
WhatsApp Co-Founder Donates $1M to FreeBSD Foundation - swills
http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2014/11/freebsd-foundation-announces-generous.html?HN
======
tiffanyh
From the announcement:

>>"This marks the largest single donation to the Foundation since its
inception almost 15 years ago"

First, I'm extremely excited to see this announcement. FreeBSD is fantastic
and extremely underrated.

Secondly though, isn't it sad to hear that in FreeBSD existence - this is the
largest donation ever ... given that Yahoo use to run it's entire company on
it, OS X is based on it, Juniper is based on it, Netflix deploys on it,
NetApp, EMC, etc.

Edit: typo

~~~
threeseed
OSX is not based on it in the typical use of the word. Darwin is a hybrid that
incorporates a lot from *BSD courtesy of its NeXtStep lineage. It doesn't use
the FreeBSD kernel and it has a lot of Apple specific enhancements.

It's more like a sibling of FreeBSD.

~~~
0x0
I think there's more to the relationship than you give credit for. Even
FreeBSD's web pages list OSX as a descendant
[https://www.freebsd.org/projects/newbies.html](https://www.freebsd.org/projects/newbies.html)
and several man pages in osx list freebsd as origin for various facilities.

~~~
threeseed
From what you posted:

"Apple's Mac OS X is based in part on FreeBSD and includes a rich UNIX®
foundation in addition to the proprietary Apple user interface"

And I am in no way dismissing the relationship. I am just pointing out that
Darwin was based on NeXtStep but incorporates a LOT of *BSD technologies. I
used OSX Beta 1 and it was pretty far from a FreeBSD based OS.

Lineage:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#media...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_\(operating_system\)#mediaviewer/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg)

~~~
0x0
Agreed for sure! But it does look like additional FreeBSD stuff was added as
nextstep turned into darwin/osx.

I found a couple of other articles, I didn't know Linus turned down the job
offer from Steve Jobs before they hired that famous FreeBSD developer. It's
funny to think how things might have turned out in an alternate reality :)
[http://www.wired.com/2013/08/jordan-
hubbard/](http://www.wired.com/2013/08/jordan-hubbard/)

It's also fascinating to try old versions of nextstep and rhapsody in virtual
machines, you can really tell how osx traces straight back. Even the installer
is so similar still, comparing nextstep 3 and yosemite (if you bring up the
console window during its progress)

~~~
justincormack
There is some attempt to draw the relations in
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-
simple.p...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.png)

FreeBSD is the main current source of stuff, but NextStep is much older.

------
datashovel
While donations from corporations is great, my hope is that developers will
jump on the micro-payment bandwagon. If every developer who uses FreeBSD in
one capacity or another donated $1 per month, the FreeBSD Foundation would
likely never need to ask for donations again.

I currently do quarterly donations to FreeBSD Foundation and Apache
Foundation, and some hand-picked developers in the technologies I use
regularly, whom I would consider indispensable in the open source community.
While it's not $1M, if everyone were doing it, none of those groups would
depend on corporate donations.

I have even thought of a project that I may bring to life one day, if enough
interest exists. Find the most indispensable members of the open source
community and put crowdfunding efforts together to buy them out. In other
words, put enough money on the table that they won't need to work for 1,2,3
years at a time. Working tirelessly on open source projects is something these
people have already proven they love to do, and will almost certainly continue
if suddenly they came across a windfall like this.

My guess is these kinds of things have been attempted, but for one reason or
another have never really gained the support they would need.

~~~
ErrantX
Given that the freeBSD foundation receives approx. $400,00-500,000 in
donations from less than 20 corps/individuals... I think rather a lot of
developers would have to donate :) Are there 42,000 FreeBSD developers willing
to contribute?

~~~
Taek
$1 per month is an incredibly trivial number. Less trivial is how difficult it
is to set up payment in this fashion. If getting payment was as simple as
convincing developers that it was worth $1 per month, I'm sure you could get
to $1m per year (many would do much better than $1 per month).

------
ChuckMcM
Nice move. I think it is awesome when folks do that.

Has anyone thought what an 'opensource' endowment might look like? I'm
thinking an endowment manager and a policy for distributing 2% of the
endowment annually to folks who contribute and against costs (like hosting
repos and mailing lists etc.) The thought being you end up with some "project"
with a $100M - $250M endowment and it operates 'in perpetuity' on a budget of
$2 - $5M annually.

