Regarding your first observation.
Regarding your first observation.
That was not my point.
It was never my intension to question neither the foundation's work, nor its use, neither the need for staff on wages to do jobs professionally which need pros to be done professionally - no question at all (at least not for me.)
I simply wanted to threw in - without checking in detail, I admit, but above all without valuating it - that all the money the foundation collects is not all completely used for paying programming work for the system, alone.
That's all.
Just for not somebody may start to dream: "They pay 2M for programming on FreeBSD.
"
I am fully aware of there are lots of other things needed to be done, to keep a show like FreeBSD running, than to rely on a bunch of stoned wanna-be-hackers with zillions fancy ideas voluntarily sometimes fuzzily program a line or two if they feel like it. (To me that's Linux.
)
And that a thing like keeping a foundation simply is nothing one can have for free - without knowing, evaluate, discuss, question, and particulary not judging, what is needed, or worth it. Absolutely not!
Again, just be very clear on this:
I neither can nor want evaluate, and above all not judge the foundation's work. Not me.
But I kind feel vindicated that my very rough, shot in the dark, completely sucked from the thumb estimated number wasn't a total miss by magnitudes.
While, when looking at e.g. Wikipedia (et al), some better always keep an eye on foundations in general. Because especially when something become popular, and start raising nameable amounts of money -
2M is
nothing. For a private person to blow it's very much, yes. But for turnover on something with expenses, like paying rent for commercial office rooms, office supplies, furniture, heating, electricity, phone bills etc., working with payed staff of even half a dozen people, getting something halfway reliably done on a professional level, actually it's really nothing you could do a lot with; 2M characterizes a very small business -
-
some - not all - then tend to start to work for their own pocket, lose sight of what the actual project, the goal, the task originally actually was, primarily working on to cling on their throne.
In this case a
potential scenario
may look like, the foundation would collect, let's say >20M/y, but still spend only a 1M on the OS FreeBSD, while with 'the rest' they may employ more people for the foundation, may pay themselves bonuses, or such, or just hoard the money. Again - for perhaps my subjunctive was missed; I'm not a native english speaker, as already may have been recognized - that's nothing by far I see was even remotely the case with the FreeBSD foundation.
All I'm saying is:
Always keep an eye on it. When really large amounts of money are suddenly, or some day, are on the table (for whatever reasons), not a few turn from altruistic idealists into greedy egoists, focused only to gain even more money, even if everything is already well payed what needs to be payed to have the show perfectly running as it is intended to. (Which in my eyes is not the case yet; or to say this otherwise:
FreeBSD could do good with more money. But why e.g. there is no money by me at the moment, which I like to donate, is the point of another thread, not to be discussed in this one here.)
There are lots of counter examples, proving the bad does not necessarily have to happen. Concerns are just a reflex old, wary grey beards like me have developed over time. You may say distrust is the natural downside of experience. (In german we say: "Eagle eye stay on guard!")
But, again to be clear, as I said, to me that's by far not remotely the case with the FreeBSD Foundation.
There is not that much money in it to cause a temptation.
And as long as the core team has the last word, I don't see no danger at all.
We have a few non-technical folks running other operating systems.
"Few." Anyway, no exemplary self-advertising, cause not really convincing.
If you are not compelled to use some certain software only running on another OS exclusively, which IMO then could be revised, I'm pretty sure it's possible to ask some one with some technical background to set up, and maintaine office desktop computers running FreeBSD to be just used only even by who are not versed in it, and I bet doing all jobs with software from the package tree was possible.
To make myself clear again: I don't push. Of course not. I am nobody to do so.
I just want to bring the idea to the table, if anybody else would see: "Here, look, they all run FreeBSD, and do all the work with it. It works."
It does, you know. FreeBSD is capable to do this [as long as you don't need to use e.g. some Windows only CAD system within a company.]
Most if not all work your non-technical folk do is with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, emails, and a Webbrowser, right? You don't need Windows for that. This you can do on any OS. So why not FreeBSD?
Anyway it was the most convincing thing you don't even need to present - others just see it.
(Plus you save the license fees for Windows - not that much, but a few hundred bucks per year it could be.)
Just ask some technician to install FreeBSD for your non-technical coworkers, with some DE (xfce, or KDE, or whatever) with LibreOffice, a Webbrowser, and some nice GUI E-Mail client, update it quarterly - and voilá, here you go.
If you don't know anybody capable to do it (
), just ask here in this forums. I could and would do it for you - just try it (and yes, it needs a bit to get used to it, like anything else new) - but I find it a too extravagant waste of money just to travel all the way from Europe into FreeBSD's HQ just for that simple task. But I bet a bavarian beer there will be more than one happy to help you on this.
)
.
