

Thank HN: You helped the FreeBSD Foundation raise over $43K in three days - profquail
http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2012/12/stunning-news-website-fundraising.html#

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

~~~
pestaa
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?

~~~
SwellJoe
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.

~~~
cperciva
I was a bit surprised by that comment, but figured that I was mis-parsing it.
I really can't claim to have made "huge code contributions", though: I'm
responsible for portsnap and freebsd-update, but those are only a few thousand
lines, and aside from those my contributions have been mostly limited to the
occasional bug stomping. There are dozens of FreeBSD src developers who have
made much larger contributions than I have.

~~~
SwellJoe
Given the quite high cost of developing and maintaining "a few thousand lines"
of pretty heavily used code, I'd say your code contributions have been much
more valuable than your monetary contributions. Good programmers often
underestimate the value of their code.

But, my primary point was that on the Open Source projects I work on, I'd
rather good coders produce great code than contribute money (if the choice
must be made, perhaps brought on by having to choose between taking on more
non-OSS contract work to make ends meet, for instance). Money is much easier
to come by than high quality code. If you're in a position to offer both, then
that's awesome. I just thought it really odd to demand the people who work on
something to also fund it.

~~~
pestaa
After you shed some different light on my original comment, I have to admit it
is phrased weirdly. Apologies for the confusion. It wasn't meant to express
the social or any other sort of pressure on Colin's responsibilities as to put
the money his company earned into the open source project others also benefit
from.

Rather, it was my compliment after seeing how much effort he dedicates to
FreeBSD and donating a significant portion of Tarsnap's revenue to the
foundation. I reflected on my gut reaction as in `I'd be surprised if a
serious contributor wouldn't aid the cause with all the tools he has` and am
sorry for the terrible wording.

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jburwell
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 ...

~~~
cperciva
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
_> 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.

~~~
yxhuvud
And the beautiful part of it is that the incentives work in the right way. The
reason for that is pretty simple - code that you submit to projects is code
you don't have to maintain when the next upgrade come.

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_delirium
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.

~~~
cperciva
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.

------
soapdog
I wish I could donate more than 50...

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

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

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

