Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Story Helps Raise $43,200 For the FreeBSD Foundation In Three Days
An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD Foundation has posted blog article article talking about the remarkable surge in donations they've received in the last three days following a recent Slashdot article reporting on weak fundraising this year. Deb Goodkin reports that the FreeBSD Foundation, as with many non-profits, receives more than 50% of its annual funds at the end of the US tax year, but that the Foundation has never seen this rate of donations before, and will hit a new record for unique donors this year. She comments that it was Slashdot readers that made the difference! She does, however, appeal for further donations noting that they have a long way to go on their full goal."
This first post is sponsored by FreeBSD. FreeBSD for a brighter tomorrow.
nt
Not sure that I agree with the implied attribution to Slashdot. As the Hacker News discussion revealed, the usual pattern of donations to FreeBSD is a late surge, apart from the fact that it got coverage in other places.
It would be nice if Slashdot dropped the self references, as it erodes its credibility.
Honestly, how can we have a BSD post and NOT have the "BSD is Dying" meme?
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1148/sam0107a/0107a.htm
in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin
http://www.amdest.com/stars/Kreskin.html
to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
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 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 OS dilettante dbblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Man, it's been a long time since the last proper Slashdotting. Anyway the server seems slow, so here's the article text.
---
*Stunning News Website Fundraising Contribution:* Over 650 new donations raise $43,200 in three days!
Astute readers of our blog know that The FreeBSD Foundation's annual year-end fundraising drive began last week. Every year over 50% of our donations arrive during this campaign. We were thus surprised by coverage on Slashdot and Hacker News suggesting that we were behind in our fundraising goat. We’d never turn down additional news coverage of our work raising funds in support of the FreeBSD project, of course, but remain confident in our fundraising target.
The response to those articles was a remarkable outpouring of support — we have had over 650 new donations in the last three days alone, raising $43,196. Individual donations are absolutely critical to the business of The Foundation. Not only do they contribute significantly to our ability to financially support the FreeBSD project, but they also help us demonstrate broad public support in order to maintain our public non-profit status.
This massive increase in small donations will set a new record for individual donors in a single year. The readership of these sites has been instrumental to this success. You'll also be glad to know that the news article triggered a number of further corporate contributions from FreeBSD consumers and wankers. Our hard work is not done, however. We still have $195,000 left to go to meet our target this year–or exceed it!
Look forward to more news soon. . .
---
I bookmarked their FreeBSD donation page so I could watch the thermometer go up(and hopefully reach the top). I made a donation too since I use FreeNAS and I'm going to solicit a friend to donate since he uses FreeNAS as well.
/. is dying.
BSD is dying.
etc.
http://everything2.com/title/BSD+is+dying
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Honestly, how can we have a BSD post and NOT have the "BSD is Dying" meme?
Umm, well... I'm not even a *BSD user, but I'm pretty sure that the rest of us would somehow have survived without having this tired meme take up space among the discussions related to this article. But, whatever.
Being posted on Hacker News and Reddit and a few other sites probably had a much larger impact. Slashdot ceased being relevant about a decade ago.
I see statcounter in the page source. I'd guess they know where their traffic is coming from.
It takes a lot of arrogance to assume that Slashdot alone was the reason for those donations. It's okay to take some credit, but I read about this issue on Hacker News and other outlets a full day before I read it on Slashdot.
Mod parent up and grandparent down. Stupid troll is not informative....
I wager 80% of slashdotters filter out javascript and ads. Combined with the prevalent use of transparent proxies among I.S.Ps, even the delta between the js counters and the server requests directed at the css and html index is simply not enough.
Even more, I think the dropping cost of hard drives has made proxies very inclusive. It used to be that we saw all sorts of statistics about Internet usage yearly. But this days, you just don't see as much reports. I think it's because the data has become unusable because of all this buffering.
How often do you plan to repost the same drivel on every BSD post?
BSD Hateboy?
Slashdot as a relevant source of useful entertainment is clearly on the decline. Whatever happened to the crazy flurry for first-post mania? Whatever happened to the frantic efforts to post anti-anything-but-linux rants from insecure posers? Come on! Has the flame gone out on slashdot? Please, for the sake of the Internet keep the *BSD hate going! Yea. Whatever ...
Slashdot and FreeBSD: after all, no one wants to die alone.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Is this the same post from 2004 or did you edit it before you reposted it?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Operating system... just kidding, I am fully aware it is alive and well and doing great things...
HOWEVER, it would make more sense and get them MORE DONATIONS if the giant "Donate" button on the top of the page ACTUALLY took you to the place/page you can make a donation instead of some monotonous page about their good works and why you should donate.
Just sayin', but the obligitory dead os thing was funny.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Your two links don't work and the primary body of your post is from a recognized troll post that has factually incorrect information and is 10 years old. Maybe I'm not sensing the sarcasm and my detector is broken.
Slashdot and FreeBSD: after all, no one wants to die alone. ;-)
"Pssssst! Hey, buddy! Can I interest you in a vintage Net 4 tape? Real cheap for a collector's item like this. I'll even throw in a QIC-2 tape reader and a 'I'm Mentally Contaminated' button, just for you..."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Correlation != Causation
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I have a PC-BSD VM, but I don't use it very often.
The FreeBSD is a great operating system that we use in our desktops, laptops and servers. The upcoming FreeBSD 10 will be a great OS for specially for desktops and laptops with high end graphics. The FreeBSD foundation should pay more attention for desktop/laptop requirements of the FreeBSD OS, especially in graphics and power management sector, such as offer a solution to support hybrid switchable graphics such as Nvidia's Optimus, etc. And also should allocate more resources to release FreeBSD 10 as early as possible.
i would've expected more from slashdot readers... much more. $43k raised from slashdot traffic is an embarrassment to this site.
