The FreeBSD Foundation falls short of its 2012 fundraising goal by 50%

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/

by profquail • 14 years ago

186 118 14 years ago

freebsdfoundation.org

dazzawazza• 14 years ago

That's odd. I usually receive a donation letter about this time of the year. Anyway, chipped in.

I couldn't get anywhere without FreeBSD running my servers.

profquail9• 14 years ago

Thank you for donating!

EDIT: The fundraiser letter is on the website, if you still want to read it: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/announcements.shtml#fundrai...

jbverschoor• 14 years ago

So where's Apple in this story?

gecko• 14 years ago

I think theres a misconception that OS X is in a huge debt to FreeBSD, or even runs it at its core. Apple runs a custom kernel, no relation to FreeBSD, with a mixture of *BSD user land tools--more NetBSD than FreeBSD the last time I looked, but certainly both. That's not nothing, but also not a situation where I'd expect Apple to be donating much.

profquail9• 14 years ago

Apple has a developer page that lists exactly which parts of FreeBSD they've used, and which parts of OS X are different (mainly, the parts of Mach they added to the FreeBSD kernel): https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwi...

Some of the Apple additions/inventions are also merged into FreeBSD proper: http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/16/freebsd_adds_suppo...

RaSoJo• 14 years ago

But there are many other "Big Corps" specified on the FreeBSD portal. Aren't they obligated in some form or the other to be funding FreeBSD?

500k appears to be quite a nominal amount when you put all these "Big Corp" names together. Or is this fund raising set apart from what the "Big Corps" pay? Not sure how this works...

yxhuvud4• 14 years ago

Isn't it also the case that while they may not have donated cash they have certainly donated code.

At least in some instances. Clang comes to mind.

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

I think the philosophy behind the BSD license is to write great code and to maximize it's usage across the world without expecting anything in return. This is especially good for standardization of things, like the TCP implementation that even Windows used.

So, I guess the developers must be happy at it being widely used in the form of iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches, even if BSD doesn't see a dime of the $100B+ in cash and billions more every quarter that Apple made leveraging it.

microtonal• 14 years ago

I would be sad, since even 0.01% of that is $10M, which would amount to 20 such FreeBSD fundraisers. Of course, the BSD license allows you to take code an run with it, but it would still be very nice if Apple donated at least some amount that is absolutely insignificant to them. Judging from [1], they don't even donate a penny.

Of course, in the past they used to donate code.

[1] http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml

sagarun• 14 years ago

JFYI, Yahoo! sponsors most of the freebsd.org and other infrastructure related to freebsd.

Evbn• 14 years ago

Is there a website that consolidates data on tech nonprofit finances?

Like givewell or whatever with a tech filter?

kstenerud• 14 years ago

I didn't even know they were fundraising. Added my donation.

Edit: Not sure if you're aware, but the paypal donation mechanism is triggering your spam detection:

This is an automated message.

The message you sent (attached below) requires confirmation before it can be delivered. To confirm that you sent the message below, just hit the "R"eply button and send this message back (you don't need to edit anything). Once this is done, no more confirmations will be necessary.

Also, it's encoding non-alphanumerics within the ASCII range in the forwarded message from Paypal. For example, "$" is being encoded as "=24", which makes it look like Paypal took two orders of magnitude more money than donated.

profquail9• 14 years ago

Thank you for donating!

I'm not affiliated with the FreeBSD Foundation, but I created a thread on the FreeBSD forums about the spam detection issue so hopefully the message will make its way to someone who can look into it:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=200149

eadler• 14 years ago

The problem was that paypal payments come in "from" the donor rather than paypal, and paypal was exempted but not all e-mails that were from paypal but listed as from the donor. This has now been solved.

DanBC• 14 years ago

Why are they using still Challenge Response?

diminish2• 14 years ago

Do we really need FreeBSD anymore when we already have Linux? I am genuinely curious from a technical point of view what important differentiators there are in FreeBSD,i m not interested in license or philosophy differences.

pestaa• 14 years ago

We need FreeBSD the most because of both license and philosophy points of view, and Linux has still a lot to learn from the BSDs from a technical perspective, too.

The only thing that keeps me using Linux is that nowadays a significant portion of self-proclaimed Unix software is in fact mostly Linux software with absolutely no interest being compatible with other Unix systems.

