By Stephen Shankland; Special to ZDNet News . . .

In a major upheaval in the open-source software market, Wind River Systems has acquired Berkeley Software Design's version of Unix, merging the realms of proprietary and freely shared software.

But Wind River likes the BSDi software as much for its open-source nature as the fact that it doesn't have to stay open source. When selling its operating systems for use in nontraditional embedded devices such as set-top boxes, handheld computers or network routers, the company needs to be able to make changes that aren't released to the public, said Jerry Fogeland, general manager of Wind River's platforms group.

BSDi is the owner of the BSD/OS, the version of Unix at the heart of open-source projects such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Under the terms of its license, though, anyone may keep modifications secret–a feature that made BSDi's software, not its cousin Linux, appealing to Wind River.

“It's clear open source is a vital part of how software is being created,” Fogeland said, but “the licensing restriction around the Linux movement . . . has significantly hamstrung the ability to embed the operating system. This restriction does not exist in the BSD movement.”

Wind River, the dominant company in the embedded market, has been grappling with the arrival of Linux in much the same way that Microsoft faces competition from the upstart operating system for servers. The newer arrival not only can be used for free, but also a large and lively programmer community is constantly improving the operating system. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has called Linux the company's No. 1 threat.

While Linux started in servers, companies such as Red Hat, MontaVista Software and Lineo have been working hard to push Linux into the embedded market as well. And LynuxWorks, formerly known as Lynx Real-Time Systems and one of Wind River's traditional competitors, has moved to embrace Linux as well.

Wind River acquired BSDi's software, along with 50 of its employees and Jason Hubbard, one of the leaders of the FreeBSD project. In addition, Wind River will provide financial backing for the FreeBSD effort and will keep some of its own software there.

“Some of our code will be proprietary and managed in a separate tree, and some of our code will be maintained at FreeBSD,” Fogeland said. A code “tree” is the collection of software and updates used by a group of programmers.

Wind River customers often prefer to keep secret some improvements to the operating system–for example, network communication or video decompression software. In the embedded world, unlike the server world, such changes are made at a deep level, making it difficult to keep the public software separate from the proprietary software, he said.

The General Public License that covers Linux doesn't allow this mixing at the deepest level.

Linux fans, unsurprisingly, defend their license, and companies such as Red Hat believe mandatory openness is an advantage. If one company can control software, those considering it for their products will fear a company such as Microsoft will have too much control.

Of the 100 or remaining BSDi employees, about 50 will continue on selling BSD computer systems under the new company name iXsystems and the other 50 will be laid off, Hubbard said.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.