6. Advocacy, recent history and statistics
6.1. Synopsis
There has been some obvious signs of FreeBSD growth recently, and here are some interesting statistics and graphs showing growth on mailing lists, commits, #FreeBSD members, and so forth.
In addition, there has been quite a bit of press coverage, press releases, events, and quotes this past year.
6.2. Press coverage
Press has been quite nice, with paper coverage in the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe. On TV, CBS MarketWatch had an interview with ex-Novell CEO Bob Frankenburg who praised FreeBSD for doing 'an exceptionally good job'. Radio interviews with Jordan K. Hubbard. Countless 'weblog' mentions, and web articles on CNN, LinuxWorld, SunWorld, IDG, and others.
Many press releases too, such as from Apple (and Steve Jobs' keynote at MacExpo) regarding the use of FreeBSD code in MacOS X (referring to FreeBSD as one of 'most acclaimed OS projects of the modern era'). FAST (alltheweb.com) released a press release about their 'largest search engine on the Internet' which runs on FreeBSD, and Pair Networks (the largest independently owned and operated paid hosting service) using FreeBSD 'to ensure maximum uptime and reliability'.
Compaq started a Testdrive program for FreeBSD, now on a Alpha 667MHz system with 2 gigs of RAM. These join traditional FreeBSD strongholds Yahoo!, Hotmail, Walnut Creek and mp3.com.
The cool cyber/sci-fi, The Matrix, used 32 SMP FreeBSD machines as the core CG render farm. More information in a press release.
6.3. Products and books
On the book scene, two will be published this year (including SAMS title, "FreeBSD in 21 days"), and work on three other FreeBSD books has begun. The FreeBSD Documentation Project has grown in bounds, and has generated interest from publishers (the luckier few contributors have been approached to author or contribute to books), and Walnut Creek will be publishing the FreeBSD Handbook soon.
A number of retail chains in the USA, including CompUSA, are now carrying FreeBSD PowerPaks, and statistics from Walnut Creek CDROM sales and downloads from the 10000 concurrent user powerhouse ftp server (http://ftp.cdrom.com/) of FreeBSD indicate a very promising growth rate roughly along Linux's two years ago.
Nokia now sells a FireWall-1 system which runs on FreeBSD, and Applix has recently ported ApplixWare to FreeBSD.
6.4. Community News
Possibly the most promising event of the year was the FreeBSD Con held in October, with Dr Marshall Kirk McKusick(co-author of 'The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System', and considered one of the father-figures of BSD) in attendance and giving talks. South African committer Mark Murray also attended, as well as a large number of committers from around the world, culminating in the largest organized FreeBSD gathering.
