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Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

ntp.org

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Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#121

Post by Aurornis »

juliusceasar wrote: post #76

I refuse to donate. Trillion dollar companies depend leech on it and yet refuse to spend money on it. Let it fail and see what happens.

Those trillion dollar companies are running a lot of public NTP server infrastructure. Here is a list of public NTP addresses from different big tech companies: https://gist.github.com/mutin-sa/eea1c396b1e610a2da1e5550d94...

> Trillion dollar companies depend leech on it

Are you confusing the NTP Foundation (the group asking for donations) with NTP the protocol or the NTP software itself?

This donation request isn’t even for the public NTP pool. Read the donation page carefully.

The big companies you’re angry at are neither dependent upon nor leeching from this group. They run their own NTP infrastructure, which in some cases has their own developments and adjustments.

Google’s, for example, uses time-smearing to handle leaps. This is different than the standard and therefore you shouldn’t mix Google’s leap-smearing NTP system with NTP servers that don’t leap smear.

> Let it fail and see what happens.

This is a real “cut off your nose to spite your face” moment, but worse: Those public companies don’t depend on any of this. They provide their own server pools and in some cases develop their own software with their own advancements. Cheering for the NTP Foundation to fail because you think it will hurt big companies is very uninformed.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#122

Post by bheadmaster »

jeffbee wrote: post #93
bheadmaster wrote: post #4

It's sad that a project that literally every company in the world depends on is requiring donations to keep working.

It is apparently "Grossly Overestimate The Reliance of Companies on Open Software and Systems Week" and nobody told me.

Name one company that doesn't depend on NTP.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#123

Post by emsign »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #116
juliusceasar wrote: post #76

I refuse to donate. Trillion dollar companies depend leech on it and yet refuse to spend money on it. Let it fail and see what happens.

This raises a lot of questions. Did they actually ask for money to these big companies? Did they get rejected? Another approach could be to move this under the umbrella of any of the other OSS foundations. I can imagine the Linux Foundation would be a good place. Well funded, already has most of the stakeholders involved, and this clearly falls in their scope of interest at least. It would not surprise me if that was…

I'd happily donate to NTP if and only if AI companies are barred from using free software like this in the future via the sw license. I don't WANT to be part of this internet that's hostile and exploitative towards users anymore.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#124

Post by Aurornis »

hosteur wrote: post #86
juliusceasar wrote: post #76

I refuse to donate. Trillion dollar companies depend leech on it and yet refuse to spend money on it. Let it fail and see what happens.

> Let it fail and see what happens. It will get replaced by a proprietary protocol/paid service from each Azure, Cloudflare, Google, AWS, ... The rest of us will be S.O.L.

FYI the big companies provide their own NTP servers and pools. You can use them if you’d like.

They also don’t use the reference implementation (which is maintained by the group this donation is for). Your distros and software probably doesn’t use it either.

The commenter above who thinks shutting down the NTP Foundation will hurt FAANG because they “leech” off of NTP Foundation is completely uninformed.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#126

Post by g-mork »

stego-tech wrote: post #69

Absolutely shameful that this project - and many, many others that underpin trillion-dollar tech company valuations - aren’t fully funded already by the major consumers. I’d like to see more projects do a breakdown of total yearly costs (including contributor compensation!), how much existing sponsorships from companies actually cover, and what number they’d need to operate properly (with full-time, paid contributors…

I'm not so sure, becoming dependent on corporate funding means importing corporate policy. Is it really necessary for a DEI policy being required to appear on ntp.org, or perhaps the sudden advocacy of some proprietary protocol crapware pushed into public use from out of nowhere? That's pretty much what tends to happen

Of course the same thing happens in reverse (see recent python.org refusal to accept federal funding)

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#127

Post by reactordev »

codingdave wrote: post #108
jahnu wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a single highly paid employee of a FAANG, many of whom frequent this very forum, could pay for a year without breaking the bank.

100% true, but they shouldn't have to. If FAANG is using it, they should fund it. I don't want to work in a culture where the employees pay for the corporations' tools.

Say this louder for the managers in the back!

I’m sick of having to pay for my own tools to do my job at your company. Either find a way to build using free tools or fork up the license for that Visual Studio Ultimate or IntelliJ Idea Ultimate license. Pay for your database vendor. Your corporate IdP. Why not $300/yr for a high value output employee?

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#128

Post by homebrewer »

clbrmbr wrote: post #19

The folks who run the public NTP pool really ought not to make it easier to pay them money to use it commercially. I submitted a request for commercial use via their online form but never received a response.

It's mostly run by one guy with very limited time. On their forum, I've seen one vendor repeatedly asking for the vendor prefix for three years, only getting the response once, and never actually receiving the prefix.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#129

Post by chocalot »

tptacek wrote: post #91
imglorp wrote: post #44

The project has been hungry for years. There was a fork to clean up and secure the implementation: https://ntpsec.org and ideally they would combine forces. Summarized here: https://lwn.net/Articles/713901

Yeah the ntpsec story, not great. I don't believe they're taken especially seriously. There are people close to Harlan Stenn who believe the project is essentially fraudulent.

An ntpd-rs contributor elsewhere in the thread suggests ntpsec is used by many distributions, and suggests donating to ntpsec (amongst some other organisations).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45900184

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#130

Post by Aurornis »

foofoo12 wrote: post #99
juliusceasar wrote: post #76

I refuse to donate. Trillion dollar companies depend leech on it and yet refuse to spend money on it. Let it fail and see what happens.

They'd each fork it. AWS NTP for $0.01/request.

This is one of those comment sections where it’s obvious that the angry comments aren’t coming from people who understand the topic.

AWS already provides their own time service and it’s both public and free https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2022/11/amazon-ti...

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