Apple Donated $100-$249 to FreeBSD in 2021
freebsdfoundation.org
freebsdfoundation.org
>for every hour an employee gives, or dollar they donate, Apple provides matching funds for both. In 2018, that added up to more than a quarter of a million hours volunteered and more than $125 million donated to organizations around the world.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/out-of-a-culture-of-g...
You could debate which open source communities that Apple should be supporting, but at least they're supporting some.
Don’t forget they have a CFO running the company. CFOs don’t give anything away.
Doing a search for "Sponsored by" would give plenty of results over the years.
The Foundation helps with other things besides code, like infrastructure (though they hire developers too: emaste@ is doing a bunch of sponsored work given recent commits).
That was quite some time ago and he is now working in Nvidia. I am sure Apple has plenty of people working on open source for things like LLVM. I am just wondering if they have any on FreeBSD.
I could ask him about nvidia but I'm pretty sure he couldn't actually tell me sadly.
Which reminds me: I think I'll go make some donations in the name of Richard Stallman...
https://web.archive.org/web/20080225230344/http://blog.unixl...
The BSD2 license tries to legally prevent the existence of the source code without the copyright notice preserved.
The GPL license tries to prevent (1) binary code distributed without matching, buildable source code (2) source code or binary code redistributed in combination with GPL-incompatible pieces, (3) ...
BSD argument: the fewer things whose existence a license tries to prevent, the freer it is.
GNU argument: existence of certain things impinges on freedom; if we curtail their existence, we increase freedom.
The only way in which the GNU argument rings true for me is that users of proprietary software unwittingly create a world in which people who would like to avoid proprietary software are effectively coerced into using it. The choice not to use it exists, but at the cost of being economically or socially disadvantaged in some way.
A software choice that doesn't affect anyone else is strictly personal, even if it is uninformed; it is itself an exercise in freedom. E.g. if someone makes a binary-only screensaver program for GNU/Linux that costs $5.99 (and contains no malware or anything of the source) the choice to use it is of no consequence. If someone likes that screensaver, it's their choice and their $5.99, and it doesn't affect anyone else even in the same household or organization.
There is no obligation to upstream anything after all, you just gotta provide the code if someone asks... And why would you care as a user?
You might want to give out or sell customized devices, adapted to the specific user or deployment. The end user typically only wants the binary, so distributing the source is at best a good-faith-waste-of-time and at worst an opportunity to cause support problems.
The example I'm thinking of is keyboards running QMK firmware-- it's literally customized by editing a bunch of C and recompiling.
GPL violations happen all the time but they rarely get caught.
It's really not. The GPL requirements, AFAIK, only come up if you're distributing binaries and refusing to give source to people when asked (or, in v3, if you stop people from building and running that code). The only situations I can think of where that would even come up are situations where you're no longer acting as a user. So humor me; what exactly could a user do to violate the GPL?
Note that you can find whole textbooks on what constitutes “derivative works”, but in any case it’s much broader than just forking a library. Basically any software that integrates the GPL licensed code (other than integration by way of loosely couples interfaces communicating via other means) is a derivative work.
For example, when your enterprisy application bundles and uses a GPL library to generate PDF’s of some of its data, the enterprisy application as a whole typically becomes a derivative work, which means (11) you must distribute the source of the full application together with any binary distribution of the app and (2) that source must be licensed under GPL.
Joking aside, I'm pretty sure the GNU Manifesto already contains the polite version of his thoughts on the BSDs though.
Donating in Theo De Raadt's name would be much funnier.
Let's not forget it's coming from a company who gave us a $200 store credit for allowing us the privilege of beta testing their M1 silicon DTK for $500.
In 2018 -- 2020, no mention of Apple above 4999, so this is still a case of 'free labor' for Apple. Also IIRC Apple also took some userland from NetBSD, they got nothing from Apple.
So what does that say about Apple ? Microsoft gave above 10,000 last year to FreeBSD.
Perhaps it was not in money but some hardware that had to be declared as a donation for tax reasons?
