4 ms·

As a total outsider it looks like FreeBSD is the “silent” OS behind lot of the big money projects. Not just this but recently learned it’s the base OS of the Pl

As a total outsider it looks like FreeBSD is the “silent” OS behind lot of the big money projects. Not just this but recently learned it’s the base OS of the Playstation 4 and 5 system too. Is there a reason why FreeBSD is so popular? Just general reliability? And why not the other BSD projects? Also one, like me, would assume Linux is behind all of these but alas not.

Thev00d00 4y ago
Sony used it because they got an entire OS for free with no obligation to release the source.
keewee7 4y ago
The sysadmin experience on FreeBSD used to be more opinionated than on Linux. This was before most Linux distros adopted systemd. The reason companies like Sony and Apple pick FreeBSD is because they get an open source POSIX-compliant OS they can drastically modify down to the kernel level without having to open source their modifications.
naikrovek 4y ago
Blame the GPL for this. The GPL is directly responsible for the livelihood of many/all BSD developers, and i could not be happier about that. Linux is overrated in a lot of ways.
- robocat 4y ago
  However the GPL is irrelevant in this case because the NetFlix Open Connect appliance is not sold to ISPs. The GPL is only relevant if you are distributing GPL software e.g. Sony PlayStation.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    Not directly relevant perhaps. I would not go as far as to say it is necessarily completely irrelevant; there are many ways usage of FreeBSD in one portion of a company, or by employees hired from another company, can affect decisions made by the company. Who knows what plans Netflix had in mind when this decision was made? Maybe they simply commit to FreeBSD because they do not want to release their code under the GPL. I certainly never do, and I will never ever make any improvements to any GPL code I use. I think it is an awful license. Maybe Netflix does, too? That would be directly relevant to the license of the OS even if they never release their customized OS, if they have a customized version at all.
Thaxll 4y ago
Linux is powering the web, like 99% of it + half of all the mobile phones. BSD is like a drop in the ocean in comparison.
paulmd 4y ago
In Netflix's case, the FreeBSD networking stack was a lot faster at the time. FreeBSD (and other BSDs) are also a much simpler platform with orders of magnitude less "churn" taking place - if you are doing an engineering experiment that involves low-level integration with OS-level or kernel-level subsystems (eg kernel TLS f.ex) then it's a lot simpler to start from BSD, and you can very safely assume that your code will pretty much continue working in future releases as well. It's a far more stable platform to build a product around, Linux is "constantly on fire all the time" in comparison to the absolutely sedate pace of BSD development. It was built over the last 50 years (the oldest code in the FreeBSD repos dates to 1979) and it mostly Just Works Like You'd Expect. The good old 'cathedral vs the bazaar' tradeoff. Well, if you are building an annex, at least you know the cathedral isn't going to collapse under you next week, and by the time you get your project finished the bazaar might have moved on to something completely different and abandoned the thing you needed. But you don't get docker and the other New Things either. Sony likes it because it allows them to release proprietary software off an open codebase. The conceptual divide is - GPL protects end user freedoms, at the cost of developer freedoms (eg linking to code with GPL-incompatible licenses, or not distributing the source to proprietary extensions to a GPL'd product). While BSD/MIT license it's the other way around, they're "here's this code, you can use it however you want", and sometimes that means doing things that users might consider "evil".

Thev00d00 4y ago

Sony used it because they got an entire OS for free with no obligation to release the source.

keewee7 4y ago

The sysadmin experience on FreeBSD used to be more opinionated than on Linux. This was before most Linux distros adopted systemd. The reason companies like Sony and Apple pick FreeBSD is because they get an open source POSIX-compliant OS they can drastically modify down to the kernel level without having to open source their modifications.

naikrovek 4y ago

Blame the GPL for this. The GPL is directly responsible for the livelihood of many/all BSD developers, and i could not be happier about that. Linux is overrated in a lot of ways.

robocat 4y ago
However the GPL is irrelevant in this case because the NetFlix Open Connect appliance is not sold to ISPs. The GPL is only relevant if you are distributing GPL software e.g. Sony PlayStation.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  Not directly relevant perhaps. I would not go as far as to say it is necessarily completely irrelevant; there are many ways usage of FreeBSD in one portion of a company, or by employees hired from another company, can affect decisions made by the company. Who knows what plans Netflix had in mind when this decision was made? Maybe they simply commit to FreeBSD because they do not want to release their code under the GPL. I certainly never do, and I will never ever make any improvements to any GPL code I use. I think it is an awful license. Maybe Netflix does, too? That would be directly relevant to the license of the OS even if they never release their customized OS, if they have a customized version at all.

Thaxll 4y ago

Linux is powering the web, like 99% of it + half of all the mobile phones. BSD is like a drop in the ocean in comparison.

paulmd 4y ago

In Netflix's case, the FreeBSD networking stack was a lot faster at the time. FreeBSD (and other BSDs) are also a much simpler platform with orders of magnitude less "churn" taking place - if you are doing an engineering experiment that involves low-level integration with OS-level or kernel-level subsystems (eg kernel TLS f.ex) then it's a lot simpler to start from BSD, and you can very safely assume that your code will pretty much continue working in future releases as well. It's a far more stable platform to build a product around, Linux is "constantly on fire all the time" in comparison to the absolutely sedate pace of BSD development. It was built over the last 50 years (the oldest code in the FreeBSD repos dates to 1979) and it mostly Just Works Like You'd Expect. The good old 'cathedral vs the bazaar' tradeoff. Well, if you are building an annex, at least you know the cathedral isn't going to collapse under you next week, and by the time you get your project finished the bazaar might have moved on to something completely different and abandoned the thing you needed. But you don't get docker and the other New Things either. Sony likes it because it allows them to release proprietary software off an open codebase. The conceptual divide is - GPL protects end user freedoms, at the cost of developer freedoms (eg linking to code with GPL-incompatible licenses, or not distributing the source to proprietary extensions to a GPL'd product). While BSD/MIT license it's the other way around, they're "here's this code, you can use it however you want", and sometimes that means doing things that users might consider "evil".