On 29/02/2012 09:23, Damien Fleuriot wrote: > This does, however, raise an interesting question. > > Do you guys know of any company whose business model is freebsd support and > engineering ? > Like, a la RHEL or SLES.
None that I know of. People have tried to set up such things in the
past, and unfortunately have failed miserably.
The closest thing is iXSystems -- but their primary business is
supplying hardware, and while they do provide FreeBSD support, their
offering is US centric -- maybe even US-West Coast focussed.
Personally I think that having a commercial entity behind FreeBSD in
this way would be a good thing. As a central provider that will help
promote FreeBSD commercial usage and fund a deal of development that
nowadays either doesn't happen, or that takes far too long, and provide
employment for FreeBSD developers and admins, it certainly has some
obvious benefits.
Setting up such an entity and making it work as a profitable concern is
an entirely different matter. It's a competitive market out there, an a
new company would be going up against the likes of RedHat, Microsoft,
Oracle and other well established behemoths. While I think that FreeBSD
and FreeBSD people have the technical quality to succeed, what is
missing is the business capability -- people who can go out and sell
FreeBSD and that can attract investors and make them feel confident that
they can invest. That's pretty rare to find in combination with the
sort of technical expertise the FreeBSD project (unconciously) selects for.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard
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