Live data from Hacker News

All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

daemonology.net

1–10 of 32 posts

Re: All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

#3
post #2

This is extremely generous and couldn't go to a more deserving group of hard working programmers. Makes me wish I had my own company to match his generosity!

Well, you know, I've decided that I don't particularly like ramen, so I figured that I'd go without this month. :-)

In all seriousness, I was planning on making a donation anyway, but I figured that I could afford to make a bigger donation this way. If I'm lucky, this will bring in new users, and the lack of profits this month will be balanced out by increased profits in the following months... but even if nobody new uses Tarsnap because of this, I'll be glad that I've supported the FreeBSD Foundation.

Re: All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

#4
post #3
post #2

This is extremely generous and couldn't go to a more deserving group of hard working programmers. Makes me wish I had my own company to match his generosity!

Well, you know, I've decided that I don't particularly like ramen, so I figured that I'd go without this month. :-) In all seriousness, I was planning on making a donation anyway, but I figured that I could afford to make a bigger donation this way. If I'm lucky, this will bring in new users, and the lack of profits this month will be balanced out by increased profits in the following months... but even if nobody new…

What a great way to do something good and generate business for your company at the same time.

Re: All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

#6
As much as I like FreeBSD, and as much as I prefer the BSD license to the GPL, everytime I think about it, I reach the same conclusion: the BSD License is flawed.

Because of the GPL, Linux has companies like Red Hat committing 25% of the new code base. Companies have to improve the product, and Linux can evolve without direct funding.

The BSD license allows Apple and others to shamelessly rip code out of the product and put very little in, thus relying on a small community of developers and donations to keep running. It's a shame really, since FreeBSD is such a better product with so much potential. And all we can really do is support it through programs like this.

Re: All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

#7

As much as I like FreeBSD, and as much as I prefer the BSD license to the GPL, everytime I think about it, I reach the same conclusion: the BSD License is flawed. Because of the GPL, Linux has companies like Red Hat committing 25% of the new code base. Companies have to improve the product, and Linux can evolve without direct funding. The BSD license allows Apple and others to shamelessly rip code out of the product…

This is an unfortunate misconception. Some of Apple's significant BSD/MIT/Apache contributions, off the top of my head:

* LLVM and clang (MIT) - http://llvm.org/

* libdispatch, aka GCD (Apache) - http://libdispatch.macosforge.org/

* launchd (Apache) - http://launchd.macosforge.org/

* OpenBSM (BSD) - http://www.trustedbsd.org/openbsm.html

* mDNSResponder (Apache/BSD) - http://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/bonjour.html

Nearly all the code to the base system is available under the non-BSD APSL, but the fact is that most of it just isn't useful to the BSDs, and if it were, Apple would likely be open to contributing the code under an alternative license (eg, they re-licensed launchd under the Apache license):

http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1062/

Re: All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

#8

How much money is he donating?

How much money is he donating?

That's between me and the FreeBSD Foundation. I don't feel that me making a charitable donation should require me to divulge what I consider to be private personal information.

Re: All Tarsnap profits for Dec '09 will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation

#10

I hate commenting when I have nothing of real value to add, but I just wanted to say this is wonderful and I hope you get some new customers out of it.

Thanks! It's always nice to know that things like this are appreciated.
Post reply on HN