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It is about money.

From Mark Shuttleworth's Dec 1st post (Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Ubuntu. He’s also the Executive Chairman and VP, Product Strategy at Canonical)

More importantly, as users, you can vote with your feet to any significant cloud and have confidence that what you are using won’t bite you hard in the weekend.

Someone did not pay to be on that list, and they are not happy about their success. Ubuntu could not have a less accurate name.

Let's see, does Slackware or FreeBSD have similarly titled self-important twats at the helm?

Nope... Slackware has a "Founder and Project Coordinator": http://www.slackware.com/about/
FreeBSD has "Executive" and "Marketing" directors: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/about/staff/ (not so good, bit like Ubuntu there)

I think Shuttleworth needs a major dose of "don't be a greedy dick" medicine.

If you make a derivative work for your own private/personal use, there's no problem. If you distribute an unmodified copy (no alterations), that's also OK. But when you make a derivative work and and distribute the result (such as selling a modified version of pfSense pre-installed on hardware) at that point it's, a new product.

http://www.linuxfoundation.org...
"A trademark should not be used as part of your product name."

https://www.freebsdfoundation....
"3. If we grant you permission to use the Marks, your use of the Marks must always be fully and clearly reproduced, and you may not incorporate any of our Marks into the trademarks, service mark, logos, name of your business, project, organization, or username, unless you have the express prior written permission of the Foundation."

The pfSense CLA and such closely mirror that of the Apache product. Here is what they say on http://www.apache.org/foundati...
"This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file."

The confusing part is that people seem to mix up distributing an unmodified copy (which is OK to put on hardware for sale, so long as the mark is respected) with distributing a modified copy, which they may not realize is now a derivative work and thus violates the trademark. People interpret that as being told they can't sell the software, but what they can't do is sell their own derivative work and call it by someone else's trademark. (See above example, re: Coke)

they use a BSD license and laugh all the way to the bank

(rather conspicuous lack of Apple wouldn't you say?)

At least the GPL requires people to give *something* back.

I think the BSDs are much more worthwhile than Debian: they produce code; Debian mostly just packages others' code.

NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD. Pick one.

OpenBSD seems perpetually short on cash, yet they spend their time on very important projects (OpenSSH, LibreSSL, OpenNTPD) which are worth supporting even if you don't personally use them.

NetBSD and FreeBSD are tax-deductible in the US.

I'm not aware of a FreeBSD foundation or a NetBSD foundation.

Okay, time to get up to speed then:

The FreeBSD Foundation

Donations to The NetBSD Foundation

RT.

If you look at the FreeBSD donations page https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors they must be doing something right that OpenBSD does wrong. They have lots of corporate sponsors. If you develop something that (almost) no one wants, you should not be surprised if no one throws money at you.

Have a look at their donations page https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors

Companies support this project because they are doing serious business with FreeBSD.

Apple strips out the GPL stuff because they don't like having to contribute everything back. They like being able to release things on their own schedule. FreeBSD has benefitted quite a lot from Apple (for example, the MAC framework was jointly developed for FreeBSD and Darwin, funded by Apple), but they generally contribute developer time rather than money. The FreeBSD Foundation is on their list for matched donations though, so if Apple employees donate then Apple will also add to the contribution. The donors page is a little bit misleading, because it only counts no-strings donations in money. Yahoo and New York Internet, for example, donate a huge amount in hardware and datacenter space, but don't appear in the list. Juniper was only in the Silver category last year, but if you counted the salaries of the people they paid to work on FreeBSD and upstream changes they'd easily be in the Uranium category.

Additionally unfounded. Given that BSD sources can be downloaded, modified, and their changes never see the light of day the loss of information is virtually guaranteed. Not to say it doesn't happen with the GPL, but it's actually a legal risk to allow it to happen.

Take a look at the donors list to the FreeBSD Foundation and see how many of them are big companies (e.g. NetApp, Juniper) that ship proprietary products built on FreeBSD, yet still contribute back changes. And then look at companies like Google, which build their infrastructure on Linux but keep a lot of changes public. The GPL doesn't force them to give anything back unless they distribute the modified version, and they don't distribute the modified Linux that they run on their servers. It's only a legal risk if you are distributing the software, but given that 90% of all developers are working on in-house software that is never intended for distribution then that means that the GPL only ever forces the 10% of potential developers who are working on commodity off-the-shelf software to release code, and they are the ones who are least likely to touch the GPL in the first place.

