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Funding An Individual BSD Developer

Posted by Hemos on from the put-your-money dept.

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."

5 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not asking for much... by dotz · · Score: 5, Informative

    And, as phk says, you'll get much more, than just some binary updates.

  2. Re:He wants HOW much? by phkamp · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have to pay my income tax, which here in Denmark is roughly 2/3, and that means the number you are looking at is a $22K/year net salary.

    Depending on the jobdescription, my normal salary would be at least $75K, so I tend to think that the FreeBSD users are getting a pretty good deal here.

    (And before anybody falls into the other ditch: For that tax we get full healthcare, free schools (incl university) and a practically non-corrupt political system.

    --
    Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
  3. Re:He wants HOW much? by phkamp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...
  4. Re:Not asking for much... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Beer-ware by Piquan · · Score: 5, Informative

    A fair bit of phk's code is under the Beer-ware license:

    /*
    * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
    * <phk@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
    * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
    * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
    */

    (Some formatting changed for the lameness filter)

    In all likelyhood, I'll never meet phk, so I reckon I can donate instead of buying him a beer directly.