
ran them well) They were hideous for not so big companies that
didn't want to have to throw perfectly good quad Pentium 200 servers
with EISA hardware raid controllers and big SCSI arrays on them
in the garbage.

And try building something like ImageMagik on Solaris 10 I will bet
that at least 1 of the collection of libraries that this conglomerate
program requires will not build without tweaks.

We do use Solaris, it's stable, runs well, nice UNIX os. But what
a time sucking bitch to setup. At least you get a Motif, that's
worth something.

Ted

[Daniel]

sorry, i should have sent this to entire list...

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 01:43:32 -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote among others...

>
> FreeBSD does not have some of the things - such as distributed management
> of hundreds to thousands of FreeBSD servers over a large enterprise -
> that
> are a requirement for big companies.

would not these things be worthy of implementing in FreeBSD? this way
other big companies would use it, pay you guys for it and FreeBSD will
grow stronger...
making a good OS that runs on cheap, low-end machines is nice, but the
real money come from companies...
another idea, a study of what features big companies want from an OS
should be conducted...by you, maybe or some other people interested
and these features be prioritized for FreeBSD...

have a good day..
Dan

[Jerry McAllister]

>

> sorry, i should have sent this to entire list...
>
> On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 01:43:32 -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote among others...

> >
> > FreeBSD does not have some of the things - such as distributed management
> > of hundreds to thousands of FreeBSD servers over a large enterprise -
> > that
> > are a requirement for big companies.

>
> would not these things be worthy of implementing in FreeBSD? this way
> other big companies would use it, pay you guys for it and FreeBSD will
> grow stronger...
> making a good OS that runs on cheap, low-end machines is nice, but the
> real money come from companies...

Maybe. But the initial intent of FreeBSD was not making money.
It was having an OS that the people creating it liked so they didn't
have to muck around with the rest of the junk out there.

But, there is no reason that someone could not make such a system
out of FreeBSD and charge for it - and probably make some significant
money.

I don't know if that should be the direction of the FreeBSD project
per se though. Maybe, if those people who made the big system
contributed their work back to FreeBSD it would be interesting.

////jerry

> another idea, a study of what features big companies want from an OS
> should be conducted...by you, maybe or some other people interested
> and these features be prioritized for FreeBSD...
>
> have a good day..
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> [email]freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email] mailing list
> [url]http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions[/url]
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
>

[Julien Gabel]

>>> That doesen't mean of course that it's impossible to do it - you can for

>>> example use Solaris for a small company server - but the effort required
>>> to go against the grain is much higher. Solaris for example comes with
>>> no compiler and you must compile by hand all the applications you need,
>>> and often you must recompile the complier just before you can even start
>>> doing that. It takes days - whereas the FreeBSD ports system takes a
>>> few hours for the largest and most complex packages.

>> Just as a side notes here:
>>
>> 1/ Solaris does come with 'gcc' on Compagnion CD as can be seen on a
>> fresh Solaris 10 installation:
>> # pkginfo -l SUNWgcc | egrep "PKGINST|NAME|VERSION|VENDOR|DESC"
>> PKGINST: SUNWgcc
>> NAME: gcc - The GNU C compiler
>> VERSION: 11.10.0,REV=2005.01.08.05.16
>> VENDOR: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>> DESC: GNU C - The GNU C compiler 3.4.3
>>
>> 2/ You can always use the pkgsrc (the NetBSD Packages Collection) as the
>> FreeBSD ports system replacement for use on Sun Solaris. We do it
>> here already for some software for Solaris 2.6, 8, 9 and soon for 10.

> What possible benefit does that give for Solaris which already has
> it's own package manager? Your certainly not advocating using the
> NetBSD presets for compiling packages on Solaris?

Yes, i do. This is one of the aim of this initial fork of the FreeBSD
ports collection (pkgsrc) to be used on multiple plateform and operating
system (NetBSD, Solaris, Linux, AIX, etc.: a list of all the supported
OSes can be found at [url]http://www.pkgsrc.org/[/url]). Sure, it is not perfect,
but it is a valuable tool.

