From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 9 03:41:10 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 27F7416A4CE for ; Fri, 9 Jan 2004 03:41:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from smithers.nildram.co.uk (smithers.nildram.co.uk [195.112.4.54]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4469C43D45 for ; Fri, 9 Jan 2004 03:41:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from nullentropy@lineone.net) Received: from lineone.net (orbital.gotadsl.co.uk [81.6.215.230]) by smithers.nildram.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id D760C24DF84 for ; Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:35:37 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <3FFE920A.8000802@lineone.net> Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 11:35:38 +0000 From: Robert Downes User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040106 X-Accept-Language: en, fr, en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20040109004625.GA64145@xor.obsecurity.org> In-Reply-To: <20040109004625.GA64145@xor.obsecurity.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: What is the end of FreeBSD ?! X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 11:41:10 -0000 Kris Kennaway wrote: >Notice the difference between these two approaches? It means there's >basically no chance that what happened with RedHat will ever happen to >FreeBSD. > > No, but it surely is possible that the people that devote time to FreeBSD will be taken for granted, and will drift away from spending time on the project? In fact, so disgusted am I with the thought of a Microsoft-dominated future, and so impressed am I with the FreeBSD system (and by that I mean the whole system, including the way code is offered up by volunteers who do it for the quality of the end result), that I'm going to donate $25 to the FreeBSD Foundation right now. And I'm unemployed, that's how much I like FreeBSD. I no that money is a crappy donation, but I don't have any spare hardware, and I'm not a good enough programmer to offer any actual code (I'm currently 2/3 the way through a PHP forum system, and I've stalled dead - anyone got any tips for getting past a stall like that?), but hopefully a bit of money will become something useful to the system. The important point is that a donation is discretionary. My all-time favourite company, Microsoft, don't seem to realise that students, and teenagers, and the unemployed cannot fork out 180 GBP for a 'professional' operating system, then 180 GBP for a 'professional' word processor (which does nothing that the 1997 version did, as far as most people can tell), and then XXX GBP for development software. I hope that FreeBSD continues to be built by people who don't do it for money, because I really believe that free software is built more lovingly (sorry, I couldn't think of a better word) than commercial, factory-produced stuff. But a donation here and there can't hurt. -- Bob