Interesting! Industrial solution.

[Tigersharke]

Beckhoff Automation on Twitter

“TwinCAT/BSD, an additional operating system for #Beckhoff Industrial PCs, combines the #TwinCAT 3 runtime XAR with FreeBSD, an industrially tested and reliable open source operating system. https://t.co/WrtnQKscJ4”

twitter.com

 

[artlessknave]

I can't even figure out what this does.

 

[Tigersharke]

I assumed it was something to do with running factory equipment. I think it is cool that they choose to adopt, adapt FreeBSD for it.

 

[artlessknave]

ya, the more apps that get on *nix, the more others will follow suit, and if a critical mass is reached to drive portably cross platform programming languages, we could see a drastic shift from M$ being king to apps that just work on whatever OS.

 

[jgreco]

The industrial PC market already has a pretty good tilt towards Linux, as Windows has been getting harder to use in the role. The main problem with Linux is that it's a "free" (copyleft-sense) operating system, not an actual free (copycenter-sense) operating system, so a lot of industrial types are a little bit leery of the GPL requirements.

There was a great graph I saw about the incursion of Linux into industrial automation but I don't recall where.

FreeBSD is a great target for anyone wanting an OS that doesn't extort your modifications or tweaks and force you to share that.

 

[artlessknave]

yes, thats why i specified *nix, not linux. freebsd is very close to unix, though i guess it's technically unix-like, but Im including unix-like in that *nix cuz there are just too many

 

[jgreco]

FreeBSD is a direct descendant of Unix. It is often referred to as "Unix-like" to avoid legal issues with a trademark holder. But look at actual lineage.

In this chart, there is no connection between Linux and !Linux. This tends to befuddle some of the Linux folks, who seem to be under varying amounts of confusion about the GNU tools and that those are somehow "Linux", and that the BSD's are therefore derived from Linux. But that's actually a more complex story that involves "GNU" - which literally stands for "GNU's Not Unix". Unfortunately none of these charts really make any effort to integrate the cross-pollination that happened between various userland utilities, so there's probably a lot of GNU that ended up in FreeBSD for awhile.

So if we widen out, we start to see some other sources. But even here, Linux shows a strong tendency towards isolationism. It's all along the righthand side there.

 

[jgreco]

Wow that broke the editor, haha.

 

[artlessknave]

holy wall of pictures Mr Grinch. I'm pretty sure my point still standsthough; the more *nix being used (unix, linux, unix-like, whatever, labels aren't allowed anymore anyway), the less dependency on M$...
I totally fail to understand the point you were trying to make :/

 

[jgreco]

Well, you said

freebsd is very close to unix, though i guess it's technically unix-like,

It's technically a lineal descendant. I'm pretty sure Linux folks snicker every time someone calls it "Unix-like" because they call their thing "Unix-like" as well, and they have a bit of an inferiority complex because they're not a lineal descendant.

Pretty sure The Open Group can't deny that FreeBSD is a Unix descendant and I am fine with describing it that way.

I would rather people use FreeBSD than Linux. But I'd rather have people use either of them over Windows.

 

[artlessknave]

overall I prefer the gpl/GNU general idea but it's gotten a bit elitist about it, and there's so many damn linux distros now it just seems silly; they used to make them for a purpose but now making a distro is more like a fashion statement....

 

[Tigersharke]

I found a larger more legible version of the second image in @jgreco's post.

 

[jgreco]

Both of which are interesting as they omit the Jolitzes despite being more thorough in other ways.

 

[jgreco]

Copy-left behind: Permissive MIT, Apache open-source licenses on the up as developers snub GNU's GPL

Share all our code modifications with others? Think again, hippie

www.theregister.co.uk