And let me add that the community around BSDs are far far greater than any of the Linux ones I've come across.

killahpriest• 14 years ago

Why the downvotes? The dude is genuinely curious.

beagle34• 14 years ago

I guess

a) because he disqualifies the license as a reason, even though it is actually the reason GNU came to be, without which what most people call "Linux", that is - GNU/Linux would have had little to stand on. So license on its own is an interesting enough reason.

b) because one second of googling would have shown that FreeBSD has numerous technical (his criterion) things that Linux does not yet at a comparable level, including (from the top of my head) ZFS, jails, dtrace.

d) because there are also things which are not license or technical details which matter (project management style, for example)

Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased: "I'm a bigot about reasons things happen in the real world, and also I'm too lazy to look up if what I believe is actually true. Lazyweb, prove me wrong", and it would get about as many downvotes.

darkandbrooding2• 14 years ago

I was tempted to reply to the original question because it implies that there is (only) one correct way to build an operating system, and once you've arrived at the correct answer any duplication of effort is pointless. I find that a quizzical approach.

I suspect the downvotes come from the way 'diminish' phrased the question. Linux is implicitly being used as the standard against which FreeBSD is measured, but the question implies ignorance of FreeBSD. Imagine the tone of the responses if the OP has written, "I know linux but not FreeBSD. From a technical perspective, where do they not overlap?"

protomyth• 14 years ago

I get the feeling[1] some of the down votes probably come from people who would rather not have every BSD topic plagued by HN's version of the slashdot.org "BSD is dying" meme. It subtracts from the discussion at hand and given "i m not interested in license or philosophy differences" part - the poster didn't really want an honest answer anyway.

1) as in I didn't down vote but assume...

dscrd• 14 years ago

I'll focus on the positive.

FreeBSD is a more centralized and more methodically developed operating system. It shows in a few important aspects: just about everything in the core system has a high quality man page -- the most significant difference being the kernel drivers, which have near to no accessible documentation in Linux.

The kernel and the core user space are developed together, which leads to better compatibility between these two. FreeBSD usually supports 1-2 old major releases, which is an obvious good thing for servers.

ZFS and jails. BSD license. Competition. The open source world will be a lot poorer if it will consist of only GNU and Linux.

If I may be a bit less serious, I feel that there's a competition between two philosophies of software projects in the OSS world: one is "lets hack lol" and the other one is a more methodological, thoughtful way. Examples: MySQL & Postgres; ruby & python; Linux & BSD. It seems obvious that neither way is absolutely superiour.

kryptiskt• 14 years ago

There is no such thing as a vanilla Linux you can run, you can only install one or another of all the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other.

And every now and then some figure who knows which political strings to pull uses that clout to load your favorite distro with pre-beta crapware.

chimeracoder4• 14 years ago

Okay, really, GP asks a genuine question, and you respond with this kind of misinformation? On the off chance that you're actually this confused - or on the likelier chance that someone else comes by and takes your comment seriously - let me make some corrections for you.

> There is no such thing as a vanilla Linux you can run

The phrase "vanilla Linux" doesn't even make sense. Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. If you're talking about the entire GNU/Linux operating system, it doesn't make sense to talk about a "vanilla" version, because there are thousands of different utilities that can comprise a GNU/Linux-based operating system, and there are combinatorially many ways to create a Linux distribution.

That's like saying that there's no "vanilla" BSD - only [Open|Free|Net]BSD - except worse, because some of the Linux "distributions" are really no more different than adding an extra package (eg, KDE) to an existing distribution and giving it a different name. It's as if you called BSD by two different names depending on whether or not you pre-installed Emacs.

> All the distros that have varying degrees of incompabilities and infelicities between each other.

This is vastly exaggerated. A properly compiled binary or a compatible source file should run on any distro - not just any modern distro, but any older one as well (assuming that it has the correct dependencies installed, etc.).

> And every now and then some figure who knows which political strings to pull uses that clout to load your favorite distro with pre-beta crapware.

If I wanted to get really snarky here, I'd say that the same thing could happen to BSD too and point to OS X. This is just ridiculous - Linux is open source and free-as-in-freedom, so just because somebody else packages your favorite distro with some stuff you don't like doesn't mean that anybody else has to as well - you can just as easily remove it and create your own "distro" as a fork.

