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While you're here, have you donated[0][1] yet? :) You may or may not be aware, but FreeBSD runs your movies on Netflix, your games on PlayStation, your files o

While you're here, have you donated[0][1] yet? :) You may or may not be aware, but FreeBSD runs your movies on Netflix, your games on PlayStation, your files on FreeNAS and ZFS, your friends on WhatsApp and OpenBSD runs everywhere else as OpenSSH. ;) So, you may or may not know that, but you need FreeBSD and OpenBSD and they also need you! Every cent counts and so does every contributor, that helps the foundations keep their non-profit status. Also, you CAN be the change, if you specify what you'd like your donation to be used for (like more secure defaults for the OS or towards code review and bugs fixing). [0]https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ [1]https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html

Strom 9y ago
Surely there are better reasons to donate to these projects other than funding development for massive corporations like Netflix, Sony, and Facebook. The idea that my donation money will be primarily used to cut costs for these corporations isn't exactly appealing to me.
- tachion 9y ago
  You might one day want to run a startup or a project and then you could just do it on FreeBSD in any way you like, given the permissive license and this is exactly the reason why you need BSD, not only because Netflix, Sony or WhatsApp uses them to serve you their service. Does it really bother you that much if your $10 of donation will benefit yourself, myself, other ordinary people and some companies at the same time, enough to stop you from donating? I personally can't understand that, because when I donate my money or my code, it's yours then and you're free to do with it as you please, and wether you make $1000000 off it or not, it's not my concern anymore.
  - Strom 9y ago
    No it doesn't bother me if others (including big corporations) benefit as well, if I'm doing the donation anyway. I'll probably view it as a bonus! It's just that the benefit to big corporations alone isn't a motivator for me to donate in the first place. The idea that at some point in the future I might want to use FreeBSD is definitely a better motivator. However this same argument applies to a million other projects that are in need of donations. My donation fund is limited, and so arguments that apply to pretty much every project don't make these BSD projects stand out. In practice there are projects which I'm already actively using, and they get the majority of my donations. However I do occasionally donate to projects with future potential that I haven't benefited from yet. I'm not against donating, even to projects which I don't directly use. I'm just saying that the fund raising pitch here is very weak. Not to belittle the BSD projects, but to point out that the situation can be greatly improved. Although yes I also understand that most open source project people want to work on their personal pet features and not deal with things like marketing, sales, image building.
    - tachion 9y ago
      The reason why Netflix/Sony/WhatsApp are mentioned is not because they're best reasons to donate to FreeBSD but instead because there's much higher chance for the reader to know them rather than DTrace, ZFS, Jails, performant TCP/IP stack and many other things where FreeBSD benefits the users. It's much simpler to get a connection this way and some interest from the end user, who otherwise wouldn't have heard about FreeBSD and wouldn't ever thought on donating the money to a project that he wouldn't have know is running so many things he enjoys and or relies on. We're aware everyone has limited funds and lots of people have better use for their resources than to donate, but this is exactly why we are asking kindly, we are not demanding nor trying to impose our point of view in such donation request and most importantly, we're not judging regardless of the donation decision :) We are grateful even for discussion such as this one, that may spread out the knowledge and familiarity of the FreeBSD project and in result perhaps drive even more donations or - better yet - new project members!
      - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
        >DTrace, ZFS, Jails, performant TCP/IP stack and many other things where FreeBSD benefits the users. Just to point out, that DTrace and ZFS are (were) not BSD features, and were not invented by a Open Source BSD. It just happened that they were open sourced by a GPL incompatible license (CDDL) which makes it impossible to directly merge it into the mainline Linux kernel. EDIT Just also to point out that had ZFS been a BSD licensed tech, it's very likely that ZoL would have been just as good an option as ZFS on FreeBSD.
jcelerier 9y ago
> You may or may not be aware, but FreeBSD runs your movies on Netflix, your games on PlayStation, your files on FreeNAS and ZFS, your friends on WhatsApp and OpenBSD runs everywhere else as OpenSSH. ;) so... let us get that straight. * Netflix had a revenue of 8.83 billion dollars USD last year. * Sony had a revenue of 68 fucking billion dollars. * WhatsApp is owned by facebook which will have around 40 billion dollar revenue this year it seems and all these guys put together aren't arsed to contribute enough for paying for a few full-time devs, in addition to keeping a part of their modifications to the BSD source closed, but us, the users, should additionnally roll out some bucks to help these companies make even more money ? What's wrong with you people ? What next ? Should we also donate to tanenbaum to help Intel (59 billion $ revenue) conceal its next iteration of the management engine better ?
- tachion 9y ago
  I don't think there's anything wrong with us. First of all, no one says you should do anything. We're asking kindly because we can, and you can do all range of things from ignoring us completely to donating $1M like WhatsApp founder. Because you can too. Second thing is that's its much easier to ask open source aware HN reader for $50 than a huge megacorp hive mind for 50c. Not to mention every 'end user dollar' is worth much more for the foundation given the regulations, where to keep the tax status we need to show up numbers supporting in people, rather than businesses. And finally, many of these companies do give us money and code, some in the open, some anonymously due to the reasons known only to them. Just a food for thought for you when you'll be thinking about these donations :)
  - int_19h 9y ago
    I think it's not so much about donating in and of itself, as it is about this "it runs Netflix!" argument. I do donate to FreeBSD regularly - in fact, I have a matching paycheck donation set up. But that's because I personally use it in my projects. When it comes to Netflix, I already pay for Netflix, so the notion that I should also pay to FreeBSD because it makes Netflix possible is kinda ridiculous.
JdeBP 9y ago
Every time that you've posted this, people have repetitively re-hashed the same old big corporations ... no they don't ... yes in fact they do arguments. Have you considered improving your boilerplate spiel? * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16011478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16011478 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854387 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14701854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14701854
- will4274 9y ago
  And is it really cool to copy paste the same comment on every article about BSD? Seems like a form of spam to me..
na85 9y ago
We got into a bit of a discussion last time you posted this, but I really don't understand your angle here. Reminding me that these huge corporations are donating so little that you still need to ask for donations on HN makes me want to donate less, not more. I already give Netflix money, and I think Facebook (and thus by extension WhatsApp) are total scum. Again, why should I give you money so that they can leech off my donation? Why aren't these companies that allegedly rely so heavily on FreeBSD making you financially stable?
- ianai 9y ago
  Because they are scum and don’t contribute.
  - na85 9y ago
    Meh, I think they do in fact contribute. It's just that they don't contribute to an acceptable degree. If FreeBSD is as indispensable to these corps as OP implies, they should be contributing to a level enough to make FreeBSD financially secure. What's scummy about Facebook is the way Zuckerberg pushes the message that privacy is dead while using the money he made selling my privacy to buy all the mansions around his so that he can protect his own privacy. But that's for another thread: I'm interested in why FreeBSD isn't receiving the financial support it seems to require from the corps that are leeching off volunteers to pad their profit margins.
    - ianai 9y ago
      Well. To be sure, it would be awful messaging for the organizations to run that message. If they alienate FB or Netflix then they could lose much more than they realize (as apparently some donations are done anonymously).
kworker 9y ago
I want kernel modules back in openbsd. Of course they gonna ignore it for reason, but you know... easy come, easy go. Netflix uses Linux too and Sony heavily dumbed the kernel, to decrease the attack surface. It's practically pointless to call it as an os. ZFS is also available for Linux and of course it's better to use it on Illumos. I wonder why Netflix chose FreeBSD and not Solaris or Illumos.

