OpenBSD Journal

Help OpenBSD! It's so easy...

Contributed by deanna on from the helping out dept.

Stephen A. Rickauer writes:

In this blog I'd like to share my experiences on how easy it can be to help the OpenBSD project, apart from buying CDs and T-Shirts regularly (you all do that anyways, don't ya).

Most of you will remember Theo's statement in one of his interviews: "If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that incorporate OpenSSH directly into their products, saving themselves millions of dollars? Companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies -- we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent."

Update: Japanese translation by TAKAHASHI Tamotsu, thank you!

I felt touched somehow (though not being a vendor) but wasn't quite sure how _I_ could help in the first place.

A few days later I've decided to write a friendly but determined letter directly to the CIO's of the University of Zurich and of the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) - and guess what:
the ETH donated $1000 right away and the University allowed me to send a mass mailing to all CIO's of all connected Institutes which enabled me to collect even more money, ~$6000!

Though the process of getting some bucks together took quite a while (try to use taxpayers money for donations ;) ) I managed to get over $7000 together, with only three (3) emails! And I do believe a lot of you guys can do so, too. Please take that personally. It even doesn't require a hero.

When I met wim@ later he told me Zurich is the only place where something like this has happened. I couldn't and still can't believe it! Come on, there must be literally hundreds of users out there who have time to write a few emails, aren't there? I know how it might feel: "My little help won't change anything." I thought the same and have proven myself wrong. It will. Just do it. Maybe it will even make the 'donate button' stop blinking.

When you start writing such an email, it helps to:

 - establish a personal connection
 - be polite
 - be determined
 - in my case it helped to talk about OpenSSH because it was known better

The story has an interesting ending. Because using taxpayers money for donations turned out to be quiet tricky, a Free Software Interest Group was founded at the University, called FOSS@UZH, to make similar activities much easier in the future - maybe even a hackathon in Zurich? :)

Stephan A. Rickauer, FOSS@UZH

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Squeege (216.252.80.87) on

    Good job, dude!

    I feel the same, and I will also try figuring out a way to achieve something similar...

  2. By rpe (84.114.5.161) undeadly@peichaer.org on http://peichaer.org

    Good job ! Theo's statement was also a good reason for me to try a similar thing, and if everthing works out around 6.000 USD are on their way to the OpenBSD project before the year ends. Even better, we implemented a really big antispam solution based on OpenBSD spamd last week. Looks like our management finally got it and is ready to accept OpenBSD as a base for production grade services. (We are a 2000+ employees shop in Vienna/Austria)

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (71.75.64.11) on

      > Good job ! Theo's statement was also a good reason for me to try a similar thing, and if everthing works out around 6.000 USD are on their way to the OpenBSD project before the year ends. Even better, we implemented a really big antispam solution based on OpenBSD spamd last week. Looks like our management finally got it and is ready to accept OpenBSD as a base for production grade services. (We are a 2000+ employees shop in Vienna/Austria)

      I'm assuming that's 6 thousand, not 6 point zero dollars. The US uses the , as the seperator (the . is used for fractions of a dollar).

      Comments

      1. By Devdas (59.92.150.123) on

        > I'm assuming that's 6 thousand, not 6 point zero dollars. The US
        > uses the , as the seperator (the . is used for fractions of a dollar).

        Europeans use the . as a separator.

  3. By Noryungi (83.202.95.37) n o r y u n g i @ y a h o o . c o m on

    Until recently, I thought there was nothing much I could do for OpenBSD, except the CD/T-Shirt ordering, which is someting I do religiously, even when unemployed.

    But recently, I started working as a sysadmin for a large company, who shall remain nameless for the time being, and I am currently considered as their in-house "OpenBSD expert". This is important, since a lot of their security infrastructure is (or will soon be) based on OpenBSD.

