Hacker News Reader

Comment by tachion | Hacker News Reader

While you're here, have you donated[0][1] yet? :) You may or may not be aware, but FreeBSD runs your movies on Netflix, your games on PlayStation 4 and Nitendo Switch, your files on FreeNAS and ZFS, your friends on WhatsApp and OpenBSD runs everything else on OpenSSH. ;)

So, you may or may not know that, but you need FreeBSD and OpenBSD and they also need you! Every cent counts and so does every contributor, that helps the foundations keep their non-profit status.

[0] https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/

[1] https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html

View on HN

FreeBSD appreciates, but doesn't need donations like the OpenBSD foundation does. many FreeBSD committers are FTE for a number of commercial outfits and work on FreeBSD full time. OpenBSD has hackathons, that are funded by donations.

if you use both, consider donating to OpenBSD first.

if you use OpenSSH, consider donating more to OpenBSD :-)

I'm a committer that works for such a commercial outfit, and I certainly don't get to work on FreeBSD full time (though I do work _with_ FreeBSD full time). Most of my contributions still come out of my spare time. I believe that's true for many others as well.

Please also note that while FreeBSD may have the bigger individual sponsors, the FreeBSD Foundation still relies on many small contributions as the tax-free non-profit status of the Foundation relies more on the number of contributors than the amount (at least that's how I understood it).

> You may or may not be aware, but FreeBSD runs your movies on Netflix, your games on PlayStation 4 and Nitendo Switch

Do Netflix, Nintendo and Sony contribute financially to the FreeBSD project? They are the ones making money off the project after all.

Netflix did in 2016 in the Gold Level ($25,000 to $49,999) and 2015 in the Platinum Level ($50,000 - $99,999): https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donors/

Netflix contributes in a much more valuable currency, cold hard lines of code.

From the new ssl-enabled sendfile syscall, general scalability and performance work to the IO-scheduler they required because they shredded the SSD garbage-collection - it is all upstreamed. They actively try to run the smallest Diff they can.

Netflix a ton, as others have pointed out. Sony, not that I can see. There was talk of code going upstream, but I never heard more about it. Nintendo hasn't, but people are overselling the "Switch runs FreeBSD" line. A copy of the kernel license was included on the switch, which could mean just one line of code taken technically. From what I've heard, the sys calls don't look like FreeBSD.

I can't recall where I read it, but it said that the Switch likely uses the FreeBSD networking stack running in userland. To me, this makes some sense, since if I remember correctly the 4G/5G/some-future-wireless-thing alliance uses a userland version of the FreeBSD network stack in their reference implementation.

From what I've seen, it originated here,and it's only speculation. It does seem likely though.

Sony has made significant contributions, but you won't find them mentioned in the commit logs; they used shell companies and pseudonyms in order to hide their trail because they were contributing to FreeBSD long before they announced that they were going to be using FreeBSD in the PS4.

Know where I can buy OpenBSD stickers (where some goes to them)? Thanks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com