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> However, the problem is very simple: vast majority of work done in FreeBSD is being done by unpaid volunteers, unlike in case of RHEL/Fedora/Centos and Ubuntu/Debian.

You don't get to use the "unpaid volunteers" excuse when a good portion of FreeBSD's site is dedicated to explaining why GPL and copyleft is anti-corporate and big business should be/is afraid of it, and how BSD is more business friendly.

discuss

slfront|8 years ago

Bullshit.

Red Hat is a business. FreeBSD is a volunteer/community project.

FreeBSD is a volunteer/community project that offers more business-friendly licensing than gNewSense, which is also a volunteer/community project. It is not, however, a business like Red Hat.

Red Hat development gets all that funding because Red Hat is a business. FreeBSD relies more on volunteer time because it is not a business.

Fedora is a "community" project of Red Hat. FreeBSD is a community project of, well, a community. Red Hat funds Fedora (astroturf project) as its testing ground for RHEL (commercial project), while FreeBSD is just a community project.

What part of this do you not understand?

tachion|8 years ago

I don't really see your point, these two things have nothing in common. Where a commercial company has resources to provide long support (paid by, hey, customers money) the volunteer based project doesn't have them, simple as that. It doesn't change the fact that BSD license is more friendly to businesses and that's why so many companies can and DO choose FreeBSD as their technology and are completely FREE to share their code and/or money with FreeBSD. But again, that's not the point.

quitspamming|8 years ago

I'll try to refine the point I was making. For years FreeBSD has explained away their problems by saying "we don't have big business helping us" and then they turn around and say "one of our key advantages is we're more friendly to big business". At some point, you need to stop offering up ONE of those arguments because while theoretically both points can be true, you have to eventually ask if FreeBSD is so good for business, why aren't there Red Hat, IBM, or Linaro for FreeBSD? And if so many businesses ARE choosing FreeBSD, why isn't it showing up in more tangible ways? Netflix might contribute a lot back to FreeBSD, but, can I watch Netflix on my FreeBSD computer? I say this mostly out of frustration with a project and product that I do really like. FreeBSD just needs better arguments in support of it.