Until very recently, BSDi had relied on a direct-sales model. But the company's merger with Walnut Creek CDROM has set the stage for BSDi to sell both BSD/OS and FreeBSD through various partners.
"We merged, because the BSD community is smaller than Linux and offers far less support," says BSDi executive VP Robert Bruce. "We saw a lot more potential for the commercial success of BSD with one BSD company--rather than ... two smaller ones."
BSDi has launched a broad-base marketing push emphasising its familiar Berkeley Daemon--a cute cartoon devil--as a BSDi brand.
The marketing push appears to be attracting attention: Sources say Yahoo! is mulling an investment in BSDi. If Yahoo opens its wallet, it would be the first time any Berkeley OS receives a significant "outsider" investment.
BSDi's two flagship operating systems target different audiences. BSD/OS will continue to target the Internet server market. FreeBSD will continue its push into Web servers and general-purpose servers.
Bruce says the two operating systems will share more and more code over time, but customer demand ultimately will decide whether the two operating systems ever become one.
Meanwhile, BSDi is developing a common application binary interface and device drivers with the other BSD groups to broaden the appeal of all Berkeley OSes. That also means greater Linux compatibility.
Major open-source packages, such as the Apache Web Server and the Sendmail mail-transfer agent, already are available natively on BSD operating systems.
