
The FreeBSD Foundation falls short of its 2012 fundraising goal by 50% - profquail
http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/
======
kstenerud
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.

This email account is protected by: Active Spam Killer (ASK) V2.4.1 - (C)
2001-2002 by Marco Paganini For more information visit
<http://a-s-k.sourceforge.net/>

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.

~~~
profquail
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
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.

------
hapless
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?

~~~
sciurus
> Who still uses it?

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Free...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_FreeBSD)

~~~
hapless
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)

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

This is the first I've heard of this. Source?

~~~
hapless
[http://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/sample/0206tot_...](http://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/sample/0206tot_monthlytool.html)

~~~
irq
That post is 6 years old and ONTAP has been through at least 3 major releases
since then.

Additionally, the post states that the purpose of ONTAP on Linux was to
simulate ONTAP for testing & education purposes. In 2006 this was probably the
easiest way, but those needs have been met for years by the VMware images
NetApp provides.

So, this almost certainly does not exist anymore.

------
diminish
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.

~~~
killahpriest
Why the downvotes? The dude is genuinely curious.

~~~
beagle3
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.

~~~
jasonlotito
WRT b:

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=freebsd+v.s+linux> (and g! doesn't help any more)

The "best" resource I could find between those two searches resulted in:

<http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/FreeBSD_vs_Linux>

I'm not sure of the quality of the results of that page.

Regardless, we've gone well beyond "a second of googling."

> Comments like the GP can alternatively be phrased...

Comments like yours can be phrased "I'm a hateful liar who reasons that unless
you blindly accept certain opinions as fact, I'm going to assume that any
questions is bigoted. I'll also knowingly require that you search using
Google, claiming that you'll find an answer there, though when someone does
search, it will immediately discredit my comment. After all, if it only took a
second, I could have provided the link that answered the question."

So, by all means, provide the search we should have used that explains what
and why the technical advantages of FreeBSD over various Linux distros. It
only takes a second.

~~~
beagle3
Well, it took me all of 3 seconds to google "why choose freebsd over linux",
and a few more to verify that most of the results I get on this page are
relevant. Your google-fu may be weak, or duckduckgo may be.

Tip: if you are in search of information, rather than self-confirmation, try
to prove the opposite of what you believe, rather than search for confirmation
to your ideas, or even "balanced" info (because you are ALREADY biased, and
you need to counter that bias).

Don't attribute your own faults to others. You seem to do a lot of that in
your post above.

------
darkandbrooding
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.

------
dazzawazza
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.

~~~
profquail
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...](http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/announcements.shtml#fundraising)

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

------
strongriley
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...

------
jedberg
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. :)

~~~
cperciva
Uhh... FreeBSD _is_ on EC2...

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

~~~
cperciva
We're working on it, and progress is being made - FreeBSD is in the AWS
Marketplace as of a few weeks ago, for example.

Unfortunately I can't talk about things Amazon is doing to help with this, but
I have seen ample evidence of Amazon's interest in and effort towards making
this work.

------
jbverschoor
So where's Apple in this story?

~~~
gecko
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.

~~~
RaSoJo
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...

~~~
profquail
The 'Donors' page on the FreeBSD Foundation website shows both corporate and
individual sponsors (and roughly, the amount donated):

<http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml>

Sadly, the number of corporate ($$$) donors has dropped off in the last couple
of years...

~~~
cpeterso
I see Google on the list of corporate sponsors. Do any Google services use
FreeBSD?

~~~
gillianseed
Given how large Google is I'm certain they use FreeBSD in some form somewhere.
Still it's kind of fun seeing Google who is predominantly Linux-based as a
major sponsor and not Apple which likely ship code from the FreeBSD project in
every device they sell. Also nice seeing Juniper contributing back but I can't
see anything from Cisco...

------
emaste
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...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/FreeBSD-end-of-year-fund-
raiser-on-target-1766330.html)

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

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

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

------
soapdog
Just donated 50 bucks! FreeBSD rocks!

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

~~~
profquail
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...](https://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=5785)

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

Like givewell or whatever with a tech filter?

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

~~~
rsync
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...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2012-January/037294.html)

[http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2012-Janu...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2012-January/037331.html)

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...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2012-January/037369.html)

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".

~~~
diminish
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).

~~~
rsync
Our current answer is that our platform is ZFS based, and given the muddy
waters with Oracle and Solaris and so on, it's more responsible to deploy ZFS
on FreeBSD.

But JUST BARELY. We've had our ZFS roadmap in place since 2009, and only just
finally deployed in 2012. Our intention originally was to switch to Solaris,
with real support contracts and contractual commitments and so on, but then
Oracle came along.

So then we had to come back to where we've been all along, since the beginning
of JohnCompanies[1] - with FreeBSD.

[1] JC deployed with FreeBSD since the first VPS product rollout was based on
jail, so that was that.

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