Yes, at the end of the day Apple didn't do anything _wrong_ by using their software and making money off of it. It's just a little on the nose to be making a donation that small.
All that is to say: claiming Apple just built on "generic BSD" isn't really fair or accurate.
Darwin/XNU/macOS are not FreeBSD based, nor NetBSD based, nor OpenBSD based, even if in places it can take pieces of their code.
Apple disagrees[1]:
> XNU is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with components from FreeBSD
From Apple's kernel docs[2]:
> Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features.
XNU has a "personalities" concept, and the BSD personality is mostly just FreeBSD[2]:
> Above the Mach layer, the BSD layer provides “OS personality” APIs and services. The BSD layer is based on the BSD kernel, primarily FreeBSD.
Even the syscall interface is from FreeBSD. Here's a diagram of macOS architecture[3].
[1] https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu
[2] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Mac_OS_X_archi...
No good deed goes unpunished [0].
The irony is that if Apple hadn't given them a dime, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Instead, they did them give them (a little bit of) money and are now being criticised for it!
--
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_good_deed_goes_unpunished
It's like driving by a homeless person in a stretch limo and giving them $0.10. It's an insult, not a donation.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-ho...
It is morally wrong, but morally wrong stuffs are not the reason to got pitchfork on them.
My view is that if they donate a huge lump sum of money, great! If they don't, fine by me too.
That’s all this is. No one is threatening legal action against Apple. Some of us are just remarking on how douchey they are in regards to open source. Many of us have done so in the past, and yes this small donation is bringing more attention to that.
Edit: Your edit seems to align to my view. Ignore this comment
Reminds me of Charlie Stross' talk about predicting the future of sociopathic AI's by comparing them to corporations. I think it's a huge issue in modern society that we have these powerful entities treated on a similar footing to people, but that are expected not to have moral standards.
Universities receive larger endowments from ordinary college graduates with far less money to give.
Apple donates $250, out comes the torches and pitchforks.
We only care because money was given. $250 > $0, so on the whole, it is a good deed. In perspective, Apple having hundreds of billions available, does make the donation look like a slap in the face.
I definitely remember this being discussed on HN previously.
IIRC somebody even said that they were donating by hiring people who worked on BSD.
"We say nothing" does not imply "we are OK with it".
It might just be that people aren't thinking about this issue 24/7.
My previous employer matched contributions 1:1 and donated $500 to a local charity that provides kids with hot meals, homework help and a friendly environment out of trouble.
My employer at the time made a few billion dollars a year in profit. What would be an appropriate match? 10x my donation? 500x?
Maybe you should be angry at Apple employees for donating to causes that aren’t FreeBSD? Or maybe it would make sense to take it for what it is — an effort to encourage and support employee giving.
It is not like Apple was making rounds marketing their contribution. Somebody had to spot this to report it.
Rather than criticize take a look at everybody else who did not give anything.
Apple's relationship with open-source software is a criticism that is brought up often. So, yes, we wouldn't be having this specific conversation had Apple not donated, but we've had, and will continue to have, very similar conversations and criticisms without donations.
It seems like the Karma is in balance here.
Maybe I'm a little crazy, and maybe such thinking fully disqualifies me for ever being on a board of directors, or being a CEO: I'd love to see every...say, billion dollar + tech company slice off 0.1% of their profits and just spread that money around to the various free software projects that they depend on.
The reason Apple is pulled out is they are probably the heaviest user of the code in the world and being in the $100-$249 range means they (effectively) donated $0 not that they were the only company to do so.
They could say something like $2-$5 million minimum. Then sue the crap out of them when they try to get out of it.
You could license new FreeBSD code more strictly. And then Apple would decide whether it was worth $2-5M to get those new pieces of code.
And you'd alienate the entire BSD crowd because of this strange license term.
I think the reasonable response would be to acknowledge just how large the cash reserve is compared to what is being asked.
And not the ENTIRE BSD crowd. Because surely one or two of them would see the idea of getting a small amount from these extremely wealthy companies as being acceptable.