FreeBSD kernel hacker Poul-Henning Kamp lost recently his biggsest contracting job and so he has plenty of free time to work on getting rid of the giant lock on the FreeBSD kernel (found on disk and device I/O path) which would benefit the system performance and scalability.However, family and house mortgage don’t feed on FreeBSD processes, so he asks for a donation from the community in order to secure this upcoming free time and work on the kernel issues.
The FreeBSD Foundation is aware and “ok” with this donation case apparently.
I guess that’s ok for me…
I’m not saying anything bad, but since it’s not part of the Foundation, it sounds more like “Employment” than it does “Donation”.
Sounds to me like a Win/Win situation. FreeBSD gets what it needs, the programmer and family get to continue to eat. People who can afford to donate can do so.
Absolutely nothing wrong with him getting paid for his efforts.
Fine grained locking will be one of the major strengths of the upcoming DragonFlyBSD. Perhaps it would be more effective to donate to Matt Dillon and his project instead
$5,500 a month US is a hell of a lot of money in today’s economy. No wonder why he is losing clients.
I would rather donate to Greg Lehey.
From Greg’s website:
” In addition to the above, I may also agree to lower rates if the project interests me greatly. Again, it doesn’t cost anything to ask”
I think that’s rather modest for someone who is top of their field, compared to certain other industries, although I have to agree he’s hardly likely to go hungry anytime soon
Not really, this works out to $66k/yr.
This is hiring a professional to work on a project. A real professional not some part-time hacker that is wouild rather do hacking than working at Denny’s. I’m sure he gets paid a lot more when he is doing other work and giving FreeBSD a discount since he’ll enjoy his work.
My parents make more one is just an engineer and the other a college professor.
On a new note I’ll see about submitting this to Slashdot, that should chock up the donations especially if it gets on the main page… ‘bsd is dying’ trolls be damned.
You do understand that is cash? That is equal to $7,200 -$8,00 0 per month payroll depending on what state you live in.
FreeBSD is a great system. I have it running on the desktop and it is powerful, stable and simple. Anything that would lead to improved performance is a good thing and you’d think big FreeBSD users such as Yahoo! would find it within their interests to donate to this guy.
anyone know how much he makes? Not to flame, but just to have a general idea what a core-os/kernel hacker is worth.
Hey, if you can swing it, why not list your project and put a paypal link at the bottom?
He’s more likely to get the money from a corporate FreeBSD partner/user who can write him a check for the full amount and do some due dilligence on the results. I doubt indivdual donations from message board readers are going to pay his bills.
In any case, anyone donating should know that they are using the trust principle here – it doesn’t look like you find out if he did the work or not.
This guy is absolutely right to ask for money.
The FreeBSD team has come up with a very powerful and robust OS, soon close to MacOS-X in several years from now. Best of all, it’s open-source and free.
People and companies who make some money with their system should make a donation of maybe the value of a MS Windows Server 2003 license. That would make sence.
They’re smart, and working hard. They deserve a fair reward.
Fine grained locking will be one of the major strengths of the upcoming DragonFlyBSD.
You don’t understand DragonFly at all, unfortunately. The whole point of DragonFly is that it is to be essentially lockless, not crammed full of fine grained locks as is FreeBSD.
Perhaps it would be more effective to donate to Matt Dillon and his project instead
While I am finding more and more that I prefer DragonFly, That’ll never happen. FreeBSD is as close to being PHK’s project as it is being an open one, and he has (from what I’ve seen) little to no interest in DragonFly.
“it doesn’t look like you find out if he did the work or
not.”
Sure you do… it’s OPEN SOURCE!
If you have any doubts about him look at anything else he may have done, browse through the archived mailing list.
If you have any doubts about him look at anything else he may have done, browse through the archived mailing list.
To Hell with the mailing lists. Read the commit logs. CVS rarely lies.
it is very nice and polite that this guy ask first the freebsd users if they want to donate, before he looks for another contract.
the 4500 euro are nothing, if you compare it to what you normaly get as an contracting person in europe.
in my job you get as an contracter between 100 and 155 euro an hour (depending how long the contract/project is).
It seems like every BSD article spawns Linux vs. BSD posts and BSD is dead trolls to come out. last I checked, there was a fair bit of BSD code in Linux, and (a smaller amount) of Linux code in the BSDs. Grow up under the bridge dwellers.
“You do understand that is cash? That is equal to $7,200 -$8,00 0 per month payroll depending on what state you live in.”
Wrong. Donations are usually taxed heavier since you don’t have a company matching the contributions. So it’s REALLY more like $3000 a month.
“You do understand that is cash? That is equal to $7,200 -$8,00 0 per month payroll depending on what state you live in.”
Because its cash your assuming 7-8k, ever work for a 1999 in the US? That means you still have to pay taxes (corporate and employee). If the country that the developer has some sort of un-employment or gov insurance, it gets taken out on takes. Because he is his own employer, he has to pay taxes for both. I know this isnt the US but odds are its not that different.
You do understand that is cash? That is equal to $7,200 -$8,00 0 per month payroll depending on what state you live in.
I assume if this is his primary income, this will be declared and taxed as a normal income. I would especially think that would be the case, since he mentioned this on a public web site. So, no its not 8000 per month, its probably 5500 a month minus 30-40% in taxes. (US, State, SS/Med, etc..) More if in Europe.
