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Side note: Tarsnap is listed at the same level as Juniper (2013) and VMware (2014); I have mixed feelings about that. If you look at the donors listed in each

Side note: Tarsnap is listed at the same level as Juniper (2013) and VMware (2014); I have mixed feelings about that. If you look at the donors listed in each category for 2008-2014 (why those years? Because that's what I scraped the website for) then Tarsnap comes after Anonymous (one or more people giving $250k+, $250k+, and $50k+), NetApp ($450k+), Cryptography Research ($250k+), Hudson River Trading ($250k+), Google ($180k+), LineRate ($150k+), NetFlix ($75k+), iXsystems ($70k+), Swisscom ($40k+), McAfee ($35k+), and John Baldwin ($30k+). And of course WhatsApp, who aren't on the donors list yet for some reason. Part of the reason that Tarsnap always looks like one of the largest donors is that Tarsnap's donation always arrives a few weeks into the new year, while other companies are faster and get their money in at the end of the previous year. Not to say that Tarsnap doesn't contribute, of course; just that other companies contribute far more over the long run.

egwor 12y ago
Tarsnap is written by the Colin Percival who works as the FreedBSD security officer. We can sometimes give more than money. (Colin is insanely bright too, so he is a true asset)
- cperciva 12y ago
  Colin Percival hasn't been the FreeBSD Security Officer for two years. He stepped down from the role because Tarsnap was taking too much of his time: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-05-21-new-freebsd-security-officer.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-05-21-new-freebsd-secur...
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    Colin Percival is the Illeist.
    - tacoman 12y ago
      If I knew more about Colin Percival, I'd make a Colin Percival facts web site. e.g. Colin Percival could crash the entire bitcoin economy with the amount of bitcoins he's accidentally mined in his head, while sleeping.
      - icelancer 12y ago
        Jon Skeet facts, of sorts.
  - balladeer 12y ago
    And still Colin Percival doesn't write a cross-platform Tarsnap GUI. He could do that just for fun, you know :-)
    - chris_wot 12y ago
      Except that if someone suggested this to him, he'd wonder why that would be considered enjoyable given he's having so much fun with the command line.
      - balladeer 12y ago
        Somehow I think that's sad. Really.
- uniclaude 12y ago
  You might not have noticed but you just replied to him.
  - cperciva 12y ago
    Oh come on, telling him takes all the fun out of it.
    - uniclaude 12y ago
      Note to self: Keep your mouth shut in those funny situations. :)
    - dopkew 12y ago
      And lets a lot of others in on the joke...
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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jlgaddis 12y ago
> Not to say that Tarsnap doesn't contribute ... Sorry, I was afraid that remark would be misinterpreted. As a long-time FreeBSD (and previous Tarsnap) user, I'm certainly appreciative of the fact that you donate to the Project (in addition to your other contributions). That's the "happy feeling". The "disappointment feeling" comes from wishing that Juniper and VMware's donations were of an amount that would put them in a much higher category. In other words, my thinking was along the lines of "These two [huge, public] companies are donating roughly as much as Colin himself is". (I realize that, technically, Tarsnap is the entity donating but the fact is that that would be extra money in your pocket otherwise.)
- cperciva 12y ago
  The "disappointment feeling" comes from wishing that Juniper and VMware's donations were of an amount that would put them in a much higher category. Well, it would always be nice to see more and larger donations, but I wouldn't be too harsh on them. As far as I know, VMware doesn't use FreeBSD at all; and while Juniper certainly uses FreeBSD a great deal, they also contribute a lot of developer hours -- vastly more than I ever have.
_delirium 12y ago
An interesting bit of that is how small the cash donations are in absolute terms! Giant companies like NetApp and Google have now been out-donated by one individual person! A wealthy person, admittedly. But those companies' cumulative donations to the project over 7 years are surprisingly small, basically in the range of what you might expect one wealthy person to donate to a charity or university they support. Given the cost of developers, perhaps that suggests that cash donations are not all that effective a method, and measuring contributions to FreeBSD is maybe better done in developer time? If you convert the donations to developer-years, companies like NetApp and Google have each donated an average of less than one developer per year over that period in the cash format. Surely there is some company that beats that threshold, if measured in developer-years?
- cperciva 12y ago
  An interesting bit of that is how small the cash donations are in absolute terms! Keep in mind that those are lower bounds based on which "donation bracket" they fell into. I know there was at least one case where a company donated $200k (which fell into the $100-250k bracket). measuring contributions to FreeBSD is maybe better done in developer time Yes. But that's harder to measure, of course. Also keep in mind that the FreeBSD Foundation != the FreeBSD Project; it is only in the past couple of years that the Foundation has had enough money to hire ongoing engineering staff. For a long time their budget went to project infrastructure and self-contained projects proposed by individual developers.