~~~
vegabook
just remember though that interest rates are currently 0%, even the 10y
treasury bond is only marginally above 2%, so giving away 2% a year at least
for the near to medium term assumes capital growth in riskier forms (equities,
more donations) well above distribution levels. This is why explicit payments
on a recurring basis are more important than ever, even more so than the
(certainly still brilliant) 1m donation. Endownments that have been used to
payout ratios of the order you mention have relied for most of the past 50
years on long term treasury yields (30y) well above 5%. We're now nudging 3%
for the first time since the dawn of the computer era. Tough times.

~~~
cperciva
I don't know about the US, but Canadian universities spend 3.5-4% of their
endowments annually and expect this to preserve the real (inflation-adjusted)
value of the endowments. So they're expecting between 5.6% and 6.1% nominal
annual return over the long term.

Nobody ever invests an entire endowment in bonds; even aside from the lower
rate of return, the inflation risk is much too dangerous.

------
debacle
It's always intriguing to me how critical the BSDs and BSD programmers are to
the Linux ecosystem, even though their user base is fairly small.

~~~
wyager
>It's always intriguing to me how critical the BSDs and BSD programmers are to
the Linux ecosystem, even though their user base is fairly small.

Edit: "critical _to_ ". My mistake.

Why? Do you think popularity reflects quality?

It is immediately evident to me that the popular BSDs (or at least FreeBSD and
OpenBSD) are of vastly superior quality (both in terms of design and code) to
Linux. I understand why people use Linux instead (it's generally for the same
reasons corporate environments use Windows: legacy, large userbase, and
familiarity), but it is definitely the case that by all my metrics, the BSD
programmers have every right to be critical.

~~~
justincormack
Any reason to omit NetBSD from that list? It might not be as popular, but the
code is good too..

~~~
wyager
I just haven't read much NetBSD code. Can't speak to it personally.

------
epistasis
> Find out more about Jan's reasons for donating here.
> [https://www.facebook.com/jan.koum?fref=nf&pnref=story](https://www.facebook.com/jan.koum?fref=nf&pnref=story)

That page is inaccessible to me, does somebody have a mirror?

~~~
mikeevans
"Last week, I donated one million dollars to the FreeBSD Foundation, which
supports the open source operating system that has helped millions of
programmers pursue their passions and bring their ideas to life. I’m actually
one of those people. I started using FreeBSD in the late 90s, when I didn’t
have much money and was living in government housing. In a way, FreeBSD helped
lift me out of poverty – one of the main reasons I got a job at Yahoo! is
because they were using FreeBSD, and it was my operating system of choice.
Years later, when Brian and I set out to build WhatsApp, we used FreeBSD to
keep our servers running. We still do. I’m announcing this donation to shine a
light on the good work being done by the FreeBSD Foundation, with the hope
that others will also help move this project forward. We’ll all benefit if
FreeBSD can continue to give people the same opportunity it gave me – if it
can lift more immigrant kids out of poverty, and help more startups build
something successful, and even transformative."

~~~
bluedino
A true rags to riches story. Which, going by the majority of posts here on HN
when it comes to that subject, doesn't actually happen.

------
drawkbox
A great example to others who have success because of open source. It should
be a common thing that once you find the coveted golden parachute in the
sprawling game of life, you give a percentage back to OSS as a tradition to
others on the adventure.

~~~
Someone1234
Isn't the expression "golden parachute" typically reserved for excessive
payouts when an employee gets fired/made redundant/laid off/etc? As far as I
know Jan Koum still works as CEO for WhatsApp, so this isn't from a "golden
parachute" payment.

~~~
drawkbox
Yes it is but it is also used for acquisitions where the money is so big that
the person suddenly never has to worry about anything ever again related to
money, a golden parachute. Typically though most acquisitions founders/co-
founders will leave after their couple years of vesting as with new money they
have more opportunities, doesn't always happen but usually. The recent
Facebook buys of Oculus and WhatsApp may be different and more like Amazon's
Zappos and Twitch acquisitions.

Here I was using it more as a game item that you get so much money from a
successful product that you don't really have to worry about anything again. I
usually hear it with technology acquisitions and founders leaving later after
the money than with termination as there are only golden parachutes for
failure in the financial industry.

I should have said funding or freedom, as the funding from WhatsApp sale now
gives Jan Koum the freedom to work on many ideas and support important
projects like BSD.

~~~
hayksaakian
I hate to be pedantic, but I think the phrase you're looking for is "golden
handcuffs"

~~~
nandemo
It's not even pedantic.

Golden parachute: you're forced out (by a lay-off or takeover) but they're
obligated to give you a pile of money.

Golden handcuffs: you volunteer for corporate servitude (by being acquired) in
exchange for a big pile of money.

------
lamby
Good grief, that's a statement. And bravo.

(However, what can they really do with that money? Operating systems aren't
the sexiest of free software projects to work on, so I would be tempted to
think that manpower is FreeBSDs biggest limiter.)

~~~
emaste
The Foundation's financials are open, so you can see how the money has been
used in the past. The short version is that our 2014 budget was on track to
spend about half that amount (i.e., approaching half a million) on funded
project development, through permanent staff and development contracts. The
other portion goes into supporting conferences, hardware purchases for the
FreeBSD cluster, and staff time to support the FreeBSD project.

Keep in mind that this donation won't be spent in one year; we'll be able to
find qualified uses for this money.