Over the years, I've worked with companies that have maintained private forks of GPL'd projects, because they don't want the potential liability of distributing things under the GPL. When they take some of our BSDL code, however, they'll push back patches because there's no possible legal obligation arising from their doing so, and it's cheaper to have all of their changes upstream than maintain a private fork. I've also worked with companies that have done a clean-room reimplementation of a project rather than touch the GPL (in many cases, it's remained private, in some they've released it under a permissive license).

There is an organization that is supposed to be enforcing the FreeBSD trademark: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/guidelines Supposedly. Except there is a project, http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ that is only using parts of FreeBSD, that is nonetheless calling itself FreeBSD. Actually, for something like grub 2, FreeBSD no longer exists, it's kFreeBSD. Either you own the trademark or you don't. Which is it? And since when is it such a big deal to require someone to rename their project?

UPDATE: $461,199 - from 1556 donors!

(How did the FreeBSD Foundation donation counter jump by exactly $100,000 (and 433 donors, avg donation $231) since the last time?! That's a precise caricature of what inept "number fudging" would look like, but please don't jump to this conclusion. Things were ticking much more smoothly when I was involved with Ron Paul fund-raising, but even then there were occasional jitters in the official numbers: checks had to be cleared in batches, credit card confirmations, etc. It makes sense to estimate the running total until you can recalculate it more accurately. I'm sure the numbers glitch on the donation page is just some intern goof, and every penny will be accounted for in subsequent financial reports.)

From the FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter, December 20, 2012 -- Fundraising Update --

Wow. I've been thoroughly overwhelmed by the outpouring of donations over the last few weeks! As of this publication we have raised $460,000 towards our goal of $500,000.

I want to thank you for everything you do to make this the best operating system around. There wouldn't be a FreeBSD if we didn't have you writing code, writing documentation, working on ports and releases, and educating current and future FreeBSD users.

We haven't met our target yet, but we are getting close. Historically, each year, we have been half way to our fundraising goal at the start of December. Going forward, this is something that we plan on changing.

We unintentionally received some interesting press that disturbed a lot of FreeBSD users. This encouraged over 950 donations to come in, this past week. All I can say, is that it was incredible to see this support. One donor commented, "I don't use FreeBSD yet, but I've heard good things about the project, so that's why I wanted to support you." How cool is that?

Your donations help us fund projects to improve FreeBSD, sponsor conferences and summits, purchase equipment to build infrastructure, promote FreeBSD, and provide legal counsel for the Project. In short, it helps us to provide the funding to make this the best OS available.

We've received some great lessons during this campaign. One thing we learned is that we need to advertise our fundraising needs outside of our FaceBook page, blog, and the FreeBSD Announce mailing list.

I hope that as you read through some of our accomplishments this year, you will consider making a donation to the Foundation. We can't do it without you!

I can think of no better major project to donate to than FreeBSD. It is a mighty pillar that feeds many other projects, and any project can borrow code from it for any purpose they want. When you donate to Linux you only benefit Linux, but when you donate to FreeBSD you're benefiting everyone, Linux as well; as well as chipping away at the threat of stagnant monoculture, and making the software industry much more competitive, innovative, and free!

It now looks probable that the $500,000 target will be reached and surpassed, but people need to donate as much as they can spare, even if just $5. How about you?

--libman

UPDATE: $461,199 - from 1556 donors!

(How did the FreeBSD Foundation donation counter jump by exactly $100,000 (and 433 donors, avg donation $231) since the last time?! That's a precise caricature of what inept "number fudging" would look like, but please don't jump to this conclusion. Things were ticking much more smoothly when I was involved with Ron Paul fund-raising, but even then there were occasional jitters in the official numbers: checks had to be cleared in batches, credit card confirmations, etc. It makes sense to estimate the running total until you can recalculate it more accurately. I'm sure the numbers glitch on the donation page is just some intern goof, and every penny will be accounted for in subsequent financial reports.)

