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OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

marc.info

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Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#191

Post by astrodust »

justin66 wrote: post #177
wpietri wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like publishing accounts? Maybe even including salaries for the highly paid people? Because every US nonprofit is required by law to do that. You can browse it all on line: http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finder/

That is a nice tool, thanks. Someone else posted something similar recently and it wanted to charge $250 for membership or something like that. The web is bringing a lot of good transparency to nonprofits but there's still a lot of repugnant wastefulness and avarice that often isn't captured well by a 990 form. (publishing salaries is pretty huge, though) I stand by my point that the more a person learns about the av…

The more transparency there is, the better the legitimate charities look and the less likely people are to throw money at what turn out to be obvious scams.

Transparency is critical.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#192

Post by gommm »

jxf wrote: post #10

Just to make the call to action a little more direct, the donation link is here: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html

Off topic, bluekitten it seems you've been hellbanned and your message show as dead. Looking at your comment history, I can't imagine what triggered it, so if you see this it might be a good idea to send an email to pg.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#193

Post by drewcrawford »

werid wrote: post #173
gtirloni wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At home when things get though, we cut costs and hope for better times. If OpenBSD isn't exaggerating about shutting down the project, then it seems reasonable to review their policy regarding old platforms and focus on what gives the most return.

Dropping platforms will lose them developers. Developers who also work on the main platforms, or atleast whose work crosses over.

You know what else loses developers? Shutting down the project.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#194

Post by auvi »

kscottz wrote: post #70

I would love to see more FOSS projects on GitTip ( https://www.gittip.com/ ). It would seem to me that regular small donations that can be budgeted would be more helpful than just scratching where and when it itches. Giving $1 a week versus $50 at once is so much more convenient. We as the FOSS community need to own up that writing and hosting software isn't free, and most of us as highly paid engineers are in a posi…

Kudos to you!

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#197

Post by davidgerard »

jlgaddis wrote: post #174
cwyers wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you're openly soliciting donations under the premise that they're essential to keeping the project running at all, you can put up with the people you're trying to get money out of asking questions to ensure that the money you're asking for really is as needed as you say it is.

Not Theo. He clearly says things like "that's not up for discussion", "I'm not going into details", etc. If anyone ever truly deserved the title BDFL...

I think if you ever use OpenSSH for anything whatsoever, you can put up with a grumpy Theo.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#198

Post by davidgerard »

weland wrote: post #187
tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A somewhat related note about branding. My first "real" job was in the mid-90's; I was the first technical hire at a small Chicago ISP (EnterAct) that grew into a relatively large ISP (when I left, we were default-free peered to several tier-1 providers and had more POPs than I can name). It was great, and the team that started it --- two Big-5 accounting firm programmers --- was inspiring, particularly when it came…

I know OpenBSD's reputation is primarily security, but I use it for a different reason. It's simple, stable, and doesn't break. Back when I was in high school and I had a lot of free time and all that, the various incarnations of Linux were a delight. Even after that, I still went with it out of inertia and spent many evenings tweaking Gentoo. I eventually just goddamn gave up. I got sick of every upgrade breaking so…

And OpenBSD has the best-written man pages in all of Unix.

When I got thrown in the deep end with Solaris, many years ago, I'd read the Solaris man page for the options, but first I'd read the OpenBSD man page to work out what the hell the command was for and why.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#199

Post by kriro »

Seems insane that they can't get enough funding given the current security climate. Think of some of the eccentrics whatever you want but they have always been fighting the good fight as far as I'm concerned.

No BLOB is a very sane idea for example. I think we'd be further along if that was enforced stricter by other projects.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#200

Post by davidgerard »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #50

So let's deal with the elephant in the room: the OpenBSD project is run by complete and utter jerks. Not just Theo, but he has set the bar quite low when it comes to friendliness and tolerance of questions from younger/less experienced contributors. Linus' rants on the Linux kernel lists are almost cookie cutter copies of Theo's. There is "opinionated software" and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious,…

If you EVER use OpenSSH for ANYTHING, you can cough up $20 for grumpy Theo.

(I've interacted with Mr deRaadt once. He was perfectly lovely and helpful.)

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