~~~
lamby
> funded project development, through permanent staff and development
> contracts

Somewhat of an aside, how do you guys manage the relationship between
volunteers and paid work? Mixing the two has a historically poor track record
in the open source community (eg. Dunc Tank, etc. etc.)

~~~
cperciva
emaste may be able to give an "official foundation answer" for this question,
but from what I've seen the Foundation employees do the work which everybody
agrees is important but nobody wants to do -- like haswell video acceleration
and release engineering.

~~~
evilgjb
Who would be crazy enough to _want_ to work on release engineering?

:-)

------
dummyfellow
Companies like Facebook, Google should give 100$ to each employee to donate,
will be petty cash for them, but will reach many project the company is really
benefiting from.

------
otterley
Looks like the mantle has passed from Yahoo! being FreeBSD's biggest advocate
and sponsor (not in direct cash donations, but employing their maintainers) to
WhatsApp. Nice to see the Y! alumni are keeping the tradition alive.

~~~
jaxx456
It's good to see any large company remembering the important software their
company is built on. I don't know if companies like Yahoo or Google could have
ever been started without free and open source software.

------
vayarajesh
>> "This marks the largest single donation to the Foundation since its
inception almost 15 years ago"

Al though it is awesome that they have received this donation but it is such a
shame it took 15 years to get a $1M donation for such a great work they are
doing.. and on the other side silly small apps get millions of funding which
go in total waste and those apps might be using FreeBSD for their production
servers or development

Its nice to see FreeBSD getting appreciated

------
jason_slack
This inspires me to give FreeBSD another shot. I haven't used it in a few
years in favor of CentOS.

There was a point I had my laptop running FreeBSD as my main OS.

------
jaxx345
Why don't other large companies also contribute to FreeBSD? I know Netflix is
a large consumer. It seems they would want to contribute more.

~~~
allanjude
Netflix does contribute, in addition to money paid to the foundation, they
also have quite a few developers working on FreeBSD almost full time. You can
see lots of commits with 'Sponsored by: Netflix'. nginx and Yandex also do a
lot of commits.

[http://freshbsd.org/search?q=netflix](http://freshbsd.org/search?q=netflix)

------
Siecje
Interesting that he got more value out of FreeBSD (Job at Yahoo!) than Erlang.

------
sandGorgon
There are lots of comments on how sad it is that nobody donates to the FreeBSD
foundation.

Part of the blame lies with the foundation itself - they don't know how to
ask! Fundraising is a full time, yet unsexy job...and very few people do it
well. The key thing is to be top of mind by asking frequently and nicely.

Personally, when the time comes, I default towards Wikipedia because Jimmy
Wales does a great job of asking. This is a problem not just with FreeBSD, but
many others like OpenSSL,etc. If nothing else, I wish these guys just run a
yearly kickstarter just for outreach.

------
jmiller_com
This is great news.

People bashing other companies, keep in mind some of them employ people that
work near full-time on FreeBSD.

But, some deserve the bashing.

------
FractalNerve
What will they do with that huge amount of much money?

 _Personally: I hope they make an UI to FreeBSD on par with OS X, because it
already seems to be so stable that no change except security fixes is
neccessary in my naïve eyes_ ☺

 _Sorry, if this was asked before._

------
vidoc
I wonder how much money a million dollar for this guy would be for me.. I'm
thinking it should probably be in the neighborhood of $.10

Either way, brilliant business plan from this whatsapp co-founder :P

~~~
estrabd
.005% of your approximate net worth (1m/19b)

------
jaxx345
I'm really excited to see the community gain more traction, especially
financially right now.

------
pnathan
Congratulations to FreeBSD; _mad_ props to WhatsApp's founder.

------
rodgerd
Neat.

------
pessimizer
"With this donation, and the generosity of all those who have donated this
year, we have shattered our 2014, million dollar fundraising goal! But this
does not mean we can stop our fundraising efforts. Only by increasing the size
and diversity of our donor pool can we ensure a stable and consistent funding
stream to support the FreeBSD project."

Is this very, very dry humor?

edit:

So nobody thinks that there's anything funny about reaching a million dollar
fundraising goal, but noting that they might want to expand the size and
diversity of the donor pool in future after getting a _million dollar donation
from a single person_.

Of course they reached the goal, and of course they might want to raise the
size of the donor pool it took to reach the goal [one person] and the
diversity [the donors that put them over the top all have the same Social
Security number.]

Feel free to interpret the comment as "why donate to them, they just got a
million dollars" or whatever bizarre impression people are getting, but if I
meant that, I would have just said that.

~~~
drderidder
Not unless the fact that organizations have recurring annual funding
requirements is funny.

~~~
pessimizer
If I make a joke about soldiers, am I saying that war is funny?