From the FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter, December 20, 2012 -- Fundraising Update --

Wow. I've been thoroughly overwhelmed by the outpouring of donations over the last few weeks! As of this publication we have raised $460,000 towards our goal of $500,000.

I want to thank you for everything you do to make this the best operating system around. There wouldn't be a FreeBSD if we didn't have you writing code, writing documentation, working on ports and releases, and educating current and future FreeBSD users.

We haven't met our target yet, but we are getting close. Historically, each year, we have been half way to our fundraising goal at the start of December. Going forward, this is something that we plan on changing.

We unintentionally received some interesting press that disturbed a lot of FreeBSD users. This encouraged over 950 donations to come in, this past week. All I can say, is that it was incredible to see this support. One donor commented, "I don't use FreeBSD yet, but I've heard good things about the project, so that's why I wanted to support you." How cool is that?

Your donations help us fund projects to improve FreeBSD, sponsor conferences and summits, purchase equipment to build infrastructure, promote FreeBSD, and provide legal counsel for the Project. In short, it helps us to provide the funding to make this the best OS available.

We've received some great lessons during this campaign. One thing we learned is that we need to advertise our fundraising needs outside of our FaceBook page, blog, and the FreeBSD Announce mailing list.

I hope that as you read through some of our accomplishments this year, you will consider making a donation to the Foundation. We can't do it without you!

I can think of no better major project to donate to than FreeBSD. It is a mighty pillar that feeds many other projects, and any project can borrow code from it for any purpose they want. When you donate to Linux you only benefit Linux, but when you donate to FreeBSD you're benefiting everyone, Linux as well; as well as chipping away at the threat of stagnant monoculture, and making the software industry much more competitive, innovative, and free!

It now looks probable that the $500,000 target will be reached and surpassed, but people need to donate as much as they can spare, even if just $5. How about you?

--libman

UPDATE: $461,199 - from 1556 donors!

(How did the FreeBSD Foundation donation counter jump by exactly $100,000 (and 433 donors, avg donation $231) since the last time?! That's a precise caricature of what inept "number fudging" would look like, but please don't jump to this conclusion. Things were ticking much more smoothly when I was involved with Ron Paul fund-raising, but even then there were occasional jitters in the official numbers: checks had to be cleared in batches, credit card confirmations, etc. It makes sense to estimate the running total until you can recalculate it more accurately. I'm sure the numbers glitch on the donation page is just some intern goof, and every penny will be accounted for in subsequent financial reports.)

From the FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter, December 20, 2012 -- Fundraising Update --

Wow. I've been thoroughly overwhelmed by the outpouring of donations over the last few weeks! As of this publication we have raised $460,000 towards our goal of $500,000.

I want to thank you for everything you do to make this the best operating system around. There wouldn't be a FreeBSD if we didn't have you writing code, writing documentation, working on ports and releases, and educating current and future FreeBSD users.

We haven't met our target yet, but we are getting close. Historically, each year, we have been half way to our fundraising goal at the start of December. Going forward, this is something that we plan on changing.

We unintentionally received some interesting press that disturbed a lot of FreeBSD users. This encouraged over 950 donations to come in, this past week. All I can say, is that it was incredible to see this support. One donor commented, "I don't use FreeBSD yet, but I've heard good things about the project, so that's why I wanted to support you." How cool is that?

Your donations help us fund projects to improve FreeBSD, sponsor conferences and summits, purchase equipment to build infrastructure, promote FreeBSD, and provide legal counsel for the Project. In short, it helps us to provide the funding to make this the best OS available.

We've received some great lessons during this campaign. One thing we learned is that we need to advertise our fundraising needs outside of our FaceBook page, blog, and the FreeBSD Announce mailing list.

I hope that as you read through some of our accomplishments this year, you will consider making a donation to the Foundation. We can't do it without you!

I can think of no better major project to donate to than FreeBSD. It is a mighty pillar that feeds many other projects, and any project can borrow code from it for any purpose they want. When you donate to Linux you only benefit Linux, but when you donate to FreeBSD you're benefiting everyone, Linux as well; as well as chipping away at the threat of stagnant monoculture, and making the software industry much more competitive, innovative, and free!

