Support FreeBSD

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Posted by Hemos on Wednesday September 3, 2003 @06:09AM from the get-your-support-running dept.

welloy writes "In a mail to freebsd-announce Robert Bruce writes that "during the week of September 7th to September 13th, all revenue from purchases at the FreeBSD Mall will be donated to the FreeBSD Foundation to support work being done to improve the fine grained threading in the FreeBSD Kernel, and other improvements needed to make the upcoming 5.2 release a success." The offer also applies to their table at BSDCon. This is a great way to support the FreeBSD project and ensure they have funding to keep up their great work."

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Welcome ! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:15 · Score: 0

I, for one, welcome our new *BSD overlords. May we live long and prosper under the cadaverous magnificence of our dead masters.
But... but... but... by mcgroarty · 2003-09-03 06:18 · Score: 4, Funny

Darl McBride is standing here.
Darl McBride glowers at you.
Darl McBride takes a swing - miss!
Nothing happens.
Darl McBride glowers at you.
Nothing happens.
Nothing happens.
Nothing happens.
> _
1. Re:But... but... but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:22 · Score: 0
  
  this is what happens to freebsd users when SCO attacks free the software community :)
donate by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

I donate regularly to the FreeBSD foundation (not much, $100/yr, I also give the same to EFF and the FSF).

If your business relies on FreeBSD as ours does, I suggest you do the same.. it's not really a donation, it's an investment in your business' future technology needs!!

Go ahead, take a look at that rack/shelf/desk filled with FreeBSD machines. Think about how great it is that you've got a simple, secure, stable platform and you didn't pay anything but a few hours of your time.

Now head over to the page and give 'em a few bucks.
1. Re:donate by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:31 · Score: 0
  
  A bigger donation would be to troll the FreeBSD mailing lists for Commit Bit Queens and to step on their heads. BSD Queens turn away good patches and piss off good developers because they won't kiss CBQ toes or hover in the list five years before submitting.
  "I'm not even looking at this! Who the hell are YOU to submit a patch??"
Follow the money by zangdesign · 2003-09-03 06:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

I was under the impression that all or most of the money already went to the FreeBSD project.

--
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
1. Re:Follow the money by gl4ss · 2003-09-03 06:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  in a way they are this should explain a bit.
  
  .
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
2. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:41 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  This was before Walnut Creek sold FreeBSD. FreeBSD usage dropped precipitously without Walnut Creek's support, and so the business model had to change in order to cover lower-volume production. 5% of net is now given to the FreeBSD foundation while the remainder pays for travel to shows to promote the FreeBSD products, half of the DSL used to host the website, as well as paying toward the monthly advertisement in the back of Family Computing. The bulk of the second usually comes out of pocket, however.
  Sadly, this dying volume is why new versions of the Toolkits and the boxed sets can only be updated every 18 months instead of quarterly as before. The jewel box sets are produced in house on regular old CD-Rs and the labels are printed on an inkjet, so these can always be kept up to date however. If you order a boxed set, please be sure to order a jewel case version as well unless the June 2002 version is sufficient for your needs, unless you have a very high end machine (Pentium 90 or newer.)
  Questions, please feel free to write:
  Bruce, Robert - rab@FREEBSDMALL.COM
  FreeBSD Mall, Inc.
  3623 Sanford Street
  Concord, CA 94520-1405
3. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 07:37 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Please stop spreading FUD. Thanks to FreeBSD Mall, BSD will enjoy a long and fruitful life. The recovery effort is fantastic, and it may even soon outgrow it's current corner of our kitchen. Once in a while, we can't even fit a whole day's orders in the oven to activate the shrink wrap and we have to ship in zip-lock bags!
4. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 09:41 · Score: 0
  
  Didn't happen to me. I ended up on FreeBSDMall like parent said.
  
