July 24, 2024
Choosing an operating system for new technology can be crucial for the success of any project. Years down the road, this decision will continue to inform the speed and efficiency of development. But should you build the infrastructure yourself or rely on a proven system? When faced with this decision, many companies have chosen, and continue to choose, FreeBSD.
Few operating systems offer the immediate high performance and security of FreeBSD, areas where new technologies typically struggle. Having a stable and secure development platform reduces upfront costs and development time. The combination of stability, security, and high performance has led to the adoption of FreeBSD in a wide range of applications and industries. This is true for new startups and larger established companies such as Sony, Netflix, and Nintendo. FreeBSD continues to be a dependable ecosystem and an industry-leading platform.
“FreeBSD is one of the four essential elements of our success, the four decisions made in the late 90s as to why Netscaler is still in business today.”
One important consideration for companies is the choice of open source licensing. Licensing dictates how companies can modify the source code of their technology and freely distribute the software. The Simplified BSD license is notable for the additional freedom and flexibility it provides to distributors. This license makes FreeBSD more appealing to businesses looking for an OS to incorporate into their technology stack and to individual developers or entrepreneurs who prefer to avoid the complexities of a lengthy licensing agreement.
Our ability to tune [FreeBSD] for our needs has proven time and time again to be exactly what we need. Then you pair that with a community that is always supporting and fosters more Innovation; it allows us to keep pushing forward
“In 25 years, we’ve never had more than one bug at a time manifest in our product that was a FreeBSD bug.”
At the November 2023 FreeBSD Vendor Summit, Sabine Anja, co-founder of Klara Inc., sat down with a panel of industry leaders representing NetApp, Arm, and Juniper to discuss FreeBSD as a platform for future technologies. Participants discussed why their companies chose to use FreeBSD and how that choice benefited them. The full recording can be found on the Project’s YouTube channel.
A recurring topic of the panel was the ease of upstreaming changes into FreeBSD. By lowering the barriers of entry to upstream, FreeBSD fosters a community of innovation and actively encourages upstreaming. Changes can quickly be integrated into FreeBSD, benefiting everyone relying on the operating system.
“Getting stuff upstreamed in other operating systems usually is a lot more difficult, and often you run into a roadblock” “While after a short amount of time, it’s integrated into part of FreeBSD”
“GPL is a big problem for us, especially since we’ve been producing signed binaries for almost 20 years now, which makes GPLv3, in particular, a complete no.”
Discover how organizations and individuals have utilized FreeBSD to address industry-specific challenges in our End-User Stories. Does your company use FreeBSD with outstanding results? Help us promote The Project by providing testimonials about your company’s experience.