It now looks probable that the $500,000 target will be reached and surpassed, but people need to donate as much as they can spare, even if just $5. How about you?

--libman

UPDATE: $361,199 - from 1123 donors!

That's 21 new donors and $35,840 added since last time - somebody gave big!

Won't you please add even $5 more?

Twelve days left (inclusively) till New Year...

--libman

Marshall Kirk says: "Check back on the FreeBSD Foundation web site in the last few days of the year or January of next year to see the final result." (End quote.) But to me it's like a spectator sport!

It's not a "failure" by any stretch of imagination. A lot of fundraising projects set an ambitious goal, and the year is far from over. The current tally is $304,844 - perfectly "on target"!

UPDATE: $319,614 - from 1082 donors!

Maybe the December issue of the BSD Magazine, which just came out yesterday, will remind more people to donate...

Maybe some are waiting for 9.1 release...

And maybe, as feedback for the recent security screw-up, some people have decided to donate to other projects (hopefully copyfree ones) instead...

--libman

UPDATE: $325,359 - from 1102 donors!

Please donate today!

--libman

It's not a "failure" by any stretch of imagination. A lot of fundraising projects set an ambitious goal, and the year is far from over. The current tally is $304,844 - perfectly "on target"!

UPDATE: $319,614 - from 1082 donors!

Maybe the December issue of the BSD Magazine, which just came out yesterday, will remind more people to donate...

Maybe some are waiting for 9.1 release...

And maybe, as feedback for the recent security screw-up, some people have decided to donate to other projects (hopefully copyfree ones) instead...

--libman

It's not a "failure" by any stretch of imagination. A lot of fundraising projects set an ambitious goal, and the year is far from over. The current tally is $304,844 - perfectly "on target"!

I think this story and some of its comments exhibit vindictive pro-copyLEFT bias that is prevalent among the GNU commies...

It should also be noted that the "FreeBSD Foundation Inc" is not FreeBSD - just one supporting pillar. FreeBSD is its code and developer / user community, with most contributors being unpaid volunteers. The ecosystem extends further, with code being shared with many other copyFREE projects in both directions, from other BSD OS'es to Haiku to Golang to Redis to Chromium. Centralization and bureaucracy are not necessary. Even if the Foundation suddenly disappeared tomorrow, the gradual advance of copyFREE software would continue unhindered!

--libman

Oh, interesting! I couldn't find anything about this year-end fundraiser being an extention of an older fundraiser from months ago. I guess it was FreeBSD that was misleading then? That is, if this is just making extending an older campaign to make it sound like a new one.

See the donors page for some of the big donors. NetApp gave $100,000 this year (they had to invent a new category of sponsor for them. Juniper gave somewhere in the $10-25K region, but they've also started pushing a lot of code upstream and employing people to work full-time on FreeBSD, which is more valuable (in terms of code, Juniper has contributed more than all of the Foundation-funded developers in the past year, the advantage of the Foundation is that it can fund work that doesn't give anyone enough a short-term commercial advantage for companies to do it).

To put this in perspective, last year's fund raising total was $400K and they raised about $480K. For the past two years, about half of the fund raising has been in the last week as US companies realise that it's the end of the tax year and they want to offset some tax, so they're pretty well on target.

Actually, the biggest problem for the Foundation currently is the opposite of what you elude to. They need to have a certain (somewhat flexible) percentage of donations from individuals to satisfy the 'broad public support' requirement for their tax-free status. This means that they need small donations from individuals as well as the big corporate donations.

P.S. The Foundation has received over 400 donations in between this story appearing and when I started writing this post. More, of course, are welcome. If you're having trouble figuring out how (apparently some people are), then go to the Foundation's donations page (reachable by clicking on Donations from the Foundation's front page, but depressingly hard to find from FreeBSD.org).

See the donors page for some of the big donors. NetApp gave $100,000 this year (they had to invent a new category of sponsor for them. Juniper gave somewhere in the $10-25K region, but they've also started pushing a lot of code upstream and employing people to work full-time on FreeBSD, which is more valuable (in terms of code, Juniper has contributed more than all of the Foundation-funded developers in the past year, the advantage of the Foundation is that it can fund work that doesn't give anyone enough a short-term commercial advantage for companies to do it).