  Y do I bother feeding the trolls?
5. Re:Follow the money by Arandir · 2003-09-03 12:25 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  The jewel box CDs are CD-Rs with inkjet printed labels? They look pretty damned professional to me. You can't even see where the inkjet paper blends into the actual CD. In fact, I can't tell the difference in CD quality between the latest 4.8 jewel box and the old Walnut Creek jewel boxes.
  
  Methinks you have your facts wrong. Perhaps you're referring to something other than FreeBSD Mall.
  
  --
  A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
6. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 17:16 · Score: 0
  
  Arandir,
  
  YHBT.
7. Re:Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-04 13:15 · Score: 0
  
  If you carefully examine all the stats and evidence, only one conclusion can be reached, *BSD is dying
Low Volume! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:49 · Score: 0

Well, look at that! Somebody threw a story and nobody showed up.
Surely this will be a new Slashdot record for "too BSD: didn't read."
1. Re:Low Volume! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-06 12:15 · Score: 0
  
  Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
  All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. If truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:53 · Score: 0

Why is csh still the default on FreeBSD? To be taken seriously this should change to bash, which is a superior shell with a superior license.
bash and bash2 are in the ports. They should be made default binary installs instead.
1. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 06:58 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  bash2 is being made the default shell for FreeBSD 6.0. 6.0 will also be the first version released under the GPL instead of the dated BSD license which has been exploited a few times too many.
  The goal was for 5.0 to be the first GPL release, however nobody anticipated the amount of effort it would take to track down all of the old developers to get them to sign the new license agreement. Some have been completely unreachable, and this has resulted in many userland utilities being rewritten or replaced, as well as the entire network stack. These efforts are well under way, and if the last release critical port authors can be reached in the next three months, you can expect FreeBSD 6.0 by Christmas, along with your treasured bash shell.
  I know I'm replying to a troll, but the fact is that this is being fixed. Hopefully that was your last reason not to join us as a contributing FreeBSD user. Troll amnesty: we welcome you anyway! :)
2. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Arandir · 2003-09-03 08:13 · Score: 1
  
  Who the hell marked this as "informative"? "Funny" maybe, "informative" absolutely not. This post was an obvious sarcasm to the previous whine about tcsh.
  
  --
  A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
3. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 08:16 · Score: 0
  
  Is it that much work to spend two seconds installing bash? Does the tcsh (not csh) shell offend you so much? Get a clue. Stop whining for people to hold your hand. You're a big boy now, learn to tie your own shoes.
4. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 08:36 · Score: 0
  
  As far as I know Windows have had native support for Java for ages. Actually since Microsoft and Sun signed an agreement about this back in 1997 that deals with this issue. So the fact that FreeBSD only recently got this is fine but not exactly revolutionary.
5. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 08:40 · Score: 0
  
  How do you have a sarcasm? Moron.
  If csh really bothers you that much, jump to the head of CVS and use the BSD that has bash already. It's a little unstable, but it's better than listening to the pro-bash whining you do.
6. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 08:48 · Score: 0
  
  As far as I know Windows has had native support for Java for ages. Actually, since Microsoft and Sun signed an agreement about this back in 1997 that deals with this issue. So the fact that FreeBSD only recently got this is fine but not exactly revolutionary.
7. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by cant_get_a_good_nick · 2003-09-03 10:39 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Me senseth a troll...
  
  Why is csh still the default on FreeBSD?
  You don't even know what you're talking about. The only account that has tcsh is root. If you go to single user mode, the prompt actually asks you whjat shell to run. You only see it if you log in or su. The default config also has a toor account (uid 0) that defaults to bash shell. As far as normal users go, the first time you run adduser it asks you what should be the default shell for new users, getting a list from /etc/shells. tcsh is not the default, just takes a little work (cd /usr/ports; make install clean) to get bash before running adduser for the first time.
  
  To be taken seriously
  Taken seriously? What, it has a bad image because Krusty the Klown endorses tcsh?
  
  this should change to bash, which is a superior shell
  Agreed, I hate tcsh, thats why my machine defaults to bash for all new accounts.
  
