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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."
I'll second that. I think it's unfortunate that when people are summing up the BSD's, they often go for the age-old "Free for performance, Open for security, Net for putting on a toaster". This gives people the impression that NetBSD is only worth checking out if you want to run it on bizarre or outdated hardware, and consequently it never seems to get considered as an OS in its own right. I urge those with the time and interest to at least check it out. Even on run of the mill x86 systems that will run any other OS, NetBSD provides a clean, minimalist, reliable Unix that's a pleasure to use. Just because it doesn't have a whole lot of hype doesn't mean there's not a lot to be excited about.
I'm willing to give it a try though. Mainly because some of the pkgsrc features seem nice. Of course I might run into other neat stuff while playing around with it
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.
Much as I love OpenBSD, that's not strictly true. The NetBSD init system, for example, is a thing of beauty, and it's both cleaner and more functional than the traditional equivalent found in OpenBSD. There's a lot of innovation happening in NetBSD, and it's worth keeping an eye on.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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