Because sunfreeware.com provide binary only packages for Solaris, it is
very convenient to be able to compile our own set of packages from source
(and use our particular settings) or be able to install a software not
provided on sunfreeware.com or not yet updated.

It can then be possible to track and keep a real personalized third party
software baseline on multiple release versions of one or more OSes (for
example, have the same version of compilation tools or web server on
Solaris 2.6, Solaris 9 and Linux).

I don't think _one_ tool can solve of all problems, but use both the
native and non-native (pkgsrc) tools/package manager can be a good
compromise.

The advantages i think of (at least :-))
- As with the FreeBSD ports collection, we can use an existing base of
packages building from source (generally well up-to-date) with our own
settings;
- Management of software (or tools) dependancies;
- Automatic checking for security vulnerabilities in installed packages;
- Can generate binary package from our own sets, either manually or
automatically using the bulk builds (for deployment for example);
- Although compiled from source, you can managed installed packages via
the pkg_* tools which is more convenient than from hands in /usr/local;
- Don't interfer with supported native packages (from Sun) or non-
supported packages (from sunfreeware.com, etc.).

As a side note, it is interesting to note that although not considered part
of Solaris 10 you can found a _reference_ to the The NetBSD Packages
Collection on the Compagnion CD provided by Sun[1], among others. It would
seems furthermore than there exists a specialized group in the NetBSD
Project to handle specific PRs on this plateform (solaris-pkg-people) and
that Sun will be using "some form of pkgsrc" for its contrib packages
extras in Solaris[2] (i have not yet verify this). Last, Sun has
contributed
some hardware to help making bulk builds of pkgsrc on Solaris OS[3].

>> I don't say i disagree with your global point of view, just that the
>> last two points may be slightly... moderated :)

> Solaris 2.6, 8, 9, 10 don't run on EISA. They also got rid of the
> alt-F keys for the multiple consoles.

Yes, right :(

> 2.6 also included it's own perl, and I think later versions did too.
> Blech on that if you needed a later version of perl on the system.

On Solaris 10 plateform, you can found Perl 5.8.4 and Perl 5.6.1. The
default is to place Perl 5.8.4 as /usr/bin/perl.

> These Solaris versions were fine for big companies with lots of money to
> buy brand new Sun boxes (which ran them well). They were hideous for not
> so big companies that didn't want to have to throw perfectly good quad
> Pentium 200 servers with EISA hardware raid controllers and big SCSI
> arrays on them in the garbage.

Maybe we can hope this will change in near future, with Solaris 10+.

> And try building something like ImageMagik on Solaris 10 I will bet
> that at least 1 of the collection of libraries that this conglomerate
> program requires will not build without tweaks.

Certainly. (FYI: currently, it breaks on the graphics/jasper dependancy
on the 2004-Q4 branch)
So, if there is no native "solution" (binary packages or anything else),
and if the FreeBSD ports collection is the favorite answer, i think that
the pkgsrc answer may be a very good solution, even with local tweaking
(you can easily track and record the changes for example). And no doubt
that is better than do nothing or try to do it by hand ;-)

> We do use Solaris, it's stable, runs well, nice UNIX os. But what
> a time sucking bitch to setup.

Ok, that is your point of view ;)

--
-jpeg.

[1] [url]http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html#20050206_1835[/url]
[2] [url]http://www.netbsd.org/Foundation/reports/2004.html#pkgsrc[/url]
[3] [url]http://www.netbsd.org/Foundation/reports/2004.html#admins[/url]

[Anthony Atkielski]

Daniel writes:

> would not these things be worthy of implementing in FreeBSD? this way
> other big companies would use it, pay you guys for it and FreeBSD will
> grow stronger...

