Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 20:30:07 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: phk@critter.freebsd.dk (Poul-Henning Kamp) Cc: hasty@rah.star-gate.com, jak@cetlink.net, mike@smith.net.au, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Donations. Message-ID: <199803052030.NAA07313@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <10463.889093931@critter.freebsd.dk> from "Poul-Henning Kamp" at Mar 5, 98 11:32:11 am
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> >Nope, $100, 000 is about right . insurance , equipment , phone calls . > >In fact we can probably spend more than $1M/year : > > > >equipment -- computers for testing, engineering, and ports group > >communication cost including phone system or calls. > >test group > >porting group > >engineering group > >marketing group --- we don't want to go around doing this telethon thingy > > every year. > >sales --- well the sky is the limit on this one. > > Do that and you'll find the bandwagon has plenty of space all of sudden. I definitely agree here. This is tantamount to an effeort at commercialization. If people were to be funded, I personally (not that my opinion matters) would be most happy with administration of funding by the FreeBSD project to fund work on things that aren't fun, either because they are very hard or becuase they nvolve a lot of uninteresting minutia. This is a hell of a lot different that putting together a corporate organism for commercializing FreeBSD. My pet projects would include: o ABI compatability with commercial OS's, including install and other environmental tools that, by their absence, make it impossible for me to easily install off-the-shelf software. o SMP; fine grained, without UP impact o RealTime support (deadlining) o Networking (NetBEUI, PC-server client FS's, etc.) o Keeping up with the Jones's (Linux Jones, OpenBSD Jones, etc.; mostly hardware support, like guaranteeing FreeBSD will run on any given Dell/Gateway/Whatever box you buy, but also security and other patches that other BSD's have volunteers for that FreeBSD doesn't) o Porting to other platforms o A grumpy old man for the source tree to go around behind developers cleaning up trivial things that keep the tree from being buildable, and in general, implementing dependencies that actually work and any other similar scut-work that needs doing. A source-base reputation polisher, if you will. In other words, things that volunteers are unlikely to do, or that are unlikely to get done without paying someone to do them because of complexity of the task, or the ongoing maintenance penalty, or for whatever other reasons. Anyone should fee free to add to this list, but no voting or other crap should be employed in the decision making process for resource allocation; there is no room for Gerrymandering. For lack of a better description, "scut-work"... "work" as opposed to "fun". I would definitely oppose commercialization of FreeBSD itself; if you want a commercial BSD, go get BSDI. Commercial software, in my experience, does not raise the bar in a useful way (ie: "here is the new bar, everyone else take the code and put up the new bar"). FreeBSD is in a unique position, I think (well, nearly; other BSD's are in a similar position, and a couple other projects fall into that category as well). I have worked for more than one commercial company that not only did not want the bar generally raised, they actively opposed anyone else raising any bars, because it would mean integration work for them (and to hell with the fact that they were nailing the left foot of progress to the floor). Anyone else see any commercial software companies in that description? ...I knew you could. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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