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Apple Donated $100-$249 to FreeBSD in 2021
- rhabarba 6y ago"Look! We contribute back!"
- ev1 6y agoOath (Yahoo, Verizon, ..) $50-99...
- rhabarba 6y agoI can understand that. I bet Yahoo is low on budget.
- 1-6 6y agoIt's classy how the foundation both thanked and shamed at the same time. The other donors can feel good that they donated more in proportion than Apple.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y agoWould be pretty easy to donate more "in proportion" than apple, even if they donated a lot more. Their yearly revenue is like a million times more than mine. Mahbe that's not what you meant.
- mikece 6y agoAnd with a prepaid debit card one can enter any cardholder name and billing address. I wonder if, perhaps, this is how such a donation was made in Apple's name... with the intention of then talking about it here. Which reminds me: I think I'll go make some donations in the name of Richard Stallman...
- blacktriangle 6y agoYou joke, but now I'm curious what RMS thinks about the BSDs?
- rhabarba 6y agostallman.org ran on FreeBSD once, but OpenBSD is "not free enough", he said. https://web.archive.org/web/20080225230344/http://blog.unixlust.com/2007/12/richard-stallman-attacks-open-source.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080225230344/http://blog.unixl...
- bifrost 6y agoStallman is also totally full of it since anything GPL is not actually free software. The BSD or MIT licenses are superior because you're then free to use the software as you wish, wheras with the GPL you're constrained in how you use it.
- lupinglade 6y agoExactly. GPL is not free software in the real sense of the word.
- kazinator 6y agoBoth the BSD2 licenses and GPL licenses try to legally prevent the existence of something. The BSD2 license tries to legally prevent the existence of the source code without the copyright notice preserved. The GPL license tries to prevent (1) binary code distributed without matching, buildable source code (2) source code or binary code redistributed in combination with GPL-incompatible pieces, (3) ... BSD argument: the fewer things whose existence a license tries to prevent, the freer it is. GNU argument: existence of certain things impinges on freedom; if we curtail their existence, we increase freedom. The only way in which the GNU argument rings true for me is that users of proprietary software unwittingly create a world in which people who would like to avoid proprietary software are effectively coerced into using it. The choice not to use it exists, but at the cost of being economically or socially disadvantaged in some way. A software choice that doesn't affect anyone else is strictly personal, even if it is uninformed; it is itself an exercise in freedom. E.g. if someone makes a binary-only screensaver program for GNU/Linux that costs $5.99 (and contains no malware or anything of the source) the choice to use it is of no consequence. If someone likes that screensaver, it's their choice and their $5.99, and it doesn't affect anyone else even in the same household or organization.
- elliekelly 6y agoI think it's far more likely that Apple Inc. did actually donate between $100-249 as part of an employee gift-matching program. I'd be willing to bet one of those $100-249 donors works for them.
- tathisit 6y agoTo belle delphine
- bifrost 6y agoPlease don't. Donating in Theo De Raadt's name would be much funnier.
- bifrost 6y agoI just checked, no RMS donation.
- zck 6y agoAre these corporation-decided donations, or matching donations for employee donations?
- captainredbeard 6y agoAlmost certainly the latter
- Gualdrapo 6y agoCan they do both, though?
- captainredbeard 6y agoCorporations are eligible for donations to non-profits, yes, in addition to matching employee contributions. But at less than $250 total donation, I have trouble believing it's anything other than a match.
- GeekyBear 6y agoMatching your employees donations of time and money is a thing at many companies. >for every hour an employee gives, or dollar they donate, Apple provides matching funds for both. In 2018, that added up to more than a quarter of a million hours volunteered and more than $125 million donated to organizations around the world. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/out-of-a-culture-of-giving-a-world-of-difference/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/out-of-a-culture-of-g...
- arcticbull 6y agoSeems pretty likely since one of the other $100-249 donations was made by "LinkedIn Matching Gifts Program"
- ilaksh 6y agoWhat's preventing FreebBSD from modifying their license to say something like "the above license applies to all companies that had less than $150 billion cash on hand in the year 2020, and the following minimum donation requirements apply to other companies"? They could say something like $2-$5 million minimum. Then sue the crap out of them when they try to get out of it.
- mlyle 6y agoApple has used the code as it was licensed when they used it, and you can't retroactively make the license more strict. You could license new FreeBSD code more strictly. And then Apple would decide whether it was worth $2-5M to get those new pieces of code. And you'd alienate the entire BSD crowd because of this strange license term.
- ilaksh 6y agoI did not suggest it would apply to the old code. I think the reasonable response would be to acknowledge just how large the cash reserve is compared to what is being asked. And not the ENTIRE BSD crowd. Because surely one or two of them would see the idea of getting a small amount from these extremely wealthy companies as being acceptable.
- sokoloff 6y agoAvoiding the appearance (and reality) of obvious bad faith, (even extortionate?), non-open source licensing terms probably.
- zamadatix 6y agoI'm sure for $2-$5 million per year Apple would rather just hire a few additional developers and never touch new FreeBSD source again than deal with those types of arrangements. As would a large portion of the developers and users - you don't pick BSD licensed projects because you liked restrictive licenses.
- ilaksh 6y ago
- mwfunk 6y agoI"m sure it was matching funds for an employee donation.
- jan_Inkepa 6y agoI'm surprised at what seem like quite low corporate partnerships https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/?donationType=partners&donationYear=2021 https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/?donationTyp... - the biggest partner being facebook with <50k? Given FreeBSD's ubiquity one might expect some company somewhere having more money for them. Well, they're clearly getting by just fine as well, but I am nonetheless surprised!