There are other obstacles to deployment of FreeBSD in large
organizations. The main one is a lack of formal, guaranteed support.
This afflicts Linux, also, to some extent, depending on the
distribution. Even for "supported" Linux distributions, the support is
often very limited in comparison to that available for systems such as
Solaris, Windows, or even Mac OS X.

> making a good OS that runs on cheap, low-end machines is nice, but the
> real money come from companies...

The problem is that the largest companies need more than just a
technically superior operating system. That's why they are still buying
Solaris and Windows.

--
Anthony

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email]owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Anthony
> Atkielski
> Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 9:02 AM
> To: [email]freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
>
>
> Daniel writes:
>

> > would not these things be worthy of implementing in FreeBSD? this way
> > other big companies would use it, pay you guys for it and

> FreeBSD will

> > grow stronger...

>
> There are other obstacles to deployment of FreeBSD in large
> organizations. The main one is a lack of formal, guaranteed support.
> This afflicts Linux, also, to some extent, depending on the
> distribution. Even for "supported" Linux distributions, the support is
> often very limited in comparison to that available for systems such as
> Solaris, Windows, or even Mac OS X.
>

Not for Red Hat, at least not anymore. The entire reason for making
Red Hat commercial was to emulate as closely as possible the same type
of $upport $tructure and co$ts that Microsoft provides.

>
> The problem is that the largest companies need more than just a
> technically superior operating system. That's why they are
> still buying
> Solaris and Windows.
>

This is a gross simplification of the realities.

The reality is they are still buying Solaris because the back end apps
they run on it - big company apps that is, like Peoplesoft and SAP -
require it.

And they are still buying Microsoft Windows because they don't have a
choice - because the low-end desktop computers that business purchase
all come with Windows preloaded on it.

And they are still buying Microsoft Office because their users are
demanding it.

But if you think that support is the reason for large companies
buying Windows, I have a bridge to sell you. Every large company
admin I've ever talked to with a Microsoft support contract
all say that their paid support sucks. The only good thing I've
ever heard about Microsoft support was the per-incident Developer
support, which is $250 per incident, and is handled by a completely
separate group than the regular paid support.

Microsoft understood years ago that if you want to lock in the
business market, the key is to lock in the application developers to
your platform. Businesses if given a choice would go for Linux -
but they aren't given a choice because the applications they want
to run don't run on Linux - because Microsoft has in many cases
told those application developers that if they offer Linux versions
of their products, they won't get the same level of support from
Microsoft than if they remain loyal. (this is one of the behaviors
that was stopped by the antitrust trial - however, many ISV's still
to this day will tell you that they believe they get better support
from Microsoft if they don't support Linux)

Years ago I worked for Symantec, and it is this very reason why for
years no Symantec applications were offered for Linux. At the time
the CEO, Gordon Eubanks (who was apparently pushed out of or got
tired of Symantec around 2000 or thereabouts) prohibited development
along those lines. (Eubanks was asked in 1999 by Bill Gates to
testify in support of Microsoft at the antitrust trial) This was
done solely to enable the Symantec development team to get inside
information about Windows from Microsoft.

This also is why Microsoft fought the idea of divestiture of Office
applications which was proposed as a remedy for the trial. (indeed,
it's the only remedy that made any sense at all) With Office apps
supplied by a different company post-trial, it would be illegal for
them to give special data to the Office company in exchange for
preventing a port of Office to Linux. Since they own Office and
have succeeded in killing off all other business office suite vendors,
they can prevent new ones from getting a foothold by using their
inside information tricks, and they can refuse to port to Linux.

None of these dirty tricks are "needed" by businesses, contrary to
your assertions.

Ted

[Daniel]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 11:48:05 -0500 (EST), Jerry McAllister wrote:

> > would not these things be worthy of implementing in FreeBSD? this way
> > other big companies would use it, pay you guys for it and FreeBSD will
> > grow stronger...
> > making a good OS that runs on cheap, low-end machines is nice, but the
> > real money come from companies...