To put this in perspective, last year's fund raising total was $400K and they raised about $480K. For the past two years, about half of the fund raising has been in the last week as US companies realise that it's the end of the tax year and they want to offset some tax, so they're pretty well on target.

Actually, the biggest problem for the Foundation currently is the opposite of what you elude to. They need to have a certain (somewhat flexible) percentage of donations from individuals to satisfy the 'broad public support' requirement for their tax-free status. This means that they need small donations from individuals as well as the big corporate donations.

P.S. The Foundation has received over 400 donations in between this story appearing and when I started writing this post. More, of course, are welcome. If you're having trouble figuring out how (apparently some people are), then go to the Foundation's donations page (reachable by clicking on Donations from the Foundation's front page, but depressingly hard to find from FreeBSD.org).

I don't think the amount is from the past 5 days. http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2012Jul-newsletter.shtml#Fundraising As of July 31st, 2012, they had $180,000 raised. So from July 31st to December 10th, they raised $80,000 or so.

Also considering that the year is not over yet, and that a third of the money usually gets raised during the last month of the year, I'd say their fundraising effort is still going pretty smoothly.

For 2011, we set a fundraising goal of $400,000 with a spending budget of $350,000. As of this publication we have raised $210,000. By this time last year, we had raised $195,000, but ended the year raising a total of $325,000. We are hoping that you, the FreeBSD community, will help us finish the year strong by making a donation this month. http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2011Dec-newsletter.shtml#Fundraising

Who wants to bet that this year, they'll have fundraised $400,000 by the deadline, and that for next year -- they'll raise the target to $650,000.

My first instinct is to think so what? Shouldn't non-profit foundations have ambitious fund raising targets that they fall short of most of the time? Is FreeBSD in danger of ceasing to be a viable operating system because the target wasn't met?

Last year their target was $400k and they reached $426k so they're not intentionally making too ambitious targets. That this is an annual campaign and they're $146k short of matching last year indicates interest has dropped significantly. Looking at their donors it's now practically run by Netapp that's moved up to double platinum ($100k+), accounting for more than a third of their total donations. The more disturbing part for them should be that the donor list is much, much shorter than last year.

http://www.freebsd.org/donations/

Great start! The home page has a Donate link at the top, it takes you to a clear, simple URL.

Then it all falls apart...

95% of the page is about everything other then cash donations. The simple PayPal Donate button? No where to be found. The Network For Good Donate link? Again, AWOL. In fact there is only one small paragraph buried 2/3rds of the way down the page about cash donations...and it just tells you to visit the FreeBSD Foundation page. Even worse, it doesn't link you to the Foundation's Donation page...it links you to the home page where you again, need to dig down and find the real donations page.

Stick the PayPal Donate box (found here) on the top of the main FreeBSD.org page and I guarantee they'll easily quadruple their donations without doing anything else whatsoever.

I love, love, LOVE FreeBSD, but yah...they've never been particularly good at tooting their own horn. :-/

You can either use the openjdk port, build java from source or download packages from here:

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.shtml

It was fixed via a FreeBSD Foundation project in 8.0 and merged back to 7.x.

FreeBSD was unavailable for comment.
Friend of FreeBSD, Netcraft is reporting that he is dead.
As of yet this rumor is still unconfirmed.
;_;

It has been supported officially supported for years.

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.shtml

real problem with GCC is that there are not enough developers working on it

Sony, Google and Apple that rely on GCC in everything from iPhone, OS X, Android to Sony's Playstation 3 should be dropping millions on this project. One would assume that the GCC developers are well off and covered by big corporate donors. Why is that not so?

Looking at GNU GCC web page, it really strikes me, that project of such an importance and gravity has such a poor on-line presence.

No wonder that the group of developers is very small then. GNU should really restructuralize and set their priorities straight. GCC is the very core, so GNU should focus that instead of doing gimmicky with GNUStep and other truly non-important projects at this time.

I can guarantee you that Apple and Sony managers are not even aware that their business is running on GCC. They do not know, do not understand or have no idea. Even if they would, the GCC page is not authoritative enough to sway their opinions or push them to take action. Sadly that is the reality of this world. People at helm are not technically inclined. They do not understand this.

