At the heart of every networking device is an operating system that enables traffic flow. In the case of networking vendor Juniper, that operating system for the past ten years has been JUNOS, a network operating system with its roots in the open source FreeBSD operating system.
Juniper has updated JUNOS every 90 days since 1998.
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Member since:2006-10-06
Well they did...
Juniper Networks, Inc. (http://www.juniper.net) has donated a reference FreeBSD port to the MIPS architecture to The FreeBSD Project. This code will be used as one reference for creating an official project-supported FreeBSD/MIPS offering.
http://www.freebsd.org/news/newsflash.html
It took about 5 sec on google to find that information.
Member since:2006-03-13
Hmm... They've been using FreeBSD code in their OS for a decade and all they've ever given back is a barebones port to niche platform. A port which they had completed YEARS before they made it available.
Not exactly a stellar track record. Yes the BSD license ALLOWS this, but that's just proof of how broken and naive the BSD license is. The BSD license comes with a silent and unenforceable implication that "sharing is nice" The GPL is more like a kindergarten teacher that will put you in "time out" if you aren't nice and don't share. Given the level of greed in the tech world, the GPL approach is much more realistic vis a vis maintaining a truly free project.
Member since:2005-07-06
Bzzt, they're "getting way with it" because the developers chose the BSD license which allow using code without contributing back..
The developers have chosen *willingly* this licence, so there's *nothing* wrong doing this.
Now, a project live and die but the contributions, so from a long term POV, it's not very wise to take only without contributing back, it's a short term gain with a long term risk..
An example is that if Apple had contributed better from the start instead of having two web-engine (KHtml and webkit) there would be only one, which would probably be even better thanks to having more developers..
Member since:2005-07-11
From the FreeBSD Foundation's July Newsletter ( http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2008Jul-newsletter.shtml#Jun... ):
Juniper benefits from the powerful collaboration between leading universities, individuals, and commercial organizations developing FreeBSD to advance the operating system functionality. The FreeBSD release system provides Juniper with a roadmap for features and a stable base for our code, while its practical licensing enables Juniper to develop intellectual property for advancing high-performance networking. Juniper employs many active FreeBSD developers that continually contribute to the FreeBSD project to further its development as a leading operating system.
-Naren Prabhu, Vice President Foundation Technologies, Juniper Networks www.juniper.net
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Guess you didn't look all that hard.
Member since:
2006-03-13
I have my doubts as to whether Juniper has ever contributed anything at all to upstream FreeBSD. Certainly I can find no evidence of any such contributions after conducting a Google search. The very fact that they're allowed to do this is, to me, a shame. If you benefit from FOSS, it just strikes me as greedy and wrong that you can get away with giving nothing back...