    I have been talking to my boss about ordering CD sets, which are very important to them, since they are currently in a combined security audit/disaster recovery process. Hopefully, I'll be able to make them one copy for each machine and send a small donation to OpenBSD as well. We'll see, but every little bit counts, of course.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (85.178.76.245) on

      > Until recently, I thought there was nothing much I could do for OpenBSD, except the CD/T-Shirt ordering, which is someting I do religiously, even when unemployed.
      >
      > But recently, I started working as a sysadmin for a large company, who shall remain nameless for the time being, and I am currently considered as their in-house "OpenBSD expert". This is important, since a lot of their security infrastructure is (or will soon be) based on OpenBSD.
      >
      > I have been talking to my boss about ordering CD sets, which are very important to them, since they are currently in a combined security audit/disaster recovery process. Hopefully, I'll be able to make them one copy for each machine and send a small donation to OpenBSD as well. We'll see, but every little bit counts, of course.

      Why not telling your CEO he should pay just 1/4-1/3 of the money he saved during using OpenBSD to the Project.
      If every company would act like this at least just once every 5 years the project would benefit a lot and the companies would still ave a shitload of money....

      Comments

      1. By Noryungi (212.11.9.139) n o r y u n g i @ y a h o o . c o m on

        > Why not telling your CEO he should pay just 1/4-1/3 of
        > the money he saved during using OpenBSD to the Project.
        > If every company would act like this at least just once
        > every 5 years the project would benefit a lot and the
        > companies would still ave a shitload of money....

        Nice try, but: (a) I don't know the CEO of this company, and, even if I did, I don't think he'd spend time with me to talk about OpenBSD and (b) this company is not really "saving" any money using OpenBSD: it has the choice between buying a cheap PC, slapping OpenBSD on it and using it as a firewall/secure router and buying a cheap hardware firewall.

        So sure, the company is saving a bit of money, but not that much. Besides, this is a large company, where you can't just waltz into the CEO office and start chatting with the Big Kahuna himself...


  4. By Marc Balmer (213.189.137.178) on

    A hackathon in Zurich could be interesting indeed, I am sure ETHZ could provide more than adequate network and computing facilities, so lets keep an eye on this option.

    Comments

    1. By Stephan A. Rickauer (130.60.5.218) on

      > A hackathon in Zurich could be interesting indeed, I am sure ETHZ could provide more than adequate network and computing facilities, so lets keep an eye on this option.

      Why did I just know you would jump on this directly ;) - You're right, infrastructure is not the problem. I'll get in touch with you soon, just have to sort out a few political things, first.

  5. By Daniel Bolgheroni (201.74.91.91) dbolgheroni@gmail.com on

    Companies like these are among those who have the major benefit from projects like OpenSSH. They make a lot of money with it and what they do? Nothing. Congratulations to Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, etc.

    Comments

    1. By tbert (70.179.123.124) on

      > Companies like these are among those who have the major benefit from projects like OpenSSH. They make a lot of money with it and what they do? Nothing. Congratulations to Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, etc.

      Well, get those emails crackin', then:

      http://www.openssh.org/users.html

    2. By Anonymous Coward (24.40.137.125) on

      "Companies like these are among those who have the major benefit from projects like OpenSSH. They make a lot of money with it and what they do? Nothing. Congratulations to Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, etc."

      I asked about this at my employer (one of the companies that benefits from OpenSSH) and the general feeling seemed to be that Theo was too hostile/unapproachable. But perhaps more importantly, OpenSSH is not set up as a 501(c)(3) entity in the USA which discourages corporate donations.

      With the right corporate setup in the USA, hundreds of thousands of tech sector employees would be able to contribute with matching funds from their employer via the United Way.

      But here comes my Troll moderation downward: you can't simultaneously tell people "bugger off, we write this code for ourselves" and "shame on you for not giving us money".

  6. By Anonymous Coward (122.17.106.125) on

    The company I work at uses mostly free software and it never occurred to them (management) to donate to these projects, however all it took was a simple email from me and they recently donated $1000 to OpenSSH and a bunch of other free software projects. Alot of companies are probably willing to donate, they just need to be told about it.

  7. By abc (88.17.111.108) on

    There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (81.3.3.148) on

      > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.

      in your oppinion, what is the most important software in opensource world?

