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The Almighty Buck Wikipedia BSD

Strong Foundations: FreeBSD, Wikimedia Raise Buckets of Development Money 113

Posted by timothy from the more-is-still-welcome dept.
mbadolato writes "On December 9, 2012, Slashdot reported that the FreeBSD Foundation was falling short of their 2012 goal of $500,000 by nearly 50%. For all of those that continued to echo about how FreeBSD is dying, it's less than three weeks later and the total is presently nearing $200,000 OVER the goal. Netcraft continues to be wrong." And reader hypnosec adds another crowdfunding success story: "The Wikimedia Foundation has announced at the conclusion of its ninth annual fund-raiser that it has managed to raise a whopping $25 million from 1.2 million donors in just over a week's time. ... As compared to last year's fund-raiser, which got completed in 46 days, this year's was completed in just nine days."
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Strong Foundations: FreeBSD, Wikimedia Raise Buckets of Development Money More

Strong Foundations: FreeBSD, Wikimedia Raise Buckets of Development Money

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  • non-Oracle ZFS FTW (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @09:38AM (#42419111)

    Thank you FreeBSD, for having a useful ZFS implementation. Countless devices around the world exist because of you.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Seconded. My FreeNAS server lifts its monocle to you, FreeBSD.

    • Re:non-Oracle ZFS FTW (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @10:54AM (#42419443)

      That's my use case as well. I gave them some cash, lord knows I've used their efforts enough.

      My surprise when setting up the ZFS server was in how well everything has worked so far. ZFS has also caught corruption a few times, so I'm going to give it props. It has me wondering if it is possible to get the same kind of data integrity on Mac or Windows. As a stopgap, I sync everything important with Unison so that I can see bitrot on the Mac/PC side. I once caught a really nasty corruption in the middle of my Photos directory that rendered several jpegs useless. More recently I caught another, though this time it was just in the preview image so it wouldn't have been a big deal. It makes me wonder what is going on in the directories that I don't sync!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cato ( 8296 )

        For Mac, try the free Zevo ZFS from Greenbytes: http://www.getgreenbytes.com/ZEVO [getgreenbytes.com]

        For Windows, if you are willing to use NTFS on an iSCSI volume hosted on ZFS by a FreeBSD NAS, you could still benefit from the checksumming provided by ZFS. See the comments by 3dinfluence here: http://serverfault.com/a/122408/79266 [serverfault.com]

        Or you could run a ZFS NAS in a FreeBSD VM on Windows, of course, and use it via SMB from Windows.

        • It's filesystems all the way down!

        • For Windows, there is the promise of ReFS, but for now I just don't keep anything irreplaceable on there.

          I'll have to give Zevo a spin. I played with the old MacZFS several years ago and decided it wasn't quite ready for prime-time, but I might give it another go. For now, I just end up backing up certain important things to ZFS, and because I use Unison, I have a very high chance of catching corruption as long as the backups are frequent enough. Unison does a two-way sync, but I use that aspect to detect c

      • Seconded. I bought another 8 drives at black friday prices and doubled my RAIDZ2 to 18TB. There just is no alternative to the functionality provided by ZFS. If you need big storage on an open source platform, you either pay a ton for fancy controllers or use ZFS. I've used FreeBSD for over 12 years now and there was only a brief time when I considered an alternative (Dragonfly), but ZFS has me locked in now. I wish the linux guys had gone for it instead of relying on btrfs.

        • ZFS has me locked in now. I wish the linux guys had gone for it instead of relying on btrfs.

          Do you mean you wish Linux used a more broadly compatible license than the GPL so it wouldn't have had problems figuring out how to directly support ZFS without violating either license?

          • I have to admit that it is a little bit funny that the GPL conflicts with a license that differs from public domain only by requiring attribution.

            • What license do you mean? That does not describe CDDL. There are licenses with "advertising clauses" and so on with which the GPL conflicts, but that's not the reason for CDDL incompatibility.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Raenex ( 947668 )

          ZFS has me locked in now. I wish the linux guys had gone for it instead of relying on btrfs.

          ZFS was patented by Sun and the license they released it under was incompatible with the GPL.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rdnetto ( 955205 )

      ZFS does work under Linux - my understanding is that the only reason you don't find it in the main repositories (Ubuntu has it in a PPA) is a licensing issue. Or is there some technical issue I'm missing?

      • The licensing issue is that both CDDL (the license for ZFS) and GPL (the license for the Linux kernel) are copyleft licenses -- and they're not the same copyleft license -- so they are legally incompatible with each other. It's a common problem when copyleft licenses meet. Unless you're playing tricks with shims and wrappers, such as by running ZFS in userspace somehow, or forcing end users to do all the work of setting up ZFS rather than making it quick and easy to set up, you're probably violating the C

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rdnetto ( 955205 )

          Unless you're playing tricks with shims and wrappers, such as by running ZFS in userspace somehow, or forcing end users to do all the work of setting up ZFS rather than making it quick and easy to set up, you're probably violating the CDDL and GPL by distributing ZFS with a Linux distribution.

          The official position [zfsonlinux.org] is that the license conflict just means you can't compile it into the kernel, not that you can't publish it as a kernel module.

          I acknowledge that there is some controversy over whether kernel modules are considered derivative works, but the fact that proprietary drivers do exist and are often available in the non-free sections of repositories contradicts the idea that the licensing issue alone is enough to stop it. Furthermore, Linus' opinion on the matter seems to be that modules dev

          • If the driver needs to be integrated into a monolithic whole with the code that makes it compatible with something distributed under the GPL (such as the Linux kernel), there's some danger of being liable for license violation if someone wants to make a stink about it -- and it's not just the GPL that may be the problem, remember: Oracle is the owner of the ZFS copyrights, and the ZFS is distributed under the terms of a copyleft license.