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

The philosophy differences are exactly why we need FreeBSD (e.g., it can support things like ZFS without getting into licensing issues).

gillianseed4• 14 years ago

Well the ZFS is a particular case as it was deliberately licenced to be incompatible with Linux licencing as Solaris was suffering from competetion with Linux and Sun obviously didn't want to give away a competitive advantage to it's main competitor.

hazov• 14 years ago

Different projects can have different objectives and I think this is good, that's a good reason to have more than one project in every major area of software.

skriticos2• 14 years ago

I'm a primary Linux user myself, but I think it's a good that we have other alternatives too. Competition is what makes the world go around, having alternatives is good. Also, if there are more targets, people tend to write more portable code.

dpkendal• 14 years ago

A comparison of Linux and FreeBSD is a legitimate, interesting question, but I don't think this is the place to raise that issue.

The open-source community is strengthened by its diversity. Linux may be more popular, but that's no reason to weaken another, similar project by not supporting it financially. Personally, I use FreeBSD and I like it. I also know that Linux is available as an alternative, and I like to know that should I ever become dissatisfied, I have alternatives I can switch to. Supporting the FreeBSD Foundation is one way that you can feel safe in the knowledge that there'll always be an alternative to Linux should you become dissatisfied.

Please don't let one project be hindered by another project's success.

billsix• 14 years ago

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01

axk• 14 years ago

Don't be discouraged by the age of this article, it's still the best answer to the GP's question.

profquail9• 14 years ago

There's a nice brochure (PDF) on the Foundation's website:

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/FBSDF_3-fold_2012...

Key points:

  * Robustness
  * Networking
  * Security
  * Scalability

SEJeff4• 14 years ago

Define scalability please. If we are talking about single system image scaling up, such as a SGI Altix monster, nothing but Linux will run on it. I'm sure ill be proven wrong, but I'm unaware of a modern general purpose operating system that runs on > 2048 CPU beasts other than Linux. Certainly not Solaris. If we are talking about scaling out horizontally, Linux is the defacto tool for most supercomputer clusters in the top 500 supercomputer list. Heck, solid SMP is still a relatively new thing compared to Linux. When I see "scalability" touted as a feature any of the other 'nix or bsds have over Linux, I really question the other person's definition of scalability. It likely is not the same as mine.

Adaptive• 14 years ago

The pfSense project http://pfsense.org/ which I use in my own router - https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/84152c1476d0 ) uses FreeBSD for the stable and robust packet filtering option provided by BSD's pfctl.

I've been under the impression that Linux's packet filtering options weren't as capable as BSD pf in years past but I know that, particularly as of 3.0, a lot of work has been done in this area. Would be worth researching but I haven't done it yet.

cmccabe2• 14 years ago

OK. If you just want the technical details:

* FreeBSD supports ZFS, whereas Linux can't really due to license issues. (Although people have tried-- please don't reply to me saying "but XYZ got it to run!" It's a legal issue that's not going away.) However, Linux has btrfs, which delivers a lot of the benefits of zfs. However, btrfs is not really at the same level of stability yet (although it may get there soon.)

* For its audio drivers, FreeBSD uses a descendant of OSS, whereas Linux moved to ALSA and later PulseAudio-over-ALSA. I have heard claims that OSS4 provides lower audio latency. I am not an expert so I cannot evaluate those claims. On the other hand, Linux also has JACK, an alternative sound API which is supposed to fix some of the latency issues of PA+ALSA.

* The original version of Rubberhose (the deniable encryption filesystem) was written for FreeBSD by one Julian Assange. I don't think it's still maintained, though. There was a version for Linux 2.2 at some point, but good luck getting that to compile in this day and age.

* Linux in general has a lot more APIs between kernel-space and user-space. In Linux, you've got procfs, sysfs, debugfs, netlink, and so forth. BSD was a lot more conservative about adding APIs.

* The FreeBSD jail mechanism is pretty good. Linux has seccomp, SELinux, SMACK, Tomoyo, cgroups, and so forth, but none of them are as easy to use as jails.

