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NetBSD Project Calls for Donations
A reader writes:"Thor Lancelot Simon from the NetBSD project recently made a post to the netbsd-advocacy mailing list, outlining the project's desperate need for monetary donations from its users and supporters to help improve NetBSD for everyone. Please read Thor's post here and think seriously about helping out this excellent open source project. Even the smallest donation counts, if enough people pitch in."
You should contribute it is excellent. Something that you need when you least expect it
No they won't; unfortanly; because it's open source. People are cheap!
:-)
Now, go get yourself a subscription and think of all the lovely and unrivaled man-pages that you get, similar to a magazine subscription
A lot of people really prefer donating money to buying CDs, even if the project has a lot of value to them. I hear this a lot about OpenBSD, where a lot of supporters will make an FTP download and donate $50 rather than buy the CD simply because it's more convient for them.
At any rate, I don't see how this would help. Presumably they aren't going to stop letting you download it for free. In that case, buying a copy is really not very different to just downloading it and donating some money - which is really all they're asking for now.
Of course, there are a lot of places that do sell NetBSD CDs for those without the bandwidth to just get it themselves, and I would suppose those places contribute some of the profits to the project. There's also the NetBSD store (although unfortunately the stuff there just isn't that flash)
PkgSrc alone is worth a small donation. With it, you can compile the same apps for many different operating systems, including Solaris, *BSD, Linux, and Irix. While not as extensive as some of the Port systems, the fact that it is so standardized across the board is a decent exchange.
Our new office's copier uses NetBSD as it's OS. I'm pretty sure the company hasn't dropped a dime in the foundation's pocket. I'm a supporter of the BSD license, but if companies are using the OS, and not pitching in even a pittance voluntarily, perhaps a gentle reminder of how much expense it would cost to move to a new OS is order? Perhaps another reminder of how if they went to say, ohhhh, Linux, that they'd have GPL issues to deal with? Yeah...that sounds like it's worth a check for a couple of grand to me...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I would indeed buy some nice looking Net(any-)BSD t-shirts if available. But just logo on white shirt? No thanks. OpenBSD has decent shirts, and stickers!
Case badges, mouse mats, bags, would also be ok =P
One of the niftiest non-technical things about OpenBSD (up there with the release songs ^_^) is the quality of the merchandise. They have a wide range of tshirt designs in all main colours and levels of seriousness, and also some really nice posters. NetBSD's merchandise leaves a lot to be desired, admittedly, although I think I read somewhere that even they acknowledged this and were working on it.
:(
Wasabi Systems used to make a nice black t-shirt that said "This Brain Runs NetBSD" and had a picture of their green samurai Beastie on it, but I can't seem to find any these days. Shame.
Don't you remember? BSD and GPL are free as in beer. No cost. Just like music, remember? You remember those pesky RAII guys? Free as in don't have to pay a thin dime free? You feel no reason to pay for corporate sponcered IP, why should I pay for yours?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
BSD mall has some items but it seems they don't have that shirt.
About the minimalist point of view, NetBSD seems to be better. For example, the distribution size of NetBSD-2.0.2/i386 is only 54MB, that's 30% smaller than OpenBSD/i386 (71MB).
Mee too. I always like benchmarks. Especially when the people who do it have no idea of what a benchmark is. How about a bechmark which compares apples with grapes ? I would really like one of those ;-)
-- Segmentation fault. Core dumped
I'd happily donate 20 or even more to NetBSD as I have one netbsd box rnning in an Sun Ultra1 if they had another method of payment than PayPal (credit card is still via pp). They cancelled my account and sucked my funds just because i'm Spanish and my name sounds too "latin" to be doing legal things on Internet.