The FreeBSD Foundation

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Moore [mailto:jaymo at cromagnon.cullmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 3:32 PM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: The FreeBSD Foundation
>
>
>
> Yes - I buy from FreeBSD mall which I thought was run by Walnut
> Creek. I've
> had this subscription since 3.0 or 3.1... the cd's keep coming.
> I'd say if
> the new owners aren't giving the project the same cut as the
> previous owners,
> then maybe consider doing something else???
>

The story here actually begins back in 1978 when 1BSD was created by
UCB's CSRG as a fork of UNIX6.  The BSD project continued at UCB for
another 10 years.  Towards the end of the project the maintainers saw
the need to detoxify the open BSD code from AT&T's copyrighted
UNIX source, and began an effort to do this.  This effort completed with
several things as a result - the release of the Net/2 tape, and
the collapse of the CSRG.  The primary movers and shakers at CSRG
went on to become employees at a new startup company named BSDI
which began marketing the Net/2 tape - except for one person, William
Jolitz, who was opposed to this.  William then commenced a project
to port Net/2 to the Intel 80386 which resulted in the creation of
386BSD.  By 1992 we had 2 parallel releases of BSD, one - the commercial
one - by BSDI, the other, the free one 386BSD - by Jolitz.

Unfortunately Jolitz had a different vision of the future of the
free BSD release 386BSD.  He broke with the community and the 386BSD
release became impossible to work with.  This resulted in the fork
of 386BSD into 2 children - NetBSD and FreeBSD in 1993.  NetBSD's charter
was all BSD on all non-Intel platforms, FreeBSD's charter was only
Intel platforms.

This is when Walnut Creek CDROM came into the picture.  W.C. had
been founded by Bob Bruce who grew it through the 1990s.  WC
bought completely into FreeBSD, providing the build and hosting
servers, and financial assistance to several developers.  FreeBSD
became Walnut Creek's flagship product and they eventually ran all
their own servers on it.  In it's heyday, ftp.cdrom.com became
the single busiest and most powerful uniprocessor server on the Internet.

While all this was going on, Keith Peterson created the Simtel archive on
the Army's computers and later moved it to simtel.net which he retained
rights to.  Keith entered into a deal with Coast to Coast Telecommunications
to host the Simtel.net archive.

In December 1995, Keith had a falling out with CCT and was basically
locked out of his server and collection by CCT.  Keith then moved
simtel.net and the original 1993 Simtel collection from the old
Army computers (which he had archived) to Walnut Creek, later Walnut
Creek obtained rights to the SimTel trademark from Keith.  Over time
they rebuilt the Simtel archive and ended up surpassing the CCT
simtel collection.  Eventually CCT's rights to use the Simtel trademark
expired and they went away.  The interesting details of this fight
are here:

http://www.softouch.on.ca/rc/simtel1.htm

In the late 90's Bob Bruce saw that as DSL and larger hard disks came
into vogue that the revenue from Walnut Creek/Simtel would diminish.
By then the Simtel archive was eclipsing the FreeBSD distribution in
commercial value.  Bob began to take steps to separate the FreeBSD revenue
stream from Simtel by creating freebsdmall.com

In October 1999 Bob sold the entire Simtel archive and rights to Digital
River for 4 million dollars in cash and stocks.  Digital River then
proceeded to build simtel.net into what it is today.  In 2000, BSDI
came back into the picture and purchased freebsdmall.com and the FreeBSD
distribution CD business from Bob and cashed him out.  In 2001, Wind River
acquired BSDI from it's founders - ie: Marshall Kirk McKusick
and cashed them out.  It is interesting to note that Wind River is a
major military supplier - and DARPA was the principle funder and
motivator of the BSD project at UCB in the 80's.  There have been
many closed circles in BSD. ;-)

In 2002 Wind River decided to stop selling the commercial BSDI
distribution and they spun off everything having to do with FreeBSD
including freebsdmall.com.  Bob Bruce came back into the picture
again and picked up freebsdmall.com which he currently owns and
operates today.  Wind River still has the BSDI copyright and presumably
is using the commercial code in some product or other of theirs.
In any case the BSDI fork of the Net/2 tape has pretty much died,
as all the principle BSD developers have quit or been fired from Wind
River, and from what I understand, many have gone to Apple Computer
and are running the Darwin project, which is based on FreeBSD 3.2
(and NeXT)  Darwin as everyone knows, is used as the base for MacOS X.

Today, 'Walnut Creek' as far as I can tell remains a trademark of
Digital River, who is not using it nor is using it's domain.
It is pretty much a dead brand.  I don't think that at this time that
Digital River is contributing anything to any BSD.