SEJeff4• 14 years ago

Disagree. I can create a Linux container (lxc) using virt-sandbox in fedora to bring up a container to run a single command with very ver little effort. It is roughly equal or less work to build a chroot

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

>The original version of Rubberhose (the deniable encryption filesystem) was written for FreeBSD by one Julian Assange. I don't think it's still maintained, though.

Wiki says it's not maintained and never made it out of alpha. Is there much difference between it and a hidden truecrypt partition?

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

I know OpenSSH and OpenSSL come from OpenBSD, and are widely used for sshd and SSL, respectively. FreeBSD may contribute to the greater environment in a similar fashion?

tquai• 14 years ago

OpenSSH is produced by the OpenBSD Project, but OpenSSL is not. That's a different organization.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

The only thing I like better about Linux than I do about FreeBSD is that usually there is a package available for many things, no compiling, just apt-get install and you're done.

X-Istence2• 14 years ago

Preliminary support for pkgng is going to be in FreeBSD 9.1, but FreeBSD 10 it is going to be the default:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng

pkgng is basically the next upgrade from the current package system/ports tree to having the possibility of having a full binary only system. pkg allows you to manage your packages using repositories that can provide your software, much like apt-get. On the plus side, you also get the power of the ports tree, so you can very easily compile newer packages yourself and host them as a repository, especially if you have to manage multiple FreeBSD systems.

gavinatkinson2• 14 years ago

You may not be interested in license differences, but many downstream vendors are. Several have a "No GPL-3 code past the front door" policy, and others would even like to not have GPL-2 code near their products. FreeBSD's active progress towards being entirely GPL free is very appealing to these people.

FreeBSD has made significant progress here, and 10.0 is on-track to be GPL-free for all tier-1 platforms, including:

* Clang/LLVM rather than GCC

* New BSD licensed toolchain

* New text processing tools (sort, grep, etc)

* bsdtar - since picked up and used by several other operating systems

sabat• 14 years ago

Just waiting for the first person to announce that *BSD is dying, a la the ol' Slashdot trolls.

rsync3• 14 years ago

Well, here you go.

We (rsync.net) are based entirely on the FreeBSD platform, and have been since we first offered offsite backup in 2001. Our principals have been server and desktop users since 1998.

Further, we built JohnCompanies (the first VPS provider)[1] entirely on FreeBSD and jail.

So with that disclaimer, we are compelled to point out that the high water mark of FreeBSD ... coherency ? completeness ? stability ? ... was 4.11 in 2005.

John Kozubik posted this long and detailed rundown of the situation in January of 2012:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-Janu...

and there was much agreement and nodding of heads. $50k over five years was committed by Kozubik to support a new development trajectory:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-Janu...

There is a good litmus test going forward. If you see 8.4-RELEASE, and see 8.x supported as "production" and not "legacy" well into the 9.x lifecycle, things are getting better.

If you see 10.2 and 11.0 and so on before you see 8.4 or 8.5 then FreeBSD is just a research project.

[1] Yes, Verio was doing that weird virtualization thing with their e10ks (or whatever it was), but in October of 2001 we were the first to make available what anyone today would recognize as a "VPS".

diminish2• 14 years ago

Interesting to hear that rsync.net is based on FreeBSD. Just from curiosity, why don't you use a linux distro? What benefits does FreeBSD offer for you compared to Linux distros. What disadvantages would you count. (I mean if you ever had a chance to make a comparison).

cperciva3• 14 years ago

My view is that FreeBSD 8 is far more coherent and complete, and just as stable, as FreeBSD 4. (FreeBSD 9.0 has a few glitches related to UFS SU+J but those are fixed in 9.1.)

As for the upcoming release schedule: The next release after 9.1 should be 8.4, early in 2013. Whether FreeBSD 8.5 ever happens is an open question; we'd like to offer major branches which live for longer than our current 5 years, but we're hobbled by some contrib code which is poorly supported upstream, so my guess is that it won't happen in the 8.x branch.

darkandbrooding2• 14 years ago

I set up a monthly donation. I think the foundation would benefit from more marketing. Similar to other commenters, I wasn't even aware of the foundation prior to this HN post. Now that I know what to look for, the "Foundation" link on the freebsd.org home page is obvious, but I'd never actually noticed it before.

