FreeBSD Foundation Blog
freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com · Company blog · on HN since 2012
The FreeBSD Foundation's blog announces donations, funded technical projects, staff hires and updates on work like ZFS, IPsec and ARM64 support.
What HN saysCommenters link it for the $1M donation from WhatsApp's Jan Koum and for announcements about the foundation hiring technical staff.
20HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
19stories submitted
1.6Kstory points
5 years agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Thank HN: You helped the FreeBSD Foundation raise over $43K in three days2 people · 172 points · first shared 2012 · 24 comments on HN
- 2FreeBSD and ZFS2 people · 143 points · first shared 2016 · 48 comments on HN
- 3Generous Donation to FreeBSD from Jan Koum2 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 4WhatsApp Co-Founder Donates $1M to FreeBSD Foundation1 people · 1.2K points · first shared 2014 · 204 comments on HN
- 5FreeBSD Foundation: Raise a Million - Spend a Million!1 people · 11 points · first shared 2013 · 2 comments on HN
- 6FreeBSD Foundation raises $43,200 in three days1 people · 9 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 7FreeBSD Foundation announces second technical staff member and iSCSI project1 people · 8 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 8FreeBSD 64-bit ARM architecture project update1 people · 6 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 9FreeBSD Foundation Announces IPsec Enhancement Project1 people · 5 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 10FreeBSD Foundation's Year-End Fundraising Campaign1 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · 1 comments on HN
- 11FreeBSD: Using Autofs(5) to Mount Removable Media1 people · 4 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 12Implement your idea to improve FreeBSD and get paid by the FreeBSD Foundation1 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 13FreeBSD Foundation 2014 Year-End Fundraising Appeal1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 14FreeBSD from the Trenches: ZFS, and How to Make a Foot Cannon1 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 15FreeBSD Foundation's Year-End Fundraising1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
unsungNovelty · 2021-10-25
They not only used FreeBSD for their servers, their CEO at the time Jan Koum donated $1 million dollars to FreeBSD foundation too. Talk about giving back!
The only thing they failed at was making money. I really wished they had. They knew what Whatsapp meant to the world. Look at WA now.
https://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2014/11/freebsd-foundation-anno…
danieldk · 2017-07-26
I think Jan Koum personally donated 1 million:
http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.de/2014/11/freebsd-foundation-announ…
https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/foundation-announces-new-uraniu…
Of course, that is completely awesome!
justinclift · 2017-02-09
It does happen. eg: https://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/freebsd-foundation-an…
There are others too. :)
emaste · 2013-05-01
Investing in staff is a primary goal for the Foundation for 2013. The staff members who have been announced so far are Konstantin Belousov and Edward Tomasz Napierała, with announcements at http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/03/foundation-announces-new… and
http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/freebsd-foundation-annou… .
In the past the FreeBSD Foundation has sponsored quite a number of specifc projects; having technical staff members employed by the Foundation allows for new kinds of work to be performed. Operational tasks are one example, and include the release process, handling security issues, system testing, and maintaining project servers. Having Foundation-employed staff also provides ability to provide continuity to longer term projects that require smaller but repeated efforts.
delano · 2013-01-27
I think the BSD license can result in "tragedy of the commons" scenarios where maximizing individual freedom has worse total consequences than would have resulted by applying regulation to maximize societal freedom instead.
There is no tragedy of the commons in software b/c there is no scarcity. Why shouldn't everyone get as much as they can?
re: "FreeBSD is dwindling" and "Linux is growing hugely", it's an improper comparison. There are many distributions of Linux and only one FreeBSD. And regardless, FreeBSD exceeded their fundraising goal for this year:
http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.ca/2013/01/thank-you-for-helping-us-…
profquail · 2013-04-20
FreeBSD doesn't need to "beg" for funding. They do however, need more awareness about the project to get more people and companies involved.
That story about falling short of their fundraising goal -- I submitted it both here and on Slashdot, not realizing that most people/companies who donate money to the FreeBSD Foundation do so in the last two weeks of the year (for tax reasons or whatever). As it turned out, thanks to the huge amount of traffic they received from those stories, they raised 50% more than their goal and are now funding project proposals, sponsoring conferences, and much more:
http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/raise-million-spend-mill…
I agree that small libraries and tools could be quickly copied into the codebase and forgotten about, but I question whether this is as much of an issue for any languages/platforms where you can dynamically link/load binaries (e.g., JVM, .NET) and you have decent package managers available (e.g., NuGet). In those cases, I think it's so simple to pull in outside libraries and use them that it's just easier for companies to contribute any fixes upstream instead of doing the work to maintain their own separate forks.