The hidden underbelly of Mac OS X is; yep you guessed it BSD. Originally based on OpenBSD however since 10.2 or shortly there after FreeBSD. So this begs the question why do some many manufacturers rally behind Linux when Apple has clearly demonstrated beyond a shadow of any doubt that if you wish to be truly commercially successful building on the back of Open Source you’ve got to do it with a BSD. Consider all of those netbook producers out there with deploying Windows XP in most cases or some flavorless Linux distribution.
- Nokia once had a very profitable security appliance business build on top of FreeBSD, shortly after rolling out new product based on Linux they sold that entity off to CheckPoint.
- The IronPort family of email scanning and filtering appliances also quit successful was built on top of a version of FreeBSD.
- At one time Iomega had a family of NAS systems that was available in two flavors one based on Windows and the other on FreeBSD
- Isilon Systems another vendor with a NAS product that was is also based on BSD was recently acquired by EMC
- Juniper has a whole line of routers, switches and security appliances from carrier class all the way down to small business solutions that are based on BSD
- Marvell is a key manufacturer of embedded systems that support both Linux and FreBSD
- IxSystems who specializes in manufacturing servers and workstations for the BSD market as well as sponsoring such venerable projects like PC-BSD and FreeNAS on its’ original FreeBSD based system
Believe me there are more than enough successful Linux based companies out there, but everyone has their eye steadily focused on Apple these days. Everyone is trying to out Apple Apple right now. Look at T-Mobile with their more than blatant reboot of the “I’m a Mac…” ad campaign. With everyone and their second cousin targeting Apple why aren’t they missing the golden opportunity to start where Apple started?
Certainly Apple did not rise to the top of the Unix technical ladder overnight, but if companies like HP who happens to manufacture some very attractive netbooks were to drop in the latest version of PC-BSD it would be a huge success. Even if Dell who by some blind luck seems to still be a player in the PC market were to do the same their odds of surviving would improve greatly. Of course there is IBM who is probably the the most directly responsible for Red Hat deep penetration into the enterprise market. Even Oracle floundered around with their attempt at gaining any sort of real market in the Linux distribution space. Now they they own Sun who also dabbled with Linux and then tried to open source Solaris which was originally based on BSD when it was SunOs.
So this brings us squarely back to Apple who is by no means a saint in the BSD community. However what is remarkable is that they have paid their dues, even virtually disappearing from the market for a period only to emerge anew based on BSD. Honestly they took a long road to making BSD work for them, but so many of these other companies could shorten that path were they only to realize that Apples success is a direct result of choosing to build a reliable product from a solid foundation and let their brilliant marketing team cool it up so that everyone would want a piece of that experience.
The trick to beating Apple at this game is to build your product on top of BSD and then giving back in a huge way to the BSD community. The manufacturer that does this will reap a loyalty and support base that is unparalleled. They key to using an open source project in your product is choosing one that best fits in licensing wise with your goals and then OPENLY working with that community.
Perhaps we should start a marketing campaign, “Successful businesses do it with BSD!”
Alright I admit that this may be nothing more than speculative holiday wishery, but honestly I think that more companies need to come our from behind the scenes to proclaim their devotion to BSD. If you know of a company that I failed to mention feel free to leave a note in the comments. Let’s open a dialog about them and even link to them. The more we talk about their use of BSD in a positive way the more likely others will follow suit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mikel King has been a leader in the Information Technology Services field for over 20 years. He is currently the CEO of Olivent Technologies, a professional creative services partnership in NY. Additionally he is currently serving as the Secretary of the BSD Certification group as well as a Senior Editor for the BSD News Network.
Unfortunately, freebsd is not so good in embedded system
Make no mistake about it—the main reason Apple chose FreeBSD is because of the license. Unlike the largely viral GPL, the BSD license allows Apple to taketh and not give back—which, while not in the spirit of being open, is perfectly fine per the license.
I have used it with great success on embedded solutions.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
While this is indeed the case you can not deny their great success in this matter. However they have given back quite a lot, just no where near what they have taken. In addition it is up to the original project whether they wish to incorporate what has been given. A perfect example is launchd which has not been adopted by any of the BSD projects at this time.