Nice example how to run non-profit project and cover the developers is the FreeBSD and their foundation. freebsdfoundation.orgThere are lots of businesses donating, because they have a dedicated channel to do so. GNU/GCC is missing on a shitload of cash from Google and others. GCC is stagnating now, maybe because of what I stated, that is hurting everybody involved, those devs active on GCC and also those that have to use that software.

Still, not to bemoan the FreeBSD community's efforts, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of corporate backing, seeing as I'm certain several companies use it in critical production situations.

FreeBSD is supported by (but not run by, as far as I can tell) the FreeBSD Foundation, a non-profit. Previous sponsors of the foundation include some big names like Google, NetApp, and Juniper. Apple is missing from the list, but I know that they have donated some significant chunks of code.

Still, not to bemoan the FreeBSD community's efforts, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of corporate backing, seeing as I'm certain several companies use it in critical production situations.

FreeBSD is supported by (but not run by, as far as I can tell) the FreeBSD Foundation, a non-profit. Previous sponsors of the foundation include some big names like Google, NetApp, and Juniper. Apple is missing from the list, but I know that they have donated some significant chunks of code.

There are official Java packages for FreeBSD available.

It's just a way to make sure one company (Google in this case) isn't using a charity (Mozilla in this case) for illegal purposes, like plain old tax evasion. If it comes to that, Mozilla simply needs to reduce the amount of money accepted by Google or rally the community to give a significant amount of money in the form of small individual donations, so the ration of Google vs others comes down.

If it seems hard to rally something that will rival Google's $66 million, a useful frame of perspective might be that the FreeBSD Foundation is working with several times the Mozilla's amount: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/ and they're managing to deal with it. (OTOH FreeBSD itself brings much money to the top donor companies so there's incentive to do it. Yes, FreeBSD developers are happy with this deal that comes from BSDL.)

Doesn't look like it. Though I'm sure you weren't "recalling" anything, anyway.

The FreeBSD team does not have any full time people either, yet they somehow managed to get things out the door.

I'm not privy to the details of FreeBSD funding, but the FreeBSD Donations page shows that the FreeBSD Foundation set a funding goal of $250,000 for 2007. That yearly goal is higher than all of the money put into Perl 6 over the past eight years, and the FreeBSD Foundation raised over $400k in 2007. That's not counting funded development work from companies such as Yahoo, NetApp, and PC-BSD.

At this point Parrot relies almost entirely on unfunded volunteer work. So does Perl 6. Criticize the schedule all you want, but do it fairly.

This danger was already highlighted by Vice President, FreeBSD Foundation.

Read the "Letter From the Vice President" of FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter, August 29, 2007: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2007Aug-newsletter.shtml

Some call Open system, etc. while it is actually closed. Some call Freedom, actually it is restrictions. Read this for more info: http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2007/9/15/260554

What makes it more interesting, NetApp use FreeBSD themselves, and are one of the top sponsors....

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.s html

My post contained a question, not a statement. However, many Free Software projects have 501(c)(3) non-profit organisations associated with them, such at the FreeBSD Foundation or The Apache Software Foundation. Code contributed to them may or may not count as tax deductible. If it doesn't, then it might be possible to count the time spent working on code donated to the foundation as a tax-deductible expense. I am not a US citizen or an accountant though, so I am just thinking out loud at this point.

FYI, distrowatch donated the money they made from ads to a handful of open source projects, among them FreeBSD. Someone has to be first, and this time it was slashdot. http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.s html

I agree, plus: it actually runs Java! Opera 8.x would never run Java for me, it would silently crash/terminate. Most likely due to the fact that it was compiled for an older FreeBSD version and was running using compatibility libs.

I loaded up the Java package from the FreeBSD Foundation, pointed Opera's Java path to it, and it Just Works (tm). I'm looking at weather.gov's Java radar loop as we speak.

So far, I'm very pleased.

Oh, I agree whole-heartedly. If Sun makes it OSI compliant, it would be a boon for the Java industry. The problem is that they can't really have it both ways. They can't not allow forking while simultaneously meeting the OSI's requirements. It's one or the other. I'm sure Schwartz is looking for a loophole, but he'll have a hard time finding it.