Nux• 14 years ago

Just donated. I feel the FreeBSD foundation could have made a bit more noise about this; I almost completely missed it ...

strongriley• 14 years ago

If they want to hit their goal, they should really hire Jimmy Wales to send uncomfortable pictures of himself staring you down. Worked great for Wikipedia...

jedberg2• 14 years ago

Just donated! Didn't realize there was a donation drive going on.

I'm a huge fan of BSD and would love to see it on EC2. :)

cperciva3• 14 years ago

Uhh... FreeBSD is on EC2...

jedberg2• 14 years ago

Let me rephrase. I'd like to see it as a first class citizen along with Linux and windows.

hapless3• 14 years ago

It is only the 9th. Look at the marks of this year against prior years:

December 09, 2012: $260k ($500k goal)

December 14, 2011: $210k ($400k goal)

December 16, 2010: $210k ($350k goal)

Early Dec, 2010: $195k ($350k goal)

December 26, 2009: $250k ($300k goal)

It looks like the last weeks of December are a big time for donations, and they're seeing an early surge relative to prior years. It surprises me that FreeBSD is even this well-funded. Who still uses it?

flxmglrb• 14 years ago

> Who still uses it?

I dunno, everyone in the world running Mac OS X?

koko775• 14 years ago

OS X has a BSD subsystem, but is based on the XNU kernel (Darwin). It's not FreeBSD in any realistic sense.

profquail9• 14 years ago

That's encouraging -- maybe they'll even be able to exceed their goal!

> Who still uses it?

Read the rest of the comments in this thread :)

noselasd• 14 years ago

> Who still uses it?

Apparently Netflix, http://opsec.eu/backup/OpenConnectDeploymentGuide-v2.4a.pdf

yxhuvud4• 14 years ago

Nice to see that the amound they manage to get seem to increase (which I admit is a guess but the numbers wouldn't make sense otherwise as they wouldn't keep asking for more if they didn't manage to get what they asked for or close to it).

sciurus2• 14 years ago

> Who still uses it?

Dell, Citrix, F5, Juniper, Netapp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free...

hapless3• 14 years ago

Dell bought an existing company.

Cisco bought an existing company, and the product is stagnant.

Citrix bought an existing company, and the product is stagnant.

F5 went to Linux many years ago

Juniper is still FreeBSD. They win this one ;)

NetApp has a port to Linux, but is still shipping FreeBSD. 50/50.

Nokia/CheckPoint went to Linux (SecurePlatform)

SageRaven2• 14 years ago

I heard during some NetApp training I took (not certain how authoritative my instructor was)that Data OnTap was a customized version of FreeBSD 4.x, which has long since been EOL. While I believe NetApp did contribute back some things to the FreeBSD tree way back in the day, I would guess they haven't in many, many years (but that's pure speculation on my part).

frozenport• 14 years ago

>> Who still uses it? Try searching menu config for /bsd :-)

olgeni• 14 years ago

> Who still uses it?

Usually people running away from Linux, Drepper-isms, Oppan Poettering Styles, and the like.

Doesn't everybody love the smell of bikesheds in the morning?

pwniekins• 14 years ago

Um...what.

wglb• 14 years ago

Um, I think Yahoo. Certainly cperciva.

systems• 14 years ago

paypal removed egypt ages ago and never add it back, cant seem to able to donate

profquail9• 14 years ago

Can you donate through Network for Good? It's the preferred donation method anyway (Paypal is the backup):

https://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscri...

jloughry• 14 years ago

I had no idea they needed money until I saw this here. I went straight there and gave them some.

pebb• 14 years ago

Maybe it's time to charge for FreeBSD for commercial use.

soapdog• 14 years ago

Just donated 50 bucks! FreeBSD rocks!

giis• 14 years ago

Very surprised to see donors list -Netapp is there but not EMC!!! http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml

emaste2• 14 years ago

A couple of more recent posts on the state of the fundraising campaign:

"FreeBSD end-of-year fund raiser on target" http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/FreeBSD-end-of-year-f...

"FreeBSD veteran confident of reaching fund-raising goal" http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/57855-fre...

The FreeBSD Foundation falls short of its 2012 fundraising goal by 50%

Related Stories