[ Thanks to George
Mitchell for this link. ]
“The FreeBSD customer roster includes such Internet powerhouses
as Yahoo, the most heavily trafficked site on the Web; Microsoft’s
Hotmail, the world’s largest e-mail services; MCI WorldCom’s UUNet,
a giant provider of Internet services to businesses and to consumer
ISPs; MindSpring, a national ISP that last year ranked No. 1 in
customer satisfaction according to J.D. Power and Associates; and
Verio, a company that says it hosts more than 300,000 Web sites in
170 countries.”
“While it will continue to improve and market its commercial OS,
the beefed-up company also has big plans for the free version: Like
Red Hat, Caldera Systems and other companies that have grown large
by providing added-value services to Linux customers, BSDI plans to
offer professional support, consulting and custom development for
users of FreeBSD. The 9-year-old company, which already has more
than 100 employees and is profitable, also plans to raise
additional funds from venture capitalists to fuel its new
ambitions, according to Rose.”
“Along with Yahoo, the biggest feather in FreeBSD’s cap has
to be Hotmail. After all, Microsoft touts its own heavy-duty OSes,
Windows NT and now Windows 2000, as alternatives to Unix, yet it
continues to rely on FreeBSD to manage the mail of Hotmail’s 66
million users. In a revealing message explaining why it hasn’t
switched to its home- grown systems, product manager Sarah Lefko
said Microsoft is “committed to providing a stable and high-quality
user experience for Hotmail.”