From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 17 14:08:56 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3985216A422; Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:08:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from anderson@centtech.com) Received: from mh1.centtech.com (moat3.centtech.com [207.200.51.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97E4643D46; Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:08:55 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from anderson@centtech.com) Received: from [10.177.171.220] (neutrino.centtech.com [10.177.171.220]) by mh1.centtech.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id k2HE8srF058296; Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:08:54 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from anderson@centtech.com) Message-ID: <441AC2F3.6070901@centtech.com> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:08:51 -0600 From: Eric Anderson User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (X11/20060112) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Baldwin References: <441A35AE.2020108@roq.com> <200603170756.35937.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <200603170756.35937.jhb@freebsd.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.87.1/1335/Wed Mar 15 22:58:43 2006 on mh1.centtech.com X-Virus-Status: Clean Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Java 1.5 donations X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:08:56 -0000 John Baldwin wrote: > On Thursday 16 March 2006 11:06 pm, Michael Vince wrote: > >> Hi All, >> >> I been seeing a lot of VM crash reports posted to this mailing list and >> I was thinking how it would be great if this project got funding, >> everyone knows doing work for reward is better then doing it for free. >> I just wanted to state my personal opinion and thoughts about this topic. >> I was thinking that methods like Andre Oppermann seem to give a good >> example of how a (arguably) small amount of money $18k US can go to >> greatly help the FreeBSD project. >> http://people.freebsd.org/~andre/tcpoptimization.html >> >> I was wondering if anyone knew if there was any details such as a time >> frame and a rough figure of how much it would cost to get some good >> results (or even full Sun Java certification) happening 1.5 Java on >> i386/amd64 as I was hoping maybe I could persuade the company I work at >> to donate. I also did notice that there was recently a funding >> announcement for Java 1.5 on FreeBSD on the FreeBSD foundation web site >> which is good news. >> > > Yes, the Foundation is the place to donate to for Java 1.5 as they already > have experience with Java 1.4 including Sun certification. > > >> I have been looking at the FreeBSD web page to judge how good it is in >> enticing donations and I think its a bit ordinary, If you go to the >> entry page of the main FreeBSD web site http://www.freebsd.org its hard >> to see any sign of a donations page, The donations page is hidden away >> under the 'about' area. http://www.freebsd.org/about.html which >> ultimately has a link going to the FreeBSD foundation page >> http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/ if you want to donate money, >> personally I don't think thats very good way to entice people to give >> money to the FreeBSD foundation. >> If you look at the OpenBSD web site http://www.openbsd.org/ you can see >> that all they really have on their entry web page is right in the middle >> front page is the encouragement of buying either CDs/Tshirts or straight >> donations which is a effective method of encouragement of donations. >> Some people could be mistaken (or just prefer) to think that FreeBSD >> foundation don't really care about donations which is not ideal. >> >> I think in the main entry FreeBSD web site page there should be an extra >> tab for "Donations" or even in place of either the "About" or "Support" >> links. It could be worded in a similar way OpenBSD have it, where it >> could have more of a guilt factor in there such as 'if your company uses >> FreeBSD then you are encouraged to give back and donate to the FreeBSD >> foundation'. >> > > I think this is a good idea. I've cc'd marketing@ to see if they can offer > some better feedback. > > >> I think this is especially true for big companies, I mean I don't know >> how much Apple or Yahoo give back for using FreeBSD but I think if it >> isn't large then having a web page that puts a bit of pressure on all of >> us including big companies to drive a guilt factor could go a long way. >> I did touch on this topic a little while ago and some one flamed me >> saying Apple gave a lot back by giving back some source patches to the >> GCC project, I don't see any argument other then that is more giving >> back GNU then to directly FreeBSD. >> > > I can't speak for Apple, but note that Apple isn't running FreeBSD directly, > more that they have borrowed bits and pieces of it. The same can be said > (though perhaps to a lesser extent) of NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Dragonfly and > vice versa (that is, all the *BSD's tend to borrow code from each other). I > will say that Yahoo! graciously hosts the freebsd.org cluster including all > the bandwidth and power costs, and provides much (most?) of the hardware for > the cluster. They also provide some hardware to developers, and employ > several committers full time (ps@, mohan@, peter@, etc.). My employer (The > Weather Channel) employs me full-time and allows me to spend 80 to 90 > percent of my time hacking on FreeBSD as well. Given that, I do think there > is evidence of companies providing a lot for FreeBSD even if it isn't very > visible. A related question: what's the best way for a company to sponsor work in a certain area or for a particular project? For instance, we could *really* benefit from having journaling in UFS, so I'm sure we'd sponsor the whole, or a majority of, the cost of having a developer (or developers) work this out. Eric -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Anderson Sr. Systems Administrator Centaur Technology Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------