egwor 12y ago

Tarsnap is written by the Colin Percival who works as the FreedBSD security officer. We can sometimes give more than money. (Colin is insanely bright too, so he is a true asset)

cperciva 12y ago
Colin Percival hasn't been the FreeBSD Security Officer for two years. He stepped down from the role because Tarsnap was taking too much of his time: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-05-21-new-freebsd-security-officer.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-05-21-new-freebsd-secur...
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  Colin Percival is the Illeist.
  - tacoman 12y ago
    If I knew more about Colin Percival, I'd make a Colin Percival facts web site. e.g. Colin Percival could crash the entire bitcoin economy with the amount of bitcoins he's accidentally mined in his head, while sleeping.
    - icelancer 12y ago
      Jon Skeet facts, of sorts.
- balladeer 12y ago
  And still Colin Percival doesn't write a cross-platform Tarsnap GUI. He could do that just for fun, you know :-)
  - chris_wot 12y ago
    Except that if someone suggested this to him, he'd wonder why that would be considered enjoyable given he's having so much fun with the command line.
    - balladeer 12y ago
      Somehow I think that's sad. Really.
uniclaude 12y ago
You might not have noticed but you just replied to him.
- cperciva 12y ago
  Oh come on, telling him takes all the fun out of it.
  - uniclaude 12y ago
    Note to self: Keep your mouth shut in those funny situations. :)
  - dopkew 12y ago
    And lets a lot of others in on the joke...
deleted 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
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jlgaddis 12y ago

> Not to say that Tarsnap doesn't contribute ... Sorry, I was afraid that remark would be misinterpreted. As a long-time FreeBSD (and previous Tarsnap) user, I'm certainly appreciative of the fact that you donate to the Project (in addition to your other contributions). That's the "happy feeling". The "disappointment feeling" comes from wishing that Juniper and VMware's donations were of an amount that would put them in a much higher category. In other words, my thinking was along the lines of "These two [huge, public] companies are donating roughly as much as Colin himself is". (I realize that, technically, Tarsnap is the entity donating but the fact is that that would be extra money in your pocket otherwise.)

cperciva 12y ago
The "disappointment feeling" comes from wishing that Juniper and VMware's donations were of an amount that would put them in a much higher category. Well, it would always be nice to see more and larger donations, but I wouldn't be too harsh on them. As far as I know, VMware doesn't use FreeBSD at all; and while Juniper certainly uses FreeBSD a great deal, they also contribute a lot of developer hours -- vastly more than I ever have.

_delirium 12y ago

An interesting bit of that is how small the cash donations are in absolute terms! Giant companies like NetApp and Google have now been out-donated by one individual person! A wealthy person, admittedly. But those companies' cumulative donations to the project over 7 years are surprisingly small, basically in the range of what you might expect one wealthy person to donate to a charity or university they support. Given the cost of developers, perhaps that suggests that cash donations are not all that effective a method, and measuring contributions to FreeBSD is maybe better done in developer time? If you convert the donations to developer-years, companies like NetApp and Google have each donated an average of less than one developer per year over that period in the cash format. Surely there is some company that beats that threshold, if measured in developer-years?

cperciva 12y ago
An interesting bit of that is how small the cash donations are in absolute terms! Keep in mind that those are lower bounds based on which "donation bracket" they fell into. I know there was at least one case where a company donated $200k (which fell into the $100-250k bracket). measuring contributions to FreeBSD is maybe better done in developer time Yes. But that's harder to measure, of course. Also keep in mind that the FreeBSD Foundation != the FreeBSD Project; it is only in the past couple of years that the Foundation has had enough money to hire ongoing engineering staff. For a long time their budget went to project infrastructure and self-contained projects proposed by individual developers.