Hi misc, I'm a young sysadmin who really enjoy using free OSes, and especially OpenBSD, for his technical excellence, no doubt about that. I use OpenBSD for about 1 year, so I start to understand the way of thinking of the community, through misc@ reading. I take a lot of pleasure with OpenBSD, but I'm a bit disturbing about his community and funding process...
How can an Open-Source project be fund ? In my mind I only see 3 source of money : * Community funding * Public funding (public research subvention...) * Corporation funding (these who resell OpenSSH, for example) I think the best (technically and ideologically speaking) funding process is BY the community. It's the only way I see to stay free (libre, en frangais). People should realize that Free Software is not "free as in beer". So, this idea need to be spread and understand. The technical superiority is already here. So, if the community can fund an Open-Source project, how can it be ? I don't think the approach "We are coding OpenBSD for us, and if you like it, you can use it." is really satisfaying. This does not stick enough with the community, and so, people are not incitate to donate as they don't always see the interest. For me, the OpenBSD greatest challenge is to become one with a larger community without conceding anything to his legendary technical excellence. It can be done with some additionnal mailing-list (maybe, a junior@ ? :), involving more developper in some high-quality-and-user-friendly-functionnalities-that-non-kernel-hackers-can-use-and-understand, and probably lots of other things. Be closer with the community. It IS the value of an Open-Source project. And people interested in open-source software should be conscious that nobody can live without money, and that a software is free after it has been payed. It is the price to pay to see great projects living and prospering. Understand & Donate. Best regards, and excuse my poor english. Bruno.
