Increasing awareness and adoption, followed by increasing donations

NetBSD seems to be thriving of late: as the Linux world goes pro-AI, some of the AI-averse are turning to this explicitly AI-free project.

The NetBSD project’s Mastodon feed reports that it received a record 120 donations last month, and it has far exceeded its target:

“We received $120,282 USD in total. Naturally, this has completely filled up our donations target bar which was set at $50,000. Time to fund some projects!”

It’s a welcome contrast to the usual stories of under-funded FOSS projects, and it follows a visible uptick in people asking about NetBSD in the FOSS Unix groups we read, ever since Emperor Penguin Torvalds said that Linux was not an anti-AI project back in July, and the following month, the Debian project polled its developers on AI use, and they chose to permit AI-generated contributions.

  • RedWeaselEnglish
    1·
    18 minutes ago

    That is like Khronos’s CTS for vulkan. It is still vulkan without it, just not necessarily compliant with the whole standard. Same applies top Unix. macOS 26 and older is certified and 27 probably is in the process of being done.

    • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 minutes ago

      Yes and no. Kronos doesn’t really care as long as you’re compliant. The open group will come after you for licensing fees and take you to court. That’s the difference. Therefore, Linux and the BSDs are just Unix like and not actual Unix. It may only be a technicality, but it is a significant one.