- kevans91 6y agoThat's just 2021- check back at 2020 and you'll find a couple more.
- ipsum2 6y agoIf anyone's curious, Apple also donated $250–$499 in 2020.
- throw0101a 6y agoA lot of companies fund development directly, which one can see in the commit logs: Netflix, NetApp, Dell-EMC Isilon, Mellanox/Nvidia, Rubicon/Netgate, Yandex, iXsystems, etc. Facebook hired the guy who wrote jemalloc, which started in FreeBSD originally. Doing a search for "Sponsored by" would give plenty of results over the years. The Foundation helps with other things besides code, like infrastructure (though they hire developers too: emaste@ is doing a bunch of sponsored work given recent commits).
- bifrost 6y agoI just donated, can't wait to have my name over Apple's lol.
- midwestemo 6y agoAdobe $5-24.
- salzig 6y agohaha, thanks. Didn't expect anything, beside private, that low.
- fuzzer37 6y agoI think people are missing the point of this post. Yes, it most likely is an employee matching contribution scheme at its source. But this is a literal trillion dollar company giving less than $250 to the operating system that they essentially based their whole software stack on. Yes, at the end of the day Apple didn't do anything _wrong_ by using their software and making money off of it. It's just a little on the nose to be making a donation that small.
- Bud 6y agoIs BSD generally actually "their software"—i.e., FreeBSD's software? I'd argue not. FreeBSD is merely one flavor of BSD.
- tw04 6y agoDarwin's entire userland was basically a direct rip from FreeBSD, the networking stack as well. Which is fine, that's perfectly acceptable given the license, but it's generally considered good form to actually donate back to the project when you do that, especially when you're worth what Apple is. All that is to say: claiming Apple just built on "generic BSD" isn't really fair or accurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29
- p_l 6y agoTheir userland is still majorly based on OSFMK, not FreeBSD - to the point where exactly that assumption recently bit me when trying to run program written for open source BSDs that assumed certain 1993-vintage userland stuff existed on every BSD-declaring system. Darwin/XNU/macOS are not FreeBSD based, nor NetBSD based, nor OpenBSD based, even if in places it can take pieces of their code.
- heavyset_go 6y ago> Darwin/XNU/macOS are not FreeBSD based, nor NetBSD based, nor OpenBSD based, even if in places it can take pieces of their code. Apple disagrees[1]: > XNU is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with components from FreeBSD From Apple's kernel docs[2]: > Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. XNU has a "personalities" concept, and the BSD personality is mostly just FreeBSD[2]: > Above the Mach layer, the BSD layer provides “OS personality” APIs and services. The BSD layer is based on the BSD kernel, primarily FreeBSD. Even the syscall interface is from FreeBSD. Here's a diagram of macOS architecture[3]. [1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu [2] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_architecture.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_archi...
- jmclnx 6y agoEven though people are saying this is a matching contribution scheme, I will say OK, lets go with that. In 2018 -- 2020, no mention of Apple above 4999, so this is still a case of 'free labor' for Apple. Also IIRC Apple also took some userland from NetBSD, they got nothing from Apple. So what does that say about Apple ? Microsoft gave above 10,000 last year to FreeBSD.
- zamadatix 6y agoPeople already have an expectation companies won't give compensation for BSD licensed code, that the small donation was listed as Apple without context it was a personal donation match is what was shocking.
- redisman 6y agoI tried to get a company I work for to contribute to a AWS account switcher plugin but they couldn't be arsed. It's a one-man operation and saves us easily weeks of time per year
- paulsmith 6y agoI wonder how much Apple has donated in in-kind contributions to FreeBSD in the form of its employees contributing to the upstream as a matter of course of working on Darwin.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoDarwin is not a fork as such, its kernel is completely different. Perhaps some userland tool changes were contributed but I kinda doubt it
- wyldfire 6y agoFWIW Apple is one of two Diamond Sponsors of the LLVM Foundation [1]. I'm not sure how much that is, but I'll bet it's a really big pile of money. LLVM foundation has public financials, IIRC, so it might not be hard to guess. You could debate which open source communities that Apple should be supporting, but at least they're supporting some. [1] https://foundation.llvm.org/docs/sponsors/ https://foundation.llvm.org/docs/sponsors/
- kazinator 6y agoWas this actual cash, or like an iTunes gift card or something?
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoStill much more than Adobe.
- zamadatix 6y agoAdobe derives code from BSD? Or has any working relation with BSD at all? Genuinely curious - hadn't heard the two ever mentioned together before.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoI'm very curious, too - for some reason they donated $5 for the project.
- zamadatix 6y agoAs mentioned in all of the other comments any major company at < $5,000 is almost certainly a donation matching benefit program (bob donates $50 so bob's employer matches it with a $50 donation as well) or similar not e.g. Adobe/Apple going out of their way to donate to FreeBSD and deciding $5 was the right amount. The reason Apple is pulled out is they are probably the heaviest user of the code in the world and being in the $100-$249 range means they (effectively) donated $0 not that they were the only company to do so.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoThanks, that makes sense.
- eecc 6y agoWell, FreeBSD seems to be in dire need of some financial support to refurbish some of its process. The last near-miss with WireGuard should have raised a couple eyebrows
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- PedroBatista 6y agoRighteous bucks! Let's not forget it's coming from a company who gave us a $200 store credit for allowing us the privilege of beta testing their M1 silicon DTK for $500.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoWhy would they even bother donating that little :) even the admin processing and approval process is likely to cost more. Perhaps it was not in money but some hardware that had to be declared as a donation for tax reasons?