OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD Foundation announces first corporate cash donations

Contributed by merdely on from the very-happy-new-year dept.

Ken Westerback (krw@) writes about the first OpenBSD Foundation activity, which includes donations from several organizations, companies and anonymous donors.

The full press release follows.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: The OpenBSD Foundation
Contact: directors@openbsdfoundation.org
Date: January 4, 2008

THE OPENBSD FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES FIRST CORPORATE DONATIONS

The OpenBSD Foundation is privileged to announce the receipt of
its first corporate cash donations.

The very first donation was received from Norwegian network engineers
SystemNet AS.

This was followed very shortly by several significant anonymous
donations, as well as contributions from Hewlett Packard and Google.

Many thanks to our corporate donors.

All donations were received soon after the Foundation announced its
existence, enabling the Foundation to start operations and perfect
its donation handling.  These donations have enabled the Foundation
to assume the costs of OpenBSD's networking expenses, and begin to
acquire several key pieces of hardware for development and infrastructure. 

The OpenBSD Foundation is a Canadian federally incorporated not-for-profit
corporation dedicated to the support of OpenBSD and related projects.
For more details please visit our website at www.openbsdfoundation.org.

Corporations and other organizations wishing to support OpenBSD with
donations of money or equipment can contact the directors of the
Foundation at directors@openbsdfoundation.org.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward (63.228.83.11) on

    Excellent news! Way to go guys…

  2. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on

    HP and Google, sweet!

    Now if more big name companies can help pitch in more too, it'll will benefit everyone one way or another - including the immature Linux people who bash BSD because it's a new 'trend' similar to bashing MS.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (viking) on

      > HP and Google, sweet!
      >
      > Now if more big name companies can help pitch in more too, it'll will benefit everyone one way or another - including the immature Linux people who bash BSD because it's a new 'trend' similar to bashing MS.

      Agreed (about more companies pitching in, and about the immature people bashing BSD). I use both Linux and BSD, but I have a huge amount of respect for the BSD devs and users (I'm a relative newcomer to BSD, and *very* impressed. OpenBSD is beautifully crafted (as in crafted like the Merlin engine of a Spitfire - that's praise for you.... :-) )


      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on

        > > HP and Google, sweet!
        > >
        > > Now if more big name companies can help pitch in more too, it'll will benefit everyone one way or another - including the immature Linux people who bash BSD because it's a new 'trend' similar to bashing MS.
        >
        > Agreed (about more companies pitching in, and about the immature people bashing BSD). I use both Linux and BSD, but I have a huge amount of respect for the BSD devs and users (I'm a relative newcomer to BSD, and *very* impressed. OpenBSD is beautifully crafted (as in crafted like the Merlin engine of a Spitfire - that's praise for you.... :-) )
        >
        >
        Glad you didn't take it as 'all Linux people are immature'; I meant it as some of them, not all, and not because they're Linux users either - as many visitors here I'm sure use both.


  3. By Martin Schröder (84.137.102.68) martin@oneiros.de on http://www.oneiros.de

    Does the foundation money also go into the funding of OpenSSH? If yes, the line about Unix vendors on openssh/donations.html should be changed... :-)

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (76.250.126.209) on

      Yes it funds OpenSSH.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (74.13.31.156) on

      > Does the foundation money also go into the funding of OpenSSH? If yes, the line about Unix vendors on openssh/donations.html should be changed... :-)
      >

      OpenBSD and associated projects.

  4. By Peter van Oord van der Vlies (zork) zork@cgg.nu on

    So if i donate to openbsd it will not sponsors the same projects ?

    Comments
    1. By Fábio Olivé (201.24.113.70) on

      > So if i donate to openbsd it will not sponsors the same projects ?

      Sure, but many people, especially corporations, need the tax-refund possibility of donating to a not-for-profit foundation. This has always been the most common punchline about donating to OpenBSD.

      So if you don't care about tax-refunds via your donation to OpenBSD, just donate the usual way. If you want the tax-refunds or warm fuzzy feelings of donating to a foundation, do it via the foundation. :)

      Comments
      1. By Fábio Olivé (201.24.113.70) on

        > > So if i donate to openbsd it will not sponsors the same projects ?
        >
        > Sure, ...

        Bah, sorry. It should be read as "Sure it will sponsor the same projects donating both ways". The moment I re-read my comment it felt ambiguous. :)

  5. By Brynet (Brynet) on

    Are the actual amounts these companies donated public? :)

    Comments
    1. By Dizzy (63.228.83.61) on

      > Are the actual amounts these companies donated public? :)

      We'll have to wait and see what the Foundation does. They will disclose the totals for their accounting periods, to fulfill foundation bylaws, I suppose.

      Checking the FreeBSD foundation site, they passed $400k last year with some big donations. We have a way to go.

      I guess the problem will continue to be the same, "my donation is not needed, if they get $10k from $vendor". I think it will always be the struggle to get everyone that uses it to donate what it is worth to them. Me, I get my boss to buy 10 or more of each release CD, and I make my own $ donations every year.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on

        >Me, I get my boss to buy 10 or more of each release CD, and I make my own $ donations every year.

