“… this particular tale does not belong to Linux. Rather, it’s
the possible Cinderella story of FreeBSD, an open source version of
BSD Unix whose future is attracting interest due to the recent
merger of Berkeley Software Design, Inc., makers of commercial
BSD/OS, and Walnut Creek CDROM, which distributes FreeBSD. One
possible outcome of the merger is that the two BSD flavors, which
both derived from BSD Unix, may be reunited.”
“But news that FreeBSD and the considerably closed BSD/OS would
be sharing their codebases and possibly moving them into one
package has been largely welcomed by the open source community.
Eric Raymond is a vocal proponent of the BSDI’s moves.”
“… the BSDI and Walnut Creek combination represent what could
be BSD’s last big chance to grab more market share. According to
Mike Prettejohn, analyst at market research group Netcraft, the two
companies together make up about 95 percent of the commercial
market for BSD OS sales while FreeBSD and BSDI represent about
90 percent of the BSD flavors powering Internet sites. In
other words, the future of BSD rests on making this merger
work.”