Not to make myself look like a huge n00b or anything, but what are locks?
More or less a lock is a variable that says you have the go ahead to modify data. Once a thread grabs a hold of a lock no other thread can use it until they acquire a lock on it.
The best example is to imagine an array with an extra boolean variable.
[code]
// wait till free
while(my_array_locked == true){};
// claim lock
my_array_locked = true;
// do sometheing with the array
my_array [4]++;
//unlock
my_array_locked = false;
[/code]
This implementation is specifically caleled a spin-lock since it ‘spins’ in the while loop until it acquires the lock.
The purpose of a lock is to make sure that only one process is changing the values of a structure at a time, this way the results aren’t ‘inconsistent’, or more or less so that different threads don’t trample each others work on shared resources.
AFAIK locks are only used on writable memory, on read only there is no problem.
Now all operating systems have locks, the point is size. While another task holds a lock all other processes waiting to use it are waisting their time. So it is preferrable to make the locks cover as small an area as possible (ie. fine grained) as opposed to cover large areas (ie. big). for example it is better to lock a single file system than a single drive, better a single folder than a file system, better a single file than a single folder et cetera ad nauseum.
The more tasks you have the more wastful big locks are since they’ll be more processes waiting for the lock (aka lock contention). That is why fine-graining locks is a big step towards increasing scalability (NUMA being another one for instance).
However, big locks are easier to write and take less time and why they are usually used as first when groundwork is still being laid. Finer grained locks require more code and debugging but ultimately have HUGE payoffs if done correctly. That is why this is such a big deal and why it would be tremendous if we could get this man the funds.
Unfortunately I’m am too poor to donate anything (aka student), but if anyone can donate anything I’m sure every bit helps. If you do please post that you did here to encourage others.
Remember guys and girls, this money also covers the cost of purchasing hardware as well, which in normal circumstances would be purchased buy the employer but since he is self employed, you could say that that $66,000 is the revenue and out of that he has to pay for himself along with paying for the associated costs like an internet connection, hardware etc etc
Guys, this person is living in Denmark. Tax starts off at ~40%, and typically it’s 42 plus other taxes. But basically 50% of the money is taxes.
FWIW, the money requested is a normal senior developer pay – it isn’t extremely high, nor is it low. He could probably have set it lower, but I think he wants to continue to have the same income flow, orders or not.
You could mix pleasure with business, but never mix business with pleasure.
The (business) devil is in the details. Will he refund the money if he doesn’t deliver on his promise? Who decides that is satisfactory work? What if it takes longer? How many hours is he going to work? (and on, and on, and on….)
A couple of months ago, Distrowatch started a monthly donation scheme. Maybe he can get some funds from there.
It’s very odd that such a well-respected and senior hacker in the FreeBSD community can’t find corporate sponsorship for this important work.
Before whining about how much money it is you people should realise what an expencive country Denmark really is. You can *easily* pay twice as much for a cup of coffee there than in most (non scandinavian) other countries.
Besides, if he’s like any other geek at all he probably has massive power bills
.
About the leisure/business, he says that he put his, and his company accountting book at disposal of others for further checking. And this isnt the case of a casual hacker asking for money to achieve something, but rather someone with a background asking for support to fix a gray area of this great OS.
But the kind of questions you asked is well answered on his FAQ.
Do you buy hardware for better performance? Then why not buy an hour of phk’s time to improve your server’s performance?
>>You do understand that is cash? That is equal to $7,200 -$8,00 0 per month payroll depending on what state you live in.
This is true only if you assume he’s a tax cheat; and that certainly seems a grossly unfair assumption. Cash isn’t inherently nontaxable, it’s simply hard for the government to trace.
Someone mentioned the OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) in an earlier post. Hm, i think they would be a prominent partner to found such a project like this. But then i discovered they only bable about Linux, so whats going on there? Is this some kind of false labeling? I mean its like going to Starbucks(tm) to discover they only have boring decaf(tm?).
$5,500 a month US is a hell of a lot of money in today’s economy. No wonder why he is losing clients.
5,500 a month ain’t much for a kernel hacker.
Java programming suckers in the enteprise get 70K a year and more.
phk did a nice work with geom but he broke a lot of stuff too.. for example raidframe. I’d personally prefer to donate money to the FreeBSD Foundation.. it’s tax deductible and there’s better control (ny someone else) that the resources are well spent.
I was just made aware of the discussion here, and would like to clarify a few points:
The amounts mentioned are pretax. I pay a hefty tax here in Denmark but gets it back in healthcare, education etc.
The rate I am offering to the FreeBSD users is a lot lower than you’d have to pay me to employ me. We’re starting at $75K provided everything is close to ideal in your offer.
As for corporate sponsorship, yes, I could have gone to Yahoo, Apple or some other big FreeBSD interested company, but I would rather not. By having this being funded by FreeBSD users “at large” means that there is nothing to create conspiracy theories about.
Finally about the foundation: If you are not comfortable donating to my project, by all means donate to the foundation instead. I am sorry that the time-constraints for this did not allow for the Foundation to run the show, but such is life every so often.
Poul-Henning