From BSDToday: “Back in March, 2000, BSDI merged with Walnut Creek CDROM, the main distributor for FreeBSD. And BSDI had goals to “form a united front for the BSD operating systems. The company will deliver, support and enhance both BSD/OS and FreeBSD. Then in April, 2001, Wind River bought the BSD properties from BSDi (and BSDi became the hardware company, iXsystems).” The article explains where WindRiver stands today regarding FreeBSD and BSD/OS and clears up that FreeBSD is now without a publisher, solid financial support and 12 FreeBSD full time engineers who were laid off as we have already noted on OSNews in a previous news article. WindRiver even said for FreeBSD that “We see it as a great alternative to Linux“. Our Take: If WindRiver was seeing FreeBSD just as a “great alternative to Linux”, no wonder they leave it now in its own fate. I sincerely hope that FreeBSD will find a way to boost itself in light of FreeBSD 5.0, find a new publisher and sponsor as it is truely a worthy system.
WindRiver and FreeBSD’s Relationship Ending
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Does anyone know what this means for Slackware? I believe it was purchased by Wind River and/or BSDi.
AFAIK, Slackware has been on it’s own since the BSDi/Walnut Creek thing came together. I’m quite sure WRS didn’t “buy” Slackware. See the http://www.slackware.com“>Slackware for details.
When researching for my BSD Today article, I clarified this with Wind River, but
never added it to my article. Here is what I was told by their PR department: “Wind River only acquired certain assets from BSDi, and Slackwear was not one of these.”