Thank HN: You helped the FreeBSD Foundation raise over $43K in three days

http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2012/12/stunning-news-website-fundraising.html#

by profquail • 14 years ago

169 24 14 years ago

freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com

cperciva9• 14 years ago

$200k more to go -- if you're building a startup using FreeBSD, please consider donating. Tarsnap donates every year.

pestaa2• 14 years ago

I'd be really disappointed if Tarsnap wouldn't do that. ;)

However I've just looked up the donors page on the foundation's website and found your company twice.

Have you donated both as a person and a company?

cperciva9• 14 years ago

However I've just looked up the donors page on the foundation's website and found your company twice.

The donors page has three columns, one for each of the past 3 years. The reason Tarsnap doesn't appear in all 3 years is that my 2010 donation arrived on December 31st 2010, but for my 2011 donation it took a few days for me to do the final accounting and so I couldn't get the money to them until early January 2012. (Similarly, Tarsnap's end-of-2012 donation will actually show up for the Foundation as an early-2013 donation.)

Have you donated both as a person and a company?

I was operating Tarsnap as a sole proprietorship until late 2011, so my 2010 donation was from "Colin Percival (Tarsnap)", while the 2011 donation (appearing in the 2012 column) was from "Tarsnap Backup Inc."

SwellJoe2• 14 years ago

Given cperciva's non-monetary contributions to FreeBSD over many years, I'd say he ought to get a pass, even if he contributed $0. It seems pretty demanding to expect both huge code contributions over a span of many years, plus monetary donations, from an individual who's just getting his company ramped up.

That's not to say it's not awesome that he contributes both, but I certainly wouldn't be "really disappointed" if he didn't.

jburwell• 14 years ago

Since they use the FreeBSD userland, it seems appropriate for Apple to kick in a little cash to the FreeBSD Foundation. The remaining ~$150k is an utter bargain considering how important those pieces are to iOS and Mac OS X ...

cperciva9• 14 years ago

They give us code, which is even better than money, really.

Not to say that we wouldn't appreciate monetary donations too, but Apple doesn't "owe" us anything.

udp• 14 years ago

> Apple doesn't "owe" us anything.

That's the beautiful thing about BSD-style licenses. Once the code is out there, nobody ever has to reinvent the wheel for legal reasons again - only technical.

batgaijin• 14 years ago

I find it embarrassing that you don't have corporate sponsors that give you guys carte blanche at this point. Not only do you guys deserve it, but your efforts are on a piece of software with an incredibly liberal and corporate friendly license.

I mean how doesn't Apple/Sony benefit from keeping FreeBSD incredibly healthy?

olgeni• 14 years ago

> Since they use the FreeBSD userland

...let's be very grateful they didn't rewrite everything from scratch...

fafner• 14 years ago

OSX userland is a wild mix of outdated GNU and BSD tools.

heymishy• 14 years ago

They had this same thing over at Slashdot (reworded of course). Good work all the same.

_delirium• 14 years ago

Interesting to see the year-to-year changes among big donors (http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml). Looks like NetApp and Google upped their contributions significantly, but Hudson River Trading dropped theirs (or is possibly waiting until the very end of the year). Also, there was a $50k+ anonymous donation in 2011.

cperciva9• 14 years ago

HRT always donates in the last couple of weeks of the year; no reason to think they won't be doing the same this time.

The anonymous donation in 2011 was $100k.

soapdog2• 14 years ago

I wish I could donate more than 50...

cperciva9• 14 years ago

Every bit helps. If every FreeBSD user gave $50 the Foundation would have lots and lots of money.

soapdog2• 14 years ago

Every year I donate at least 50$ to Mozilla, I've just added FreeBSD to my yearly donations as well.

Thank HN: You helped the FreeBSD Foundation raise over $43K in three days

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