Strom 9y ago

Surely there are better reasons to donate to these projects other than funding development for massive corporations like Netflix, Sony, and Facebook. The idea that my donation money will be primarily used to cut costs for these corporations isn't exactly appealing to me.

tachion 9y ago
You might one day want to run a startup or a project and then you could just do it on FreeBSD in any way you like, given the permissive license and this is exactly the reason why you need BSD, not only because Netflix, Sony or WhatsApp uses them to serve you their service. Does it really bother you that much if your $10 of donation will benefit yourself, myself, other ordinary people and some companies at the same time, enough to stop you from donating? I personally can't understand that, because when I donate my money or my code, it's yours then and you're free to do with it as you please, and wether you make $1000000 off it or not, it's not my concern anymore.
- Strom 9y ago
  No it doesn't bother me if others (including big corporations) benefit as well, if I'm doing the donation anyway. I'll probably view it as a bonus! It's just that the benefit to big corporations alone isn't a motivator for me to donate in the first place. The idea that at some point in the future I might want to use FreeBSD is definitely a better motivator. However this same argument applies to a million other projects that are in need of donations. My donation fund is limited, and so arguments that apply to pretty much every project don't make these BSD projects stand out. In practice there are projects which I'm already actively using, and they get the majority of my donations. However I do occasionally donate to projects with future potential that I haven't benefited from yet. I'm not against donating, even to projects which I don't directly use. I'm just saying that the fund raising pitch here is very weak. Not to belittle the BSD projects, but to point out that the situation can be greatly improved. Although yes I also understand that most open source project people want to work on their personal pet features and not deal with things like marketing, sales, image building.
  - tachion 9y ago
    The reason why Netflix/Sony/WhatsApp are mentioned is not because they're best reasons to donate to FreeBSD but instead because there's much higher chance for the reader to know them rather than DTrace, ZFS, Jails, performant TCP/IP stack and many other things where FreeBSD benefits the users. It's much simpler to get a connection this way and some interest from the end user, who otherwise wouldn't have heard about FreeBSD and wouldn't ever thought on donating the money to a project that he wouldn't have know is running so many things he enjoys and or relies on. We're aware everyone has limited funds and lots of people have better use for their resources than to donate, but this is exactly why we are asking kindly, we are not demanding nor trying to impose our point of view in such donation request and most importantly, we're not judging regardless of the donation decision :) We are grateful even for discussion such as this one, that may spread out the knowledge and familiarity of the FreeBSD project and in result perhaps drive even more donations or - better yet - new project members!
    - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
      >DTrace, ZFS, Jails, performant TCP/IP stack and many other things where FreeBSD benefits the users. Just to point out, that DTrace and ZFS are (were) not BSD features, and were not invented by a Open Source BSD. It just happened that they were open sourced by a GPL incompatible license (CDDL) which makes it impossible to directly merge it into the mainline Linux kernel. EDIT Just also to point out that had ZFS been a BSD licensed tech, it's very likely that ZoL would have been just as good an option as ZFS on FreeBSD.

