Tracking FreeBSD in a Commercial Setting

The FreeBSD project[1] publishes two lines of source code: current and stable. All changes must first be committed to current and then are merged into stable. Commercial organizations wishing to use FreeBSD in their products must be aware of this policy. Four different strategies have been developed for tracking FreeBSD over time: • Stock FreeBSD: A company runs only unmodified releases of FreeBSD. • Grab and Go: A company imports a specific version of FreeBSD’s sources once and then never imports new code from FreeBSD again. • Stable Branch Tracking: A company imports new stable branches over time, adding its own changes to that branch, as well as tracking FreeBSD’s changes to the branch. • Own Branch: A company tracks FreeBSD’s CURRENT branch, adding to it their changes and creating their own stable branch as it sees fit. This paper catalogs the methods different companies have used and explores the pros and cons of each.