FreeBSDmall.com is a shadow of what Walnut Creek was in WC's heyday,
and it is not hosting the FreeBSD Project servers.  The FreeBSD
project's servers went off elsewhere when Wind River acquired BSDI.
Because of this it isn't reasonable to expect the same level of
support from freebsdmall.com as happened in the past.  And in any
case, it's not needed now anyway.  In the long view it is actually
much better to have the support for the FreeBSD Project hosting,
servers, and development staff support spread around much more widely
instead of having the burden fall on one single organization as it
did 10 years ago on Walnut Creek.  If BSDI had remained a viable
entity by itself and Wind River had never been in the picture, and
the FreeBSD Project would have maintained the same dependency on
BSDI, it would by now have seriously compromised the independent
nature of the FreeBSD Project.  After the BSDI acquisition of FreeBSD
distribution from Walnut Creek, Marshall announced the codebase of
FreeBSD and BSDI would be merged (this ended up never happening)
and if that had happened, we could have ended up with another
copyright dispute over copyrighted BSDI code in FreeBSD which would
have poisoned the distribution's useability to commercial organizations.

> >   Now, as for the Foundation's status as a charity:
> >
> > I'll start with asking you a simple question:  Setting aside the
> > legal definitions, what in your mind IS a charity, exactly?
>
> Hey look - I don't need a lecture about charity, and I'm not
> disputing that
> the foundation is "legally" classified as a charity.

I never said that you were disputing the legal definition.  But
clearly you are disputing the idea that it is a charity.

> In my mind, I would
> consider it more like a not-for-profit organization; charities are
> organizations that help the needy - people who can't help themselves.
>

Well, that is why I made the Robin Hood remark.  I will point out
that the FreeBSD Foundation in fact uses the actual term "public charity"
on their website.  And certainly the
Foundation doesen't attempt to pass itself off as using the money
to help the poor.  I am aware that many people don't view a
charity as anything more than a needy-person-helping apparatus.
However I urge you to examine your view of the idea of 'need'  There
are many people out there also who feel that much of the 'need'
served by charities isn't really need it is choice.  Many people
are incensed that some charities feed alcoholic bums that spend
their nights sleeping in the streets.  Many would weigh the 'need'
of FreeBSD to have a good Java implementation against the 'need'
of an alcoholic to continue to be fed day after day without quitting
drinking, and feel that the FreeBSD need was greater.

> And by the way - that IS the dictionary definition of a charity.
> I'm not sure
> what dictionary you're reading from.
>

It is one of the dictionary definitions.  But it is not the only
definition.  Marriam-Webster is what I'm using.  Here is the link:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=charity&x=8&y=7

And the definition, section 3:

"...3 a : a gift for public benevolent purposes b : an institution (as a
hospital) founded by such a gift..."

>
> I think you are as full of shit as a Christmas goose, Ted.

Thanks!  I've never eaten a Christmas goose with any shit in it,
so I must be pretty clean, then. ;-)

> But in my opinion, calling the FreeBSD foundation a "charity"
> denigrates the
> project. That's my opinion, and I don't care to debate it.
>

I think your missing the fact that the FreeBSD Foundation isn't
the same thing as the FreeBSD Project.

If you think that calling the FreeBSD Foundation denigrates the
FreeBSD Foundation, or is a misuse of the term Charity, or denigrates
the idea of charity, that is your opinion and I won't debate it -
other than to point out that you are wrong when you state that
the FreeBSD foundation isn't a charity in the dictionary definition.
If you think Marrian-Webster is wrong in their definition of
the word charity then I encourage you to write them.  But if you
want to communicate with any logic or reasonableness you must
accept that there are words and there are dictionaries and that
words carry definitions that are in those dictionaries, and that
when you talk or write about something in the English language you
must accept those dictionaries as they currently stand.

Arguing over word meaning is a semantics debate and I enjoy these
very much - but let's not mix the two debates here, shall we?

I will argue with you though when you state that calling the
FreeBSD Foundation a charity is a denegration of the Project.
It is not.  The Project existed without the FreeBSD Foundation
before, and if the Foundation cannot stand on it's own in the
future, the FreeBSD Project will still be around.  These are
separate entities here.  The FreeBSD Foundation is trying to do
something they (and I) consider charitable to the FreeBSD Project -
but the Foundation isn't the Project, and it is wrong to assume
that it is.

And furthermore the FreeBSD Foundation isn't the only way to
financially contribute to FreeBSD.  The Foundation has nothing
to do with the hosting of freebsd.org, and many people have
sent money and hardware directly to FreeBSD developers without
involving the Foundation.

I don't know how it is in other countries but here in the United
States there is a tax advantage to donation to a 501(c)(3) 'charity'
which is a significant incentive to many people to donate money.
Many people feel why should their tax dollars go to supporting
an "immoral war in Iraq", when they can divert some of them to a
charity of their choice.  You might regard the Foundation as a way
of using the laws to cheat the US Government out of what should
be going to them instead, and perhaps it is.  But, given what the
government is currently spending the money on, I think a lot of
people would weigh the 'denegration' of the 501(c)(3)
charity laws against the 'denegration' of States Rights that
the current administration is involved in, and decide that
one good denegration deserves another. ;-)

Ted