jcelerier 9y ago

> You may or may not be aware, but FreeBSD runs your movies on Netflix, your games on PlayStation, your files on FreeNAS and ZFS, your friends on WhatsApp and OpenBSD runs everywhere else as OpenSSH. ;) so... let us get that straight. * Netflix had a revenue of 8.83 billion dollars USD last year. * Sony had a revenue of 68 fucking billion dollars. * WhatsApp is owned by facebook which will have around 40 billion dollar revenue this year it seems and all these guys put together aren't arsed to contribute enough for paying for a few full-time devs, in addition to keeping a part of their modifications to the BSD source closed, but us, the users, should additionnally roll out some bucks to help these companies make even more money ? What's wrong with you people ? What next ? Should we also donate to tanenbaum to help Intel (59 billion $ revenue) conceal its next iteration of the management engine better ?

tachion 9y ago
I don't think there's anything wrong with us. First of all, no one says you should do anything. We're asking kindly because we can, and you can do all range of things from ignoring us completely to donating $1M like WhatsApp founder. Because you can too. Second thing is that's its much easier to ask open source aware HN reader for $50 than a huge megacorp hive mind for 50c. Not to mention every 'end user dollar' is worth much more for the foundation given the regulations, where to keep the tax status we need to show up numbers supporting in people, rather than businesses. And finally, many of these companies do give us money and code, some in the open, some anonymously due to the reasons known only to them. Just a food for thought for you when you'll be thinking about these donations :)
- int_19h 9y ago
  I think it's not so much about donating in and of itself, as it is about this "it runs Netflix!" argument. I do donate to FreeBSD regularly - in fact, I have a matching paycheck donation set up. But that's because I personally use it in my projects. When it comes to Netflix, I already pay for Netflix, so the notion that I should also pay to FreeBSD because it makes Netflix possible is kinda ridiculous.

JdeBP 9y ago

Every time that you've posted this, people have repetitively re-hashed the same old big corporations ... no they don't ... yes in fact they do arguments. Have you considered improving your boilerplate spiel? * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16011478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16011478 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854387 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14701854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14701854

will4274 9y ago
And is it really cool to copy paste the same comment on every article about BSD? Seems like a form of spam to me..

na85 9y ago

We got into a bit of a discussion last time you posted this, but I really don't understand your angle here. Reminding me that these huge corporations are donating so little that you still need to ask for donations on HN makes me want to donate less, not more. I already give Netflix money, and I think Facebook (and thus by extension WhatsApp) are total scum. Again, why should I give you money so that they can leech off my donation? Why aren't these companies that allegedly rely so heavily on FreeBSD making you financially stable?

ianai 9y ago
Because they are scum and don’t contribute.
- na85 9y ago
  Meh, I think they do in fact contribute. It's just that they don't contribute to an acceptable degree. If FreeBSD is as indispensable to these corps as OP implies, they should be contributing to a level enough to make FreeBSD financially secure. What's scummy about Facebook is the way Zuckerberg pushes the message that privacy is dead while using the money he made selling my privacy to buy all the mansions around his so that he can protect his own privacy. But that's for another thread: I'm interested in why FreeBSD isn't receiving the financial support it seems to require from the corps that are leeching off volunteers to pad their profit margins.
  - ianai 9y ago
    Well. To be sure, it would be awful messaging for the organizations to run that message. If they alienate FB or Netflix then they could lose much more than they realize (as apparently some donations are done anonymously).

kworker 9y ago

I want kernel modules back in openbsd. Of course they gonna ignore it for reason, but you know... easy come, easy go. Netflix uses Linux too and Sony heavily dumbed the kernel, to decrease the attack surface. It's practically pointless to call it as an os. ZFS is also available for Linux and of course it's better to use it on Illumos. I wonder why Netflix chose FreeBSD and not Solaris or Illumos.