        I do similar with the clients I setup, I have them purchase at least a media CD (they don't know the difference) or I in-turn charge a little extra for each release CD, but also donate some too. It's still so minimal what they're paying for and what they're getting in return from OpenBSD / OpenSSH, etc.

        Comments
        1. By DoctorPepper (68.209.134.179) on

          > >Me, I get my boss to buy 10 or more of each release CD, and I make my own $ donations every year.
          >
          > I do similar with the clients I setup, I have them purchase at least a media CD (they don't know the difference) or I in-turn charge a little extra for each release CD, but also donate some too. It's still so minimal what they're paying for and what they're getting in return from OpenBSD / OpenSSH, etc.
          >
          >

          I sporadically purchased the CD sets in the past, but starting with the 3.8 release, I've been purchasing them each release. I also try to buy at least one t-shirt a year, and I always donate extra when I buy the CD release.

          Not bragging, just hoping my little bit helps, and maybe gets others to do the same.

      2. By wim (88.82.33.37) wim@kd85.com on https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order.eu

        > I guess the problem will continue to be the same, "my donation is not needed, if they get $10k from $vendor". I think it will always be the struggle to get everyone that uses it to donate what it is worth to them. Me, I get my boss to buy 10 or more of each release CD, and I make my own $ donations every year.
        >

        Indeed

        I think it's important for people to remember to keep contributing small amounts (compared to the 10k) to guarantee the independence from large donors who try to influence the project by potentially pulling out.

        They might all donate money today, but if CD sales dry out and in two years they stop giving money, the project would be in more problems then ever before.

        Trying once again to start up CD sales from scratch in three years would be very hard...

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (76.23.156.62) on

          > > I guess the problem will continue to be the same, "my donation is not needed, if they get $10k from $vendor". I think it will always be the struggle to get everyone that uses it to donate what it is worth to them. Me, I get my boss to buy 10 or more of each release CD, and I make my own $ donations every year.
          > >
          >
          > Indeed
          >
          > I think it's important for people to remember to keep contributing small amounts (compared to the 10k) to guarantee the independence from large donors who try to influence the project by potentially pulling out.


          Do the donations via OpenBSd's online store go to the foundation? if not, would it be possible to have that option?

          Comments
          1. By Anonymous Coward (63.227.46.53) on


            >
            > Do the donations via OpenBSd's online store go to the foundation? if not, would it be possible to have that option?

            The initial announcement of the Foundation here on undeadly said that it existed for larger donations, as they were not really set up to handle smaller payments, the online store works fine for that. All of the money ends up supporting the project, no matter where the donation lands. So if you want the tax angle, go via the foundation, but make it large enough to be worth their time, since no one is getting paid to administer the foundation.

            Comments
            1. By Anonymous Coward (76.23.156.62) on

              >
              > >
              > > Do the donations via OpenBSd's online store go to the foundation? if not, would it be possible to have that option?
              >
              > The initial announcement of the Foundation here on undeadly said that it existed for larger donations, as they were not really set up to handle smaller payments, the online store works fine for that. All of the money ends up supporting the project, no matter where the donation lands. So if you want the tax angle, go via the foundation, but make it large enough to be worth their time, since no one is getting paid to administer the foundation.

              Thanks for the follow-up. Based upon what you mentioned, I wish I could donate enough to make it worthwhile to go through the foundation. I'll stay with the online store for now....

  6. By Bob Beck (129.128.11.43) beck@openbsdfoundation.org on http://www.openbsdfoundation.org



    And really, what this shows is talk to your bosses people. Particularly if you make use of OpenBSD. regular contributions from industry to allow us to have a semi-predictable cash flow will greatly help us to make things better - like improving network connectivity, aquiring hardware,
    and getting developers together.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (38.113.22.50) on

      I spoke with Theo about this once, a long time ago, but nothing ever happened with it-- I understand you're all busy. It would be really easy to get our company on board if OpenBSD sold "annual licenses", or something along those lines. OpenBSD wouldn't need to provide support or anything, except maybe a printed invoice. We currently buy one CD for every OpenBSD machine we run (~20 at the moment) for every release, plus a few t-shirts, but if we could just send a big cash donation, I'm sure that would be better for the project. Unfortunately, the accountants need something to satisfy their wicked little souls-- they just can't handle the thought of a "donation".

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (75.166.167.135) on

        Part of the problem is the Canada <-> US issue. Our accountants wanted OpenBSD to fill out forms and become a vendor so they could get paid off an invoice. It was too constricting, so we went back to paying for CDs via the department mgrs credit card, which works great. We always buy just below 20 cds avoiding the automatic discount (16 or 18) so the maximum amount goes to OpenBSD. I end up giving the CDs to others to promote it, and actually another group is buying some for themselves now.

        One other option is the Dixon Group Enterprise Bundle,

        http://dixongroup.net/?q=openbsd

        But it looks like it still goes through PayPal. There is no way our accountants would let that happen, but they don't blink at a credit card purchase of $800. Maybe he could write you an invoice.

        It is not hard to justify buying one for every host running OpenBSD, I just hope that becomes the standard for support.

  7. By Peter N. M. Hansteen (pitrh) peter@bsdly.net on http://bsdly.blogspot.com/

    Ah, a .no corporation were the first. Excellent, guys!

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