Let's Help Netbsd Cross the Finish Line Before 2025 Ends

Linux came around at the right time when the Internet was going public and regular people had access to hardware that could run a decent UNIX. People latched onto it because it was free and an interesting project. The free BSDs were just late enough to the party that they missed out on the momentum.

All the proprietary UNIX vendors (other than SCO) relied on expensive proprietary hardware sales. Intel ate their lunch while they were too busy stabbing each other in the back to notice. Linux killed SCO because SCO was, quite frankly, overpriced crap.

None of this had anything to do with the license, other that the fact you could use it for free. It was all about hardware availability, the rise of the Internet, the wave of new IT people who had experienced Linux at home, and the fact that Linux on Intel was good enough to replace those pricy proprietary machines.

Now, you wanna talk Apple, there's where your code "theft" kicks in. But that's a whole different thing.

You mean any free software license, BSD or otherwise.

Notice how NetBSD isn’t asking for code contributions, but for monetary contributions. The GPL doesn’t cover that either. Observe the current rugpulling fad to relicense free software (both permissive and copyleft) to nonfree protectionist licenses like BUSL and SSPL in order to monetize.

More than fine if you ask me, giving away your work for megacorps and oligarchs to steamroll your business or otherwise society at large isn’t much of a public service in the end

https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/support/kb/using-software-pack...

FWIW, this is the first time I have ever seen any mention of donations on any major tech WEB site.

NetBSD has been a labor of love for a long, long time.

In the mid-90's I was a teenager with a 486-25 on a desk in a closet running NetBSD 0.9-1.0, connected to 10base2 going to my dad's office where there was a computer that dual booted to Linux. I learned so much from those systems; systems programming, how to really use the C programming language, sysadmin skills, reading network traces. A whole part of who I am today derives from those early experiences trying to figure out what the $## was going on while tracking -CURRENT.

For hardware, can a single device driver be made for all variants of BSD? If so, then I agree.

FreeBSD: I always got the impression this was trying to be full modern UNIX but non-linux

NetBSD: I guess this is for older/less powerful computers based on comments here?

OpenBSD: ???Security???

Dragonfly: a schism over threading, but FreeBSD?

I remember it used to be expensive as heck to do TLS back in 2014~, so much so that we bought accelerator cards and segmented "secure" servers so that load wouldn't hit the ordinary browsing of our sites...

Imagine this, a system which can watch movies, edit texts, create disks, have curl/wget, send and recieve files using piping server (which is a curl thing) , view pdfs, mpv and what not, a desktop manager, file manager etc.

As someone hacking around with the legendary tiny core linux, I am more and more mind blown each day with just how much can happen in 14-21 MB, you can definitely build a mini self hosting rack with just some remastering as tinycore can actually run podman as well (combine this with alpine containers to create a super duper minimalist self hosting things too)

the possibilities are endless. When I ran tiny core linux on my pc and ran nothing else, It took 21 mb in ram for a whole gui with editors and file managers etc. all running in ram so super fast filesystem with a package manager

I personally wanted to build my own operating system to limit myself to the most minimal system so taht I just study and do nothing else, I thought tiny core was it but then I tried to hack around it and there are sooooo many things in 21 mb, makes me appreciate minimalism

Linux (the kernel) may have been ported to more machines and architectures than NetBSD’s kernel, yes. But is all the code present in the same source tree or do you have to go find patch sets or unofficial branches?

More importantly: is there a modern distribution that builds an installable system for that platform?

The special thing about NetBSD is that you get the portability out of a single and modern tree for many more platforms than any single Linux distribution offers.

Once, after accident.

But if the cost of a new machine is the same as a year or two of the old operating the new is probably the way to go.

But aren't those made regardless if the people with old computers upgrade to them or not? I guess over time, they'll make less if people buy less, but the ones we'd purchase today has already been made, and might as well replace less energy efficient devices than just being added to the global count.

I'm surprised someone like the Sierra Club, Consumer Reports, a scientific group, a government group, etc. doesn't undertake it. Yes, it's a bunch of work, there would be uncertainty, but it's essential and better than nothing.

There are such things for food:

* Klimato: https://klimato.com/

* The Big Climate Database: http://thebigclimatedatabase.com/

I hope you understand how unique netbsd is, it is one of the only systems which can be compiled so easily with just a single script even from linux or other systems and its rump kernel etc. drivers from what I know are (modular?) so they could be used with other kernels as well if any kernel wants ie.

You never know where the innovation can be, I feel like that each kernel/operating system can bring a new idea, as an example, templeOS uses Holy C which basically is Just in time C (iirc) and that means that you can just edit files of templeOS and restart and those changes would occur

I know TempleOS is niche and a meme OS but I feel like that there are a lot of ideas and unique operating systems and I have heard that netbsd can be good in giving driver support to.

This is just one of many things, and I feel like the main point of NetBSD and the likes are fundamental hackability, they can run on things like routers as well although most run openbsd/freebsd but still. I don't see a reason not to unless you are speaking monetary (ie. it may take some extra funds developing/hosting but that is chump change) but I feel like NETBSD is a novel project with respectable goals and they aren't going to change just for this.

More Options are a good thing. if I can have a project run on Netbsd, then its very easy to port it over to any other vast array of hardware as well, and that hardware includes extremely embedded hardware as well I guess

The comparison probably needs to be: Running that old NetBSD machine for a few hours a day, worst case about 40 while I work vs. producing an running a brand new laptop.

If we're talking desktops, then many older machines have 2-300W PSUs, not even enough to power a modern graphics card (I know, an Nvidia card isn't running 600W all the time).

And on a larger scale, you could use your dismissal against almost everything. Every part of society (and businesses are part of society) can think ‘that thing I do means literally nothing when so much else is going on!’ about almost anything.

I’ve just replaced an old Cubieboard (RPi1 alternative - about 2W) running Pi-hole and an old temperamental gigabit router (~10W) with a 2014 Mac mini (plus second Gigabit adapter) - which uses about 11W (a really efficient computer for its age!)

It’s less than the old combo drew - but I wonder if I could be accomplishing the same with an (or even a couple of) SBCs - and if that would ‘pay for itself’ (environmentally well as financially) after a couple of years.