Same here, especially since it'd mean it would /also/ run all the other open source operating systems. It'd be a great litmus-test ("hardware so open that even OpenBSD supports it").
Actually Linux is a very poor choice when a product depends on out of tree binary blobs to operate. The lack of stable driver ABIs and APIs are a real problem for long term maintenance. I'm really surprised that the BSDs aren't a much bigger player in the embedded space.
In celebration of this milestone, Smartisan will donate approximately 3 million RMB from sales of tickets of this year's and last year's launch events to OpenSSL Software Foundation and the OpenBSD Foundation, two Android open source service organizations.
Background: Smartisan is an Android phone maker in China. Smartisan fans pay for admission tickets to attend Smartisan's new product release events, and Smartisan donates the ticket sales to an open source project. So far they've donated to OpenSSL ($160k), OpenBSD (CA$280k), and OpenResty (pending approval).
Edit: IIRC, Smartisan's first donation to OpenSSL happened right after HeartBleed.
They donated $320k in two batches to OpenSSL in 2014. Is the $160k you mention for this year? Do you have a source for the exact amount? The PR News wire bit does not mention the exact sums per org.
I went back and checked the video for the latest release event in October 2016. Smartisan collected about 2 million RMB (Chinese Yuan) in ticket sales. They also donated another 1 million RMB originally for Smartisan Open Source Foundation (its own charity arm). So that's about 3 million RMB in total donated to OpenSSL and OpenBSD.
For its December 2015 event, Smartisan tried to donate ticket sales to OpenResty, but OpenResty could not legally accept the donation due to complicated Chinese laws governing non-profit organizations. So the money is still in Smartisan's bank account and pending regulatory approval.
For its 2014 event, Smartisan donated 1 million RMB to OpenSSL.
My bad. I only knew one of the donations. Anyway, I'm asking a friend at Smartisan and see if their PR could release a detailed list of past donations.
It may be that you would have avoided being so cynical if they had not made that donation, but as can be seen, their contribution will keep the project going for a time.
The very fact that this reached the front page of HN indicates that it has a PR value - that a value in itself. Or maybe they trully want to help out projects that they most likely depend on daily.
In any case, this is a positive thing so why repeat the propaganda that if it's coming from China/Russia == bad?
Evaluating individual cases is much more productive and in this case, I don't really see an ulterior motive here.
Smartisan (the phone maker) is placed in the top level, called "Iridium". It's defined as $100,000 and above.
That level of donation used to be defined as $100,000 to $250,000. [0] The removal of the top limit could in theory mean that Smartisan actually donated more than $250,000.
I'd really like it if VC/incubators etc. would set up a donation system where they give X$ to projects that are used by their funded companies. I also wouldn't mind seeing an equivalent to the YC-nonprofit program specifically dedicated to the development of interesting FLOSS software (or the support of existing projects).
At the very least I'd be interested in seeing an overview of the various FLOSS code that is used by every YC batch (maybe such a list exists?).
Apple did not "fork" anything, and certainly not OpenBSD. Their core OS (Darwin) was developed by NEXTStep. It reused chunks of the original BSD (from which FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD were all forked at one point or another) mostly for I/O interfaces, but the actual kernel architecture is very different.
AFAIK Apple are are not involved in OpenBSD at any level, nor do they donate to any OSS project; they just maintain a few selected ones.
> Apple did not "fork" anything, and certainly not OpenBSD. Their core OS (Darwin) was developed by NEXTStep. It reused chunks of the original BSD (from which FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD were all forked at one point or another) mostly for I/O interfaces, but the actual kernel architecture is very different.
That's wrong. Apple pulled in and integrated a lot of code from FreeBSD itself to modernize NeXTStep.
Considering few people here seems to have heard about Smartisan before this thread, I think we can agree that this sort of donation works very well for publicity among geeks.
DDG has a program dedicated to donating money to open-source projects: they do it every year. MS, HP, and Yandex might also do so, but they don't have to same kind of dedication.
Its strange to see negativity to genuine support for open source projects. Instead of inventing conspiracy theories to try to explain away and diminish the donations perhaps it might be better to focus on the positive.
And maybe be try to understand why all the billion dollar companies so popular here rely on open source but do not seem to accomplish much beyond token gestures and posturing. Clearly Smartisan shows if there is a will you can do a lot. Maybe there is something to learn here that can lead to a positive change.
I think its beginning to look more and more like HN should stick strictly to VC and new tech stores. There is no social or moral dimension here to process any other information.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadedit: Smartisan's PR indicates the other donation is to OpenSSL, so it seems likely the primary purpose of the OpenBSD donation is in fact SSH.
But to be honest, the problem with Android is not the Linux kernel but the fact that most phones were never designed to be continuously updated.
In celebration of this milestone, Smartisan will donate approximately 3 million RMB from sales of tickets of this year's and last year's launch events to OpenSSL Software Foundation and the OpenBSD Foundation, two Android open source service organizations.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smartisan-technology...
OpenBSD: https://github.com/android/platform_bionic/search?q=openbsd
Edit: IIRC, Smartisan's first donation to OpenSSL happened right after HeartBleed.
For its December 2015 event, Smartisan tried to donate ticket sales to OpenResty, but OpenResty could not legally accept the donation due to complicated Chinese laws governing non-profit organizations. So the money is still in Smartisan's bank account and pending regulatory approval.
For its 2014 event, Smartisan donated 1 million RMB to OpenSSL.
They donated 2 million RMB, see https://mta.openssl.org/pipermail/openssl-announce/2014-Dece...
There's always costs/benefits analysis involved.
I did not prove myself wrong.
In any case, this is a positive thing so why repeat the propaganda that if it's coming from China/Russia == bad?
Evaluating individual cases is much more productive and in this case, I don't really see an ulterior motive here.
That level of donation used to be defined as $100,000 to $250,000. [0] The removal of the top limit could in theory mean that Smartisan actually donated more than $250,000.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20161114061632/http://www.openbs...
Never heard of Smartisan, checking out their phones now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hPpeKPDoDg
It seems to be quite entertaining, by judging from the number of laughs/minute :)
They seem to be their only long term recurrent donor.
Edit: Actually they are just part of the Core Infrastructure Initiative now https://www.coreinfrastructure.org
http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html
At the very least I'd be interested in seeing an overview of the various FLOSS code that is used by every YC batch (maybe such a list exists?).
AFAIK Apple are are not involved in OpenBSD at any level, nor do they donate to any OSS project; they just maintain a few selected ones.
That's wrong. Apple pulled in and integrated a lot of code from FreeBSD itself to modernize NeXTStep.
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths:
> most userland utilities and the C library on OS X are derived from FreeBSD versions
> The XNU kernel used on OS X includes a few subsystems from (older versions of) FreeBSD, but is mostly an independent implementation.
DDG has a program dedicated to donating money to open-source projects: they do it every year. MS, HP, and Yandex might also do so, but they don't have to same kind of dedication.
And maybe be try to understand why all the billion dollar companies so popular here rely on open source but do not seem to accomplish much beyond token gestures and posturing. Clearly Smartisan shows if there is a will you can do a lot. Maybe there is something to learn here that can lead to a positive change.
I think its beginning to look more and more like HN should stick strictly to VC and new tech stores. There is no social or moral dimension here to process any other information.