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NetBSD Support From Wasabi Systems, Inc.
from the live-from-the-Usenix-terminal-room dept.
N: How long have you been working on this?
P: A couple of months now. Things have moved far faster than we expected. For years we've been hoping that someone would stand up and do this, and no one did. It's a shame that no one's stood up to provide sales and support. There's no central place to get customization done, which is important for some of the commercial users who are using NetBSD in embedded systems, companies like Geocast, or IBM's Network Computer.
We're trying to be Cygnus of this space, rather than the RedHat.
N: How big is the company at the moment?
P: We're in the startup phase. We've got a few people who have already signed contracts, and a few people we're in negotiations with. The non-technical staff is relatively small at the moment, three to four people, the technical staff is larger, and growing pretty fast.
N: So you're hiring now?
P: We're very actively hiring. We're looking for developers, people to do support stuff for NetBSD using clients, infrastructure consulting for NetBSD using clients. We're tapping the NetBSD developer community right now, but we're looking for people who are good above everything else. Contact information is on the website, or just get in touch with me directly.
N: Why Wasabi?
P: It's a neat name. When all the bad names are already taken, why not use a good one? <laughs> We're a hot young company.
N: Are you going to be selling NetBSD on CD?
P: Yes. 1.4.3 on CD within a few weeks when the project releases it. 1.5 as well, which is expected at the end of September (when the RSA patent expires. . .)
We'll be doing a multi-CD release, and probably a couple of different CD options depending on what people want. We have to release for 29 different architectures, which complicates things.
N: How many NetBSD project members are involved in Wasabi?
P: At the moment we have a couple of members from -core, and most of the people involved are developers. We also have a couple of non-NetBSD developers involved.
N: If clients approach you for NetBSD development are you making sure that it's going to be released under the BSD license?
P: Everything that we can we will. There will be instances where clients come to us for work that will be used in house, or is uninteresting. But we're unequivocably an open-source company, and we want to release virtually everything we do as open source.
N: NetBSD is very community led. How is Wasabi going to be contributing back to the community?
P: We're members of the community ourselves. It's in our interests to help out the community where possible. This might mean covering developer's conference fees, hardware costs, all sorts of things. Whatever we need to do to eliminate barriers to improving the system.
N: Any plans for other NetBSD products?
P: You've seen the beachballs? [ At the BSD BoF last night Perry and others were kicking around 300 or so Wasabi beachballs "NetBSD support: it's not hot air anymore" ] I don't think that's a big revenue stream for us. But if people in the community want to buy that sort of stuff then we're happy to be the place they get it from, or to collaborate with other companies to make sure that there is somewhere they can get it from.
N: Any plans to provide support or consulting for the other BSDs?
P: Our area of expertise is NetBSD -- it's what we do best, it's what we know. But, if a customer came to us with interesting work involving another BSD we'd of course look at it. They're probably smartest hiring us for NetBSD stuff.
N: Is this going to be a U.S. operation, or will you be working with NetBSD developers worldwide?
P: We've already hired developers from outside of the U.S., who are staying where they are. We go where the talent is and where the customers are.
N: Perry, thanks for your time.
Re:Difference between Cygnus and RedHat. (Score:3)
Re:Difference between Cygnus and RedHat. (Score:4)
>distributing proprietary tools.
Not so. They make most of their money from development and support of custom, well tested, versions of gcc, gdb and binutils.
Cygnus contributes a *LOT* of man hours back to the community mainly through gcc, binutils and gdb. The vast majority of new CPU ports for gcc come from Cygnus for example. They have a lot of very talented engineers that are only too eager to help with difficult problems. What RedHat does is, by comparison, chicken feed.
An intersting thing to note is that Cygnus has been making honest money out of Open Source for the past 10 years or so...just how long is it going to be till RedHat make a single cent?
And, yes I do know that RedHat owns Cygnus now...
Difference between Cygnus and RedHat. (Score:3)
It's interesting that he made a strong destinction (perhaps with a note of derogation?). I suppose the difference is that Cygnus builds tools (many of them proprietary, incidentally) for developing on Unix, for porting between Win32 and Unix, and they customize open source tools and OSen. On the other hand RedHat doesn't customize Linux for specific clients, rather it focusses on the consumer model of one-size-fits-all (or 'a-few-sizes-fit-all').
Note that Cygnus makes most of its revenue from distributing proprietary tools.
N: If clients approach you for NetBSD development are you making sure that it's going to be released under the BSD license?
P: Everything that we can we will. There will be instances where clients come to us for work that will be used in house, or is uninteresting. But we're unequivocably an open-source company, and we want to release virtually everything we do as open source.
They're not going to GPL everything. Cygnus' revenue model relies on proprietary products. There's a lack of information on how Wasabi will actually make money (if neither support nor beach balls seems like a good revenue source). This makes me wonder how well they'll do, and how much work they can give back to the community. Frankly, if a company is committed to GPLing every line of code they produce, RedHat seems like a better business model to emulate.
NetBSD and driver independence. (Score:4)
Driver independence. Say I have an embedded x86 running NetBSD with an intel 82559 network card. It then strikes me that a PowerPC would be a far better call for an embedded platform, and the same network card driver works on that too.
Is it just me, or is this a complete shocker? I'll definately be getting a disk off these guys.
Dave
Does this mean an end (Score:3)
Anyway, this is good news. I know many people think that NetBSD is "irrelevant" owing to Linux's supposed "superiority" but the fact is that NetBSD can do damn near everything Linux can, and more on top of that. You want a stable, secure OS that runs on many platforms? NetBSD is just perfect.
"Most reliable" &tc. OS (Score:3)
It is more reliable than proprietary operating
systems such as Windows, and is more powerful and portable than open source systems such as Linux,
FreeBSD and BSD/OS
While I'm well aware that marketing is marketing, has anyone done a real, as-empirical-as-possible reliablity/scalability/[random buzzword] testing of the major free Unix variants? Sure, I've heard all the zealotry, but I'd like to see any sorts of facts. I know that as a user, I can't see a huge speed difference between Linux and OpenBSD on the same PC, but I don't run any high-load servers or anything.