            How you go about getting the pieces of software to play well with each

    • Is ZFS on OpenIndiana not feature comparable? I thought OI was a few versions of ZFS ahead of FreeBSD?

      • Nevermind, as of April FreeBSD caught up and now they're both on ZFS28.

        • A number of ZFS developers work on both platforms, so features flow pretty freely between the two. There's also a Linux ZFS implementation maintained in Gentoo, and they're also pretty good at pushing changes in the FreeBSD direction.

          • ZoL is why I moved to OpenIndiana. The performance was terrible, even without dedupe or compression turned on I was getting maybe 10MB/sec writes. Same pool under OI runs at an appropriate 120MB/sec, no changes other than OS. Mind you, this was over a year ago, so maybe they've fixed the performance issues.

            With the departure of the lead OI dev [openindiana.org], I may have to start looking for a new ZFS capable OS.

  • Memories (Score:3)

    by ClaraBow ( 212734 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @10:07AM (#42419245)
    I can feel it in my bones, this is the year of FreeBSD! I"ve always had a soft-spot in my heart for BSD of any flavor. Fond memories of running NetBSD [netbsd.org] on my Mac LCIII are coming back!
  • Good, also don't forget to help NetBSD if you can, they haven't reached anywhere near expectations.http://www.netbsd.org/donations/

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I did check that page and investigated a bit and found out that the page hasn't really been updated in a while since NetBSD 6.0 has been out for a few months already, and if we check the money gauge image, we get:

          Last-Modified: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:30:05 GMT

      They probably have gone above the ~$13k the image shows. It just hasn't been updated in three years, for whatever reason.

  • Linux Foundation and graphics/wifi drivers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LourensV ( 856614 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @10:24AM (#42419331)

    Maybe the Linux Foundation (or someone else, they're the first that come to mind) could do a similar thing to raise money for improving the Linux graphics and wireless stacks? How much improvement could we get for a million USD? Or perhaps there are individual developers out there who would do what Poul-Henning Kamp [freebsd.org] did? I'd be happy to contribute to such an initiative. Kickstart it?

    • Linux is backed by corporations that sell per-seat licenses.
      Linux was just a pawn to drive Sun Microsystems out of business.
      Ask Red Hat to do it.

  • I donate (small amounts) to FreeBSD almost every year, and I don't even use their software currently. They have an important place in the history of Unix-like operating systems, and I have used their software for some great projects in the past.

    Wikipedia is so obnoxious with their fundraising, I've stopped donating. The local news recently reported that the most visited page on Wikipedia was "Facebook", and I rarely use it. I did get a kick out of their previous campaign where the staffers photos were ab

    • Wikimedia is different -- a huge directory of public domain images and other media. I use it for just about every school paper I write. There's no inherent bias in "This is a picture of milk thistle"

      Wikimedia is doing FSM's work and is well deserving of your support.

      • may I see your RAW thistle cheese?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        >> There's no inherent bias in "This is a picture of milk thistle"

        Sorry but there is. What format is the image stored in?

      • Wow, just wow ...

        Your statement pretty much proves why wikipedia shouldn't even be allowed anywhere near school research. No bias? Are you 8?

  • This article is misleading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nosubmit ( 2800659 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @10:41AM (#42419397)
    this article is misleading and upside down.

    if an entity has the following charactoristics:
    1- good product (quality)
    2- product is appreciated (demand)
    3- costs are reasonable (feasibility)
    4- has a consumer base with spending power (viability)

    then it will NECESSARILY meet it's goals. this is basic economics of supply and demand. didn't we all learn this in highschool?

    let me fix this article:

    "corporations with crap products who raise money with psychological tactics are increasingly finding it difficult to get funding because of the internet."

    i would also add: "projects such as netbsd and openbsd that add enormous value to the lives of every human being are underappreciated because the consumer is ignorant of them, and so they fall short of funding goals some times, and it befalls us as responsible technologists to make sure that they continue to protect our interests with the same selfless, joyful, gracious generosity that we have been able to enjoy for so long without giving much in return"

    typing this message just left a bad taste in my mouth. to realize that somehow everyone doesn't get this stuff is sad.

  • Told ya FreeBSD would make it. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Told ya so! [slashdot.org]

    But this doesn't mean you shouldn't still donate! ;-)

    --libman

  • Good on both counts. Congratulations.

  • Fundraisers vs Time (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alcoholic Synonymous ( 990318 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @12:22PM (#42419879)
    Should I point out that at the point that the FreeBSD fundraiser was on Slashdot as being a failure, it had only been running for 4 days and had reached nearly half of it's goal...?
    • It's a bit more complex than that. The goal is an annual goal and is set at the start of the year. In the past, most of the donations have come towards the end of the year, as they did this year, but they've been quietly raising money all year. It's not like the first $400K came in those first four days: most of it came months earlier. One of the priorities for the Foundation in 2013 is encouraging companies to donate earlier (individuals tend to donate at random times anyway, companies when they realis

  • And also to haiku OS. They all were useful or fun' and still are.

  • Thank you, FBSD, for being a pioneer not only in implementing IPv6, but also producing possibly the first IPv6-only implementation of an OS. I hope that Monowall and pFsense develop advanced IPv6 specific security and routing features that makes them fully usable for that purpose.

  • good (Score:2)

    by xuvetyn ( 89257 )
    maybe they'll develop a desktop OS now.

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