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Funding An Individual BSD Developer
PuceBaboon writes "Poul-Henning Kamp,a committed FreeBSD developer (the
main contributor to
"jails", one of my
favourite features) has lost his main
contract and is
appealing for funding to enable him to work
on FreeBSD exclusively for the rest of the year."
USD$5500/month? That's more than my net take home
He still has to pay taxes, you know...
It may be where his budget balances, but if he expects to live off the kindness of strangers, he needs to adjust his budget substantially.
He's not *expecting* anything. This is an experiment: See if the FreeBSD community is willing to pay for someone to work full-time on FreeBSD. If not, well, he finds more contract work, earns the same amount (or more), and works on FreeBSD in his spare time.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
You know, the funny thing is, once you're done paying for all the little not-at-all-tax-items like health-care, pensions, education for your kids etc, then I probably have more financial freedom than you have.
For my 2/3 tax, I get healthcare and there are no "pre-existing conditions" or HMOs to deal with.
It's a bit hard to explain to americans, but healthcare is simply not a thing I have to consider in relation to my employment.
I also get education, including college, for my kids.
I don't have to fear the pan-handlers, insane and other strays because we actually have a social care system that works.
And don't even get me started about guns, bureaucrazy, corruption and the oppresive regime controlled by big business.
I've lived in San Francisco. My son is born there.
I don't miss any of those things.
What I get by paying the same amount you do, is peace of mind.
Priceless!
Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
There are a lot of people and companies running FreeBSD, and it wouldn't take much from each of them to pay for several people to work full-time on FreeBSD.
Indeed.
I work for a firm with at least 50 FreeBSD boxes. After the recent tcp advisory the boss cant stop with semi-serious offensive comments about the BSD community. I'm now trying to get him to realise that the weight of his complaints are directly proportional to what he's contributed to FreeBSD... i.e. nothing.
Now if there was some way to allow him to pay money into FreeBSD... and have a say... I'm sure he'd go for it. I mean he pays for an MS TechNet subscription and all that seems to get him is a few CDs every month. Hell, this would be in addition to the ongoing FreeBSD development, so there would be a net gain.
seriously,i can understand students with no jobs shying away from donating to fbsd. For everyone else out there, if peeps donated just a bit (either to this guy or the FBSD foundation) then perhaps projects like this could be funded more frequently. just a couple bucks from most people is all it takes.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
I have been in the unique position of working in close proximity with some incredible programmers over the course of my career. Although I have never worked with PHK, I have been the happy user of some of his work. $66K/year for PHK's time has got to be the deal of the century! Even in our post bubble burst economy.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
That is why you got the choose if you wanna support him... nobody forces you, if you don't like the terms, don't donate! This is pretty much like ever other charity, you pay them money/time/whatever and they choose what to do with it. You still get something out of it because he will put his full time on FreeBSD and that benefits you! I trust him as an old time commiter to choose good stuff to put his time.