Berkeley Software Purchase of Firm May Speed Acceptance of FreeBSD

来源：https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB952470579348918651

Berkeley Software Purchase of Firm May Speed Acceptance of FreeBSD

By 

Lee Gomes

Staff Reporter of 

The Wall Street Journal

March 8, 2000 12:01 am ET

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Berkeley Software Design Inc. announced a definitive agreement to acquire Walnut Creek CDROM, a move that could accelerate the acceptance of FreeBSD, a free operating system that is a rival to Linux.

Berkeley Software of Berkeley, Calif. (www.bsdi.com ), which sells operating-system software, is providing an undisclosed amount of stock for Walnut Creek CDROM of Walnut Creek, Calif. (www.cdrom.com ), the main distributor of FreeBSD.

Both companies are closely held, but once combined, they are expected to try to take advantage of the current investor interest in Linux and free software by moving toward issuing stock as a public company. That would give the FreeBSD movement, which now relies on a global army of volunteers, the backing of a public company with money to spend on development work. Jordan Hubbard, who will be chief technical officer of Berkeley Software, said that could give FreeBSD a leg up as it competes with Linux, the free operating system that has spawned a number of popular and highly valued companies, including Red Hat Inc. and VA Linux Systems Inc.

The acquisition joins two of the scattered offspring of the pioneering work on the Unix operating system that occurred at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s and 1980s. Berkeley Software sells a commercial version of Unix called BSD. Walnut Creek CDROM is a distributor of FreeBSD, which though not as well known as Linux is well-regarded technically. FreeBSD is used to power a number of major Internet sites, including Yahoo Inc.'s Internet portal and the Hotmail free e-mail service of Microsoft Corp.

Besides FreeBSD, there are two other free Unix-like operating systems that are considered rivals to Linux: NetBSD and OpenBSD. All three are older than Linux, and all are maintained by a global army of volunteers. Collectively, they operate an estimated 15% of all Internet sites. While FreeBSD is the most popular of the trio, all three risk losing developers and users to the Linux bandwagon, not to mention to the commercial versions of Unix, including Solaris from Sun Microsystems Inc.

While FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are very close to each other technically, the three communities of programmers developing them are somewhat balkanized and competitive. Mr. Hubbard said that once the Berkeley Software-Walnut Creek CDROM acquisition is completed, he hopes to begin working on collaborative projects with members of the NetBSD and OpenBSD communities.

Write to Lee Gomes at lee.gomes@wsj.com

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