The sword of damacles explanation of BSDi's ending is utter bullshit in this article. BSDi knew they were in direct competition with RedHat in the late 1990s. The President, Rob Kolstad, ran a very lean operation with only about 20 employees. Red Hat managed to IPO and was heavily capitalized. Some BSDi employees and one in particular, argued for an IPO and the particular guy from MIT guaranteed that with an IPO everyone would be rich in one year. The palace revolt worked, the MIT guy took over, Rob Kolstad was deposed, and the MIT guy bankrupted the company in just 1 year (record time). The pieces were sold off to Wind River, which was later absorbed into VxWorks, which finally cancelled development a few years later, and that was the end of BSD/OS or BSDi.