IMHO, it would help a lot more if Sun were to simply make Java binaries easier to distribute. They keep removing licensing restrictions, but they never actually grant permission for Operating Systems to include their binaries. (I actually spoke with a Java Product Manager on the issue to confirm that was a problem.)

Thankfully, that is finally changing. If the recent news is correct, Sun may soon be allowing Java to be carried by any distro that wishes to do so. Combined with the annoucement of FreeBSD binaries, things are starting to look up, up, up. :-)

As others have already posted, Java binaries are now freely redistributable for FreeBSD.

Maybe you missed this from April 5th: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/20060405-PR release.shtml

FreeBSD got an official download already.

I've run Eclipse and Azureus on my laptop and work PC running FreeBSD, and both work great (albiet the root issues with Azureus up-patches).

But as said, you don't need Java for a decent desktop OS, especially for most web browsing. I need to check out what's this flash issue is about.

/*
Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop.
*/

Nope - you need to keep up. Native Binaries are now out from Sun - the announcment was April 5, so thats old news that you didn't care to look for. So either correct your knowledgebase or (if this was a troll) find another troll point, I hear that Netcraft still has ones people recycle.

FYI, here's the link: http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.sh tml

Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop.

For fsck's sake, it really seems this /. thread on FreeBSD is full of trolls!
Didn't you read the news, the FreeBSD Foundation negotiated with Sun and now there's a native Java on FreeBSD so stop trolling, because installing it is as easy on any, e.g. Debian-like system (simply #pkg_add diablo-jdk-freebsd6-1.5.0.06.00.tbz)

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.sh tml

The problem is that that source is effectively useless. because you cannot distribute the resulting binaries AT ALL.

in which case you basicly end up having to have each user of such a system compile java from source.

But, anyway, you should stop the FUD-spreading -- not "each user of such a system". An organization can build a JDK once on a system, and let all users of all compatible systems use it.

The FreeBSD Foundation has a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute FreeBSD binaries for the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Java Development Kit (JDK). These implementations have been made possible through the hard work of the FreeBSD Java team as well as through donations to the FreeBSD Foundation that supported hardware, developer costs, and legal fees. http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.sh tml

NetBSD and OpenBSD can also run Java through ports.

The FreeBSD situation is special: the FreeBSD foundation has negotiated a license and now has certified Java 1.5 JDK and JRE binaries for FreeBSD 5.4 and 6.0.

it's just bad business. lately lots of companies got big on open source and seeing how SUN (and others) has openssh based products, it would be freakin common sense to give something back to the developers. "well shit, they threw all that code in the wild, we're using and profiting from it, why not drop them some dosh so we motivate them to keep up the good work, so we don't have to".

some recent examples:

HP donated a 20 node blade monster to the FreeBSD project last year in december "We at HP recognize the important role of FreeBSD in the Internet's global network infrastructure, and we are happy that the HP BladeSystem cluster can contribute to the on-going success of the FreeBSD Foundation"

i was listening to a LUGRADIO episode recently and there's this propylon company which specializes in legal products, and they are the fourth largest contributor to OO.o -- nothing small either, they got like 60 devs on top of shit.

and i'm sure the list can go on and on. so before you blame big bad theo for expecting something back from the `freeloaders' why don't you look around at what other `big bad souless companies' are doing?

--EORant

Debian/kFreeBSD has its web site's pages copyrighted by SPI, web pages which mention that "Debian" is a registered trademark without mentioning the status of "FreeBSD".

But the people I blame are the directors of the FreeBSD Foundation which now owns the FreeBSD trademark at least as far as it applies to "CD ROMs featuring an archive of computer programs which may be accessed for use archived on a CDROM." (And it appears the FreeBSD Foundation is working to expand the applicability of the FreeBSD trademark.) But there is already a Debian/kFreeBSD iso.

Considering that a simple cease and desist was sufficient to force CentOS to scrub references on its web site to the phrase "Red Hat" and other such trademarks (other than apparently a link to someone else's article), I am baffled what either Debian/kFreeBSD or the FreeBSD Foundation is waiting for.