  BTW: some would debate that zsh is superior to bash (I actually agree, but zsh isn't universally available to me on all systems I need to be on). Should I run around to RedHat and gentoo and tell them they should change their shell because zsh is better?
  
  with a superior license.
  Debateable. And you just answered your own question, the license issue. If Stallman can have his whole snitfit about GPL code and saying the only true license is the GNU license EVEN when the license has been cerified Open Source, then BSD can do what it wants.
8. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 16:00 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  The default config also has a toor account (uid 0) that defaults to bash shell.
  
  No, it doesn't. The default config has a toor account that defaults to the sh shell. sh is a bourne shell, but it's far from bash for interactive use, and lacks such basics as command-line editing and completion. bash has to be installed on any FreeBSD box that wants it.
9. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by muyThaiBxr · 2003-09-04 01:54 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I disagree, tcsh is a great shell, normal csh sucks. Which shell you use is largely personal preference, but in my eyes, tcsh and bash are equal in terms of features, so after that just use the shell you prefer. I personally prefer tcsh, as do many of the people who use FreeBSD.
10. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by fsdb · 2003-09-04 05:02 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  /bin/sh (the BSD Bourne shell) DOES have command-line editing. Both vi and emacs flavors -- just like bash. Please try things before posting "facts" about them.
11. Re:Even Apple knew enough to change by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-06 05:27 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe you're a bit retarded.
Pimping by rf0 · 2003-09-03 09:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

I would also like to point out our companies donation scheme at JVDS.com

Rus

--
Cheap UK and US VPS
bash sucks ass by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 11:33 · Score: 0

enough said
Re:Please, DO NOT support them by edhall · 2003-09-03 17:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

You must not have spent much time reading LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List). It's hardly populated by paragons of politeness (from Linus on down). That's hardly a surprise -- they are there to conduct the serious business of building and enhancing the Linux kernel, and naive questions draw dismissive responses if they are answered at all. So why are people so surprised at the responses they get when they post inappropriately to the equivalent FreeBSD lists?

I've seen it happen again aand again: someone posts an inappropriate question to freebsd-stable, freebsd-current, or some other technical list, and after a few private suggestions to take it to freebsd-questions or freebsd-chat persists in posting. It's usually only then that one of the heavy hitters decides to knock him out of the ring...

As for Matt Dillion, he was given a choice: play by the rules, or leave. He chose the latter. It's no secret that he didn't agree with some of the choices made in FreeBSD 5 development, so it's a good thing that he's decided to channel his considerable talents into creating his own distribution based on FreeBSD 4. Nonetheless, he still is on cordial terms with many of the FreeBSD developers, still runs FreeBSD on many of his machines, still makes bug reports and suggests patches, and so on.

In other words, he shows a lot more class and maturity than guys like you who, sore after some imagined slight, take anonymous pot-shots from the sidelines.

-Ed
shell game by kace · 2003-09-04 04:01 · Score: 1

Is it that much work to spend two seconds installing bash?

No, it's not. I've built dozens of BSD boxes, at work and at home, and I've never had one without bash, which I install from a package during the installation. It rarely takes as long as two seconds. (... Are you some sly kind of troll? :) )

I like choosing my own shell and I like only having minimalist shells in the base system. Some of these people need to get a life and stop nit-picking.
silly trolls by chowells · 2003-09-04 04:59 · Score: 1

You're a stupid troll and I know that considering that you've posted this rubbish on several occassions, but just so that nobody else gets the wrong idea, copying a 19MB file takes 4 seconds on a Pentium 150 running FreeBSD.

chris@gimli:~> ls -lh test
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris chris 19M Sep 4 17:55 test
chris@gimli:~> time cp test test.old

real 0m3.430s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m1.644s
chris@gimli:~> ls -lh test.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris chris 19M Sep 4 17:57 test.old