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Title: FreeBSD: 'We're Still Here. (Let's Share Use Cases!)'

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/26/0452...

31 years ago FreeBSD was first released. But here in 2025, searches for the
Unix-like FreeBSD OS keep increasing on Google, notes the official FreeBSD
blog - and it's at least a two-year trend. Yet after talking to some
businesses using (or interested in using) FreeBSD, they sometimes found that
because FreeBSD isn't talked about as much, "people think it's dying. This is
a clear example of the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic is
a fascinating mental shortcut. It's how product names become verbs and
household names. To 'Google' [search], to 'Hoover' [vacuum], to 'Zoom' [video
meeting]. They reached a certain tipping point that there was no need to do
any more thinking. One just googles , or zooms . These days, building
internet services doesn't require much thought about the underlying systems.
With containers and cloud platforms, development has moved far from the
hardware. Operating systems aren't top of mind - so people default to what's
familiar. And when they do think about the OS, it's usually Linux. But
sitting there, quietly powering masses of the internet, without saying boo to
a goose, is FreeBSD. And the companies using it? They're not talking about
it. Why? Because they don't have to. The simple fact that dawned on me is
FreeBSD's gift to us all, yet Achilles heel to itself, is its license. Unlike
the GPL, which requires you to share derivative works, the BSD license
doesn't. You can take FreeBSD code, build on it, and never give anything
back. This makes it a great foundation for products - but it also means
there's little reason for companies to return their contributions... [W]e'd
like to appeal to companies using FreeBSD. Talk to us about your use case...
We, the FreeBSD Foundation, can be the glue between industry and software and
hardware vendors alike. In the meantime, stay tuned to this blog and the
YouTube channel. We have some fantastic content coming up, featuring
solutions built on top of FreeBSD and showcasing modern laptops for daily
use.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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