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Do you have any idea why Facebook would rather develop a TCP/IP Stack for Linux to match FreeBSD's, instead of further evolving FreeBSD's stack? Licensing issue

by atmosx 12y ago

Do you have any idea why Facebook would rather develop a TCP/IP Stack for Linux to match FreeBSD's, instead of further evolving FreeBSD's stack? Licensing issues?

justincormack 12y ago
How could licensing issues be a problem? I think people prefer a monoculture, even though the security idea of having multiple software stacks is appealing, thoroughly testing issues on two OS stacks is a lot more work, especially at Facebook scale. Presumably they are tied into Linux for a lot of their internal infrastructure.
- Perdition 12y ago
  The main security threat these days isn't viruses or worms so a monoculture makes no real difference. In fact running multiple operating systems is more likely to lead to a misconfiguration issue which allows an attacker into your network.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    If someone getting into your network is your threat model then, well, you have already been owned. If you want to have resilient services where you can swap them out if there are security issues, a monoculture is not a win.
MasterScrat 12y ago
I would rather guess it is for consistency reasons. People are more familiar with Linux than FreeBSD. Similarly one of the reasons Facebook relies on PHP is because a lot of developers are familiar with it.
- justincormack 12y ago
  I know lots of people who are more familiar with FreeBSD who are working on Linux systems. The Linux monoculture is just massively dominant.
tachion 12y ago
While I have no actual knowledge why they made that decision, its not very hard to guess, and the possible answers are around their own staff familiarity with FreeBSD, the pros of having the platform simplified by using single OS (Linux in their case, since for sure they've more servers with Linux already than they've acquired with WhatsApp) and all possible security and financial implications following these factors. However, it seems like at least for know they might be staying with FreeBSD a bit longer, what's a great PR/recognition win for the FreeBSD itself. I really doubt its for 'licencing issues' because (religious wars aside) the BSD license is way more attractive to businesses than GPL one. Said all that - I might be terribly wrong about everything I said, because its not an insider knowledge ;)
sciurus 12y ago
Facebook is almost certainly further evolving Linux's existing TCP/IP stack, not developing a new one.

by atmosx 12y ago

Do you have any idea why Facebook would rather develop a TCP/IP Stack for Linux to match FreeBSD's, instead of further evolving FreeBSD's stack? Licensing issues?

justincormack 12y ago

How could licensing issues be a problem? I think people prefer a monoculture, even though the security idea of having multiple software stacks is appealing, thoroughly testing issues on two OS stacks is a lot more work, especially at Facebook scale. Presumably they are tied into Linux for a lot of their internal infrastructure.

Perdition 12y ago
The main security threat these days isn't viruses or worms so a monoculture makes no real difference. In fact running multiple operating systems is more likely to lead to a misconfiguration issue which allows an attacker into your network.
- justincormack 12y ago
  If someone getting into your network is your threat model then, well, you have already been owned. If you want to have resilient services where you can swap them out if there are security issues, a monoculture is not a win.

MasterScrat 12y ago

I would rather guess it is for consistency reasons. People are more familiar with Linux than FreeBSD. Similarly one of the reasons Facebook relies on PHP is because a lot of developers are familiar with it.

justincormack 12y ago
I know lots of people who are more familiar with FreeBSD who are working on Linux systems. The Linux monoculture is just massively dominant.

tachion 12y ago

While I have no actual knowledge why they made that decision, its not very hard to guess, and the possible answers are around their own staff familiarity with FreeBSD, the pros of having the platform simplified by using single OS (Linux in their case, since for sure they've more servers with Linux already than they've acquired with WhatsApp) and all possible security and financial implications following these factors. However, it seems like at least for know they might be staying with FreeBSD a bit longer, what's a great PR/recognition win for the FreeBSD itself. I really doubt its for 'licencing issues' because (religious wars aside) the BSD license is way more attractive to businesses than GPL one. Said all that - I might be terribly wrong about everything I said, because its not an insider knowledge ;)

sciurus 12y ago

Facebook is almost certainly further evolving Linux's existing TCP/IP stack, not developing a new one.