Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2000 19:45:06 -0600 (MDT) From: "Forrest W. Christian" <forrestc@iMach.com> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD/Opensource is not free Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004041821470.23759-100000@workhorse.iMach.com> In-Reply-To: <20000404203411.B23851@speedy.gsinet>
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Since I probably am about to step in a puddle of gasoline with what I am about to say, I'd just like to preface this with this isn't meant as an attack on anyone, but instead as some food for thought. I'm not particularly good with saying things in a tactful manner, and I'd rather not muddy what I'm trying to say by "softening" it. It seems that a growing number of posters to the list seem to not understand that FreeBSD and other OpenSource projects have a real cost which every user should help to bear. Let me explain. The core FreeBSD team is "responsible for deciding the project's overall goals and direction as well as managing specific areas of the FreeBSD project landscape". These 16 or so people are supplemented by approximatley 150 additional committers. In all, around 170 or so people are responsible for the 6.6 MILLION plus lines in /usr/src are stable. Remember these are almost (if not) all volunteers. Most of them have "day jobs" and as a result are only able to spend a couple hours a day or so on the project. Regardless, each and every one of them has made a commitment to invest their valuable spare time towards improving FreeBSD. Now, to try to wander back to the point I was trying to make - Even if the volunteers above only provide one hour a day average on this project, that still comes out to be 1 hour x 365 days/year x 150 committers or 57,750 hours a year. Multiply this by say $50/hr which is cheap for "contract" programming, then you end up with over 2.7 Million dollars of labor being spent on FreeBSD each year. Remember this is DONATED labor. Now think about this: The "committers" have donated 2.7 million dollars of labor to FreeBSD, what have you done? I think there is an unfortunate feeling that you have to write code to help with FreeBSD. At this point, I would ALMOST say that if you want to help with FreeBSD DO ANYTHING BUT WRITE CODE. For Instance: * Submit pr's: Document bugs you find and submit the info. * Fix lacking/outdated documentation. * Help newbies on the appropriate list(s). * Find a developer who hates writing documentation and write documentation for them. * Help track down developmental documentation for a piece of hardware and/or purchase said hardware for development purposes. etc. etc. etc. I'm sure if someone dropped Jordan or one of the core committers a note that said "Hey, I have some spare time and I would like to do x" where x is about anything not already well (or over) covered, they could FIND something useful for about anyone to do. I think that maybe the best summarization of this whole thing is this: FreeBSD costs both time and money to develop. Although FreeBSD doesn't officially "cost" us anything (in the fiscal sense), each of us should find a way to contribute to the project as much as we can justify and in whatever way we can. - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) KD7EHZ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iMach, Ltd., P.O. Box 5749, Helena, MT 59604 http://www.imach.com Solutions for your high-tech problems. (406)-442-6648 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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