>
> Maybe. But the initial intent of FreeBSD was not making money.
> It was having an OS that the people creating it liked so they didn't
> have to muck around with the rest of the junk out there.

by making money i did not meant necessarily big bank acocunts for the
its developers but money that would allow developers to allocate more
time to FreeBSD, enhancing it so that when someone, sys admin/company/
would want to setup a internet-aware (mail, web, fw, gw) server and at
the same time keep the peace of mind, would think "Of course!, we'll
use FreeBSD, you'll see, it's awesome"

> But, there is no reason that someone could not make such a system
> out of FreeBSD and charge for it - and probably make some significant
> money.
>
> I don't know if that should be the direction of the FreeBSD project
> per se though. Maybe, if those people who made the big system
> contributed their work back to FreeBSD it would be interesting.
>

i hardly think that companies that use and enhance FreeBSD adding
features that they (and maybe others) need, would submit back those
enhacements - BSD license...

Dan

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

On Feb 25, 2005, at 1:01 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

>
> And they are still buying Microsoft Office because their users are
> demanding it.

I don't believe this. I believe that a few users demand it, and by
default everyone else gets it. Some manager or IT VP or someone
decides that is the new corp standard and that is it.

Chad

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email]owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Daniel
> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 12:04 AM
> To: [email]freebsd-questions@freebsd.org[/email]
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Is Yahoo! moving from FreeBSD?
>
>
> by making money i did not meant necessarily big bank acocunts for the
> its developers but money that would allow developers to allocate more
> time to FreeBSD, enhancing it so that when someone, sys admin/company/
> would want to setup a internet-aware (mail, web, fw, gw) server and at
> the same time keep the peace of mind, would think "Of course!, we'll
> use FreeBSD, you'll see, it's awesome"
>

Daniel, if I'm running a big company and I pay a developer a chunk of
change for a distributed FreeBSD server manager program, or some such
thing like that, I am not going to pay them if they are going to take
the money and run out and work on their own projects.

> i hardly think that companies that use and enhance FreeBSD adding
> features that they (and maybe others) need, would submit back those
> enhacements - BSD license...
>

Your wrong. There's lots of code and features that are in FreeBSD
right now today that came from companies that used and enhanced
FreeBSD.

Ted

[Joshua Tinnin]

On Friday 25 February 2005 12:04 am, Daniel <bdaniel7@gmail.com> wrote:

> i hardly think that companies that use and enhance FreeBSD adding
> features that they (and maybe others) need, would submit back those
> enhacements - BSD license...

Happens all the time - the goodwill is stronger than the license, or
maybe it's because submitting improvements helps create a better OS for
that company, as well as everyone else. Apple and Yahoo! are two
notable examples.

- jt

[Daniel]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 18:02:20 +0100, Anthony Atkielski wrote:

>

> > would not these things be worthy of implementing in FreeBSD? this way
> > other big companies would use it, pay you guys for it and FreeBSD will
> > grow stronger...

>
> There are other obstacles to deployment of FreeBSD in large
> organizations. The main one is a lack of formal, guaranteed support.
> This afflicts Linux, also, to some extent, depending on the
> distribution. Even for "supported" Linux distributions, the support is
> often very limited in comparison to that available for systems such as
> Solaris, Windows, or even Mac OS X.
>

> > making a good OS that runs on cheap, low-end machines is nice, but the
> > real money come from companies...

>
> The problem is that the largest companies need more than just a
> technically superior operating system. That's why they are still buying
> Solaris and Windows.
>

well, if a big company pays for support, those money would allow
FreeBSD to have some more people (developers or not) focus on giving
the support (fixing/answering) while the developers do their job...i
believe this is quite natural course of action

the reason for the above comments is that i think FreeBSD should come
out in light and become more popular, not only in sys admin world,
maybe just like Linux; yes, we know that it is used in many critical
systems, that it is there, serving, provinding certainty; true,
FreeBSD is like "real things just happen, the press doesn't have to
talk about it".

Dan