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

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Funding, donations, and project health

  • Commenters are struck by how little NetBSD raises (≈$10k/year), calling it severely underfunded relative to what it delivers.
  • Many individual users (and some non‑users) report donating; some view it as paying for ecosystem diversity and “insurance” against monoculture.
  • Questions arise about whether any developers are paid; the financial reports show modest “consulting” spend, so most infer the bulk of work is volunteer.
  • Several suggest more visible donation UX (clearer buttons, fewer walls of text) and revenue streams like a NetBSD-focused hosting/VPS service, similar to OpenBSD’s.

Corporate use and responsibility

  • Strong frustration that corporations use BSD-derived code without contributing much back, while appeals are made to individual developers for donations.
  • Some believe NetBSD is mostly used by hobbyists, universities, and researchers; others point to at least some institutional use (e.g., NASA using pkgsrc).
  • There’s a broader complaint that companies waste vast sums on internal projects yet give almost nothing to foundational FOSS they depend on; calls appear for governments to treat funding such OSes as national-security infrastructure.

Licensing and open source culture shifts

  • Debate over whether Linux’s success was mainly about GPL forcing vendor collaboration or about timing, cheap x86 hardware, and the early Internet; participants disagree sharply.
  • Several note a cultural shift away from GPL toward permissive or “source-available” licenses, plus AGPL and non‑compete licenses (SSPL, BUSL, FSL) as defenses against big tech free‑riding.
  • Concerns about relicensing “rug pulls” surface; one view is to start as source‑available if monetization is a priority so contributors aren’t surprised.

What NetBSD is used for and why it matters

  • Described as the lean, traditional BSD focused on portability and clean design—“runs on almost anything”—with one unified tree for dozens of architectures, including very old x86 and VAX.
  • Use cases mentioned: routers, firewalls, home gateways, nameservers/DHCP, file servers, retrocomputing on vintage hardware, embedded experiments, and as a teaching/research platform.
  • Man pages and kernel code are praised as unusually clear, suitable for learning systems and kernel programming from the source.
  • Highlighted features include rump kernel (kernel components in userspace, though now largely unmaintained), proplib, Veriexec, LFS, WAPBL, ATF, pkgsrc, and extremely fast boot in virtualized setups.

NetBSD vs. Linux and other BSDs; sustainability angle

  • Quick taxonomy repeated: FreeBSD for performance/features (ZFS, jails), OpenBSD for security/correctness, NetBSD for portability/clean design, DragonFlyBSD for experimental SMP and filesystems.
  • BSDs freely share code; consolidation is seen as pointless given diverging goals.
  • Some argue Linux in practice supports more concrete devices despite NetBSD’s longer architecture list; others emphasize the value of a single, portable, modern tree and consistent userland.
  • The “NetBSD reduces e‑waste” claim triggers debate: skeptics note old hardware can be power-hungry; defenders counter that manufacturing dominates emissions and many old boxes are lightly used or surprisingly frugal at idle.
  • Consensus: NetBSD is excellent for keeping certain older or niche systems useful, but its environmental impact is context‑dependent and likely small in the global picture.

Miscellaneous technical and cultural notes

  • Explanation of % in NetBSD mailing list email addresses as a legacy ARPANET routing trick, once abused for spam relays.
  • Mentions of a swag store, retro‑YouTube coverage, and interest in NetBSD for containers and SSI clusters.
  • Overall tone: warm nostalgia, high technical respect, but concern about chronic underfunding and the broader FOSS sustainability problem.