了解NetBSD

　　In recent years, numerous companies have been sued over the improper use of GPL software. Choosing software released under the BSD license gives wider operating room for commercial products, which is another reason NetBSD is so well suited for embedded systems. For instance, if Company A were to use NetBSD in a new smart phone running on Intel XScale® technology, the company might add kernel support for Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) devices. Under the BSD license, the company can keep this code proprietary so that Company B can't use the same code for their new phone. Had Company A decided to use a Linux kernel, their source for any modifications to the kernel would have to be released back to the community under a GPL license.

　　Note: Find information in the BSD newsletter in the Resources section on building a small NetBSD kernel as a starting point for an embedded system.

　　NetBSD: Not just for embedded systems

　　Any system administrator who has been in the business for a while understands the inevitability of hardware changes. You see it everyday when looking through an information technology (IT) room filled with architectures that were hot one day but failed to stand the test of time -- be it for technical or commercial reasons. Unfortunately, when many of these systems pass, their operating systems pass along with them. A big advantage of running a highly portable operating system, such as NetBSD, is consistency across platforms. If a system administrator can be confident that an operating system runs on the oldest workstation in the lab and the newest server comes off the assembly line, that administrator's job becomes substantially simpler. This simplification can be referred to as hardware compatibility through software homogeneity. A similar example is sharing productivity documents across computers running Microsoft® Windows® and Mac OS X by using Microsoft Office programs on both platforms. Sharing at the operating system level is an advanced extension of the same concept, suitable for developers rather than everyday users.