Any sensible web site runs It's own reverse proxy anyway. The only somewhat reliable stats come from tools like GA et al.
For example, if ReactOS was getting this kind of funding, we would have a complete open source windows clone by now.
And then they donated in order to make sure they don't lose that joke due to BSD actually dying.
Slashdot for bisexuals? :-)
That meme is dead. Netcraft comfirms it.
..you sound really depressed these days. I assume that the long-term demise prospects of windows are slowly sinking in to your greed-based minds.
Do you really think critical thinkers have ever been popular ? The leading clique will always use their means of suppression in the most cynical way they can get away with.
Grow up and realize there is No Free Free Speech. As much as there is no Free Lunch.
I always load all messages and randomly select one to read and comment on.
Do we need any more proof that a "-1 WTF" tag is needed.
Mind you, for posts that actually manage to be funny, a "+1 WTF" tag would also be helpful.
Tim Cook would like to thank everyone for their generous donations.
You need to learn what a troll is sonny.
Whatever is going on here can't be bad and definitely is different than most of the news I've seen on here about FreeBSD. Less disappointed now and gives slashdot that rounded out balanced feel. Go Slashdot! Keep up the good work!
I donated $30 last night after reading this article.
My reasons are 1) I think the BSD license is awesome, 2) SSH rocks, and 3) OS diversity is a good thing.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Nope. He's just an automaton and the post is hard coded as a constant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Duh.
Is the Openoffice suite already ported to LLVM? So you can use FreeBSD for OO.org headless servers?
This reads that they require more open-source style promotion than anything else, to keep on.
Open-source style promotion should be different than commercial promotion. They don''t need to cheat. Or create a status illusion related to using the product. They should search for the real advantages of using good open-source products for a future free world (from commercial products).
What is the use of comparing with their commercial nemesis? Their goals are different. Or should be... Customer satisfaction should only appear from a mature self open-source culture. Not by any other comparison.
And a successful image should mean not only that their number of users. is growing, but also that they are safe from being swallowed by a big commercial brand. And are still free to change completely whenever they want.
The use of phrases such as "reasonable people like me" usually indicates that the speaker is not a reasonable person.
I hate printers.
Actually, no. ReactOS could have 2 projects in tandem - an XP clone for 32-bit Windows and any system below 4GB, and a Windows 7 clone for 64-bit Windows and any system above. They could toss in some common inprovements to both platforms, such as IPv6 support, and for the 32-bit version, support the widest range of hardware. The 32-bit version won't have to move much, once done - it'll just have to be maintained, and there, the project can charge maintainence fees, such as Windows Update, AntiVirus updates, Service Packs & so on. Even the 64-bit version can be clamped @ Windows 7, and they don't need to chase Metro or anything else Windows 8 or 9 will be doing.
That doesn't mean that FreeBSD doesn't have its place. It does, and I'm glad that the people who contributed to it contributed to it. I'd certainly like to see the FBSD family of OSs - PC-BSD, pFsense, m0n0wall, FreeNAS, et al prosper. Same for OpenBSD and Minix.
Use of such a phrase indicates that the speaker values reason, so at least s\he has taken the first step in the right direction.
It is possible to analyze one's actions (especially when all of them are a matter of written record), establish benchmarks, and objectively test one's rationality. I know where I come up short (anger management issues, frustration, depression, and other emotional flaws) - I often let those slide during a passionate rant, but I do try to prevent them from overshadowing the substance of my arguments...
My history on Slashdot, with most of my thoroughly-researched comments being ranked as 0 or -1, speaks for itself. Copyleft, "net neutrality", government interventionism, and other socialist causes are "sacred cows" around here, and those who question them as persistently as I do get stifled...
--libman
This is correct. On one hand, they claim that it's not censorship, but when getting modded down restricts you to something like 10 posts a day, when those you disagree w/ are still unlimited if they haven't been similarly modded, it's very much censorship. Either a guy has to stop posting, or post as AC.
It should be clarified that I do NOT ever use the word "censorship" to mean "a violation of an entitlement / positive right to rant on anyone's private servers against their wishes". No one is obligated to provide me anything!
Censorship isn't necessarily a government action, and not necessarily a bad thing. Parents probably should censor what their young children can read and write on the Internet. DJ's provide the service of selecting good songs while "censoring" the bad. Censorship should exist, but only come from voluntary institutions (the latter requirement excludes people who are not presently capable of full self-ownership: children, prisoners, the mentally handicapped, etc).
So I'm not accusing Slashdot of any political repression - just of hypocrisy and incompetence.
---
My account has been at -1 karma for a long time now, just 2 posts per day... Accessing as AC I think I get 10 (more through a proxy), and improved starting karma of 0. Pathetic...
For a very long time I resisted making this exception to my "never sockpuppet" policy, but it doesn't really count as sockpuppeting if I make it very clear who I am, and sign every post. (Plus my writing style and solecisms are deliberately unique.) Just some arbitrary hoops for me to jump through...
Using Slashdot as AC all the time is a pain in the butt - I have to check for replies manually, for example. The worst part is the difficulty I have finding my old AC posts, since Slashdot's internal search functionality is broken, and low-ranking posts don't get seen by Googlebot and other spiders. (Seriously, who codes for this site - nine-year-old QBASIC programmers?!) Every once in a while, a post of mine will get ranked as 3 or 4 - without the slightest correlation to merit! But most stay as they are...
Why do I bother? Sadly I remain a creature of creative impulse and of habit... Slashdot is a great place to get news, and when I come across a certain kind of story - I just cannot suppress what I have to say... I don't really care if anyone reads my comments or learns from them - I write in service of the Truth.
--libman