iXsystems: focusing on Linux makes more sense than FreeBSD

A few weeks ago we talked about how iXsystems, the company behind TrueNAS CORE and SCALE, has all but confirmed that its FreeBSD-based CORE product will be put in maintenance mode, while the Linux-based SCALE product will get all the attention and focus from here on out. In an interview with Blocks & Files, the company gave more insight into this choice.

We had a huge chunk of our engineering staff spending time improving FreeBSD as opposed to working on features and functionalities. What's happened now with the transition to having a Debian basis, the people I used to have 90 percent of their time working on FreeBSD, they're working on ZFS features now ... That's what I want to see; value add for everybody versus sitting around, implementing something Linux had a years ago. And trying to maintain or backport, or just deal with something that you just didn't get out of box on FreeBSD."

It's not knocking against FreeBSD. We love it. That's our heritage. That's our roots, I was on the CORE team elected twice. So believe me, if I felt like I could have stayed on FreeBSD for the next 20 years, I would have absolutely preferred to do that ... But at some point, you gotta read the writing on the wall and say, well, all the the vendor supported-innovations are happening on the Linux side these days."

[...]

BSD aficionados don't like this change. Moore said: Talk is cheap and complaints are free. You know, everyone loves to complain about it. But ... if people wanted to push FreeBSD forward for the last 15 years, they would have."

Chris Mellor at Blocks & Files

Above all else, my personal north star is choice, especially in technology, and as such, I want iXsystems to keep focusing on FreeBSD so that not everyone is using Linux for server- and server-like workloads. The fact that TrueNAS was a FreeBSD-based product for this long was amazing, and I would definitely have preferred if it stayed that way for many, many more years to come.

However, I don't think the people of TrueNAS are saying anything wrong or outrageous here. They've got employees to feed, and the money is in Linux, not FreeBSD. If they spend more money, time, and resources on getting FreeBSD on par with features Linux has had for ages than on actually developing their own product - TrueNAS - then they're fighting a losing battle. Honestly, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to take this controversial step.

All we can hope for is that the things they work on, the features they develop, will make it to FreeBSD regardless.