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (69.70.207.240) on

        > > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.
        >
        > in your oppinion, what is the most important software in opensource world?
        >

        To me: OpenBSD, then OpenSSH ;)

        It's mostly all thanks to OpenBSD (and related crew, projects and users/supporters) that they're re-shaping the industry (some see it, some don't) and actually standing up for OSS as a whole. None of this signing NDA crap, no accepting BLOBs, binary only drivers from vendors, asking only for 'documentation' etc. By this, they're offering to build more and better support for various commercial products for those companies, FREE of charge and in turn, increase their sales too - at no cost to them, yet some are too ignorant to see this...

      2. By Lennie (194.213.15.37) on

        > > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.
        >
        > in your oppinion, what is the most important software in opensource world?
        >

        gcc ?

    2. By Lars Hansson (203.65.246.6) lars@unet.net.ph on

      > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.


      Exactly where in this item is OpenSSH shown as "the most important software project in the opensource world"?

    3. By Anonymous Coward (82.157.194.81) on

      > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.

      It's not as visible as, say, Firefox, but it's everywhere, it's terribly useful, and there are no real alternatives. I think very few UNIX machines do not have OpenSSH installed, and a significant portion if not the majority sees quite a bit of OpenSSH use.

      Joachim

    4. By Nate (74.13.45.173) on

      > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.

      Bigger? I don't think there is anything that runs in more places, except for maybe ntpd. It may have less developers than some, but it sure is big.

      OpenSSH is the most widely used software in the Unix-world, it's available on anything from Cygwin and Windows Services for Unix to Solaris and Mac OS X. It runs nearly everywhere there is Unix and almost all of them come with it included. I'd say that makes it pretty important, it's on more machines than there are Linux-based machines - so the number of users of OpenSSH must be pretty big.

    5. By jb (69.239.198.33) jb+undeadly@caustic.org on

      > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.

      I don't see how it isn't.

      Everyone uses it. I've not seen a machine without ssh in over 8 years. In the last 5 years, 19 out of 20 times it's OpenSSH.

      Dismissing its ubiquitous use is pretty ignorant. Dismissing the fact the project works with little or no outside help, and is run from the already somewhat meager resources of OpenBSD.. that's just dumb.

      Asking for some donations to keep funding a tool that's distributed with every open and closed source OS out there? That's admirable.

      Show me a single UNIX or Network admin that doesn't use SSH. Please.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (68.167.146.78) on

        > Show me a single UNIX or Network admin that doesn't use SSH. Please.

        Just go to any "Microsoft shop" and ask any MCSE. "OpenSSH? What's the VBA macro name for it? Oh, there isn't one? OK, where's the MMC snap-in for it? Oh, it's not one of those, either? OpenSSH must not exist, then." :-)

    6. By escapenguin (69.248.109.233) escapenguin@gmail.com on Kenny Ferguson

      > There are a lot of opensource projects bigger than OpenSSH. OK, it needs money to continue, and OpenBSD team is doing a good job, but don't show openssh like the most important software in opensource world.

      Dead horse, whatever. I could *not* do my job without OpenSSH. I depend on OpenSSH. I show my gratitude by extolling the virtues of OpenBSD to my co-workers and friends, and I purchase as much as I can and provide as much information I can to help advance the project as much as possible which is a pittance. There is no replacement, and our infrastructure would decay rapidly with its departure. Sorry to be rude, but you don't have a ******' clue.

  8. By Sacha Ligthert (83.160.140.70) sacha@ligthert.net on

    I gave the whole OpenBSD and financing somethought lately and I came up with the following:
    By shares in the respectable company which actually gives the owner of the share the right to say something at a shareholders meeting. And demand that appropriate donations will be made to the opensource project the used their source code from.

    Would it work?


    (Guess I suck)

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (69.70.207.240) on

      > I gave the whole OpenBSD and financing somethought lately and I came up with the following:
      > By shares in the respectable company which actually gives the owner of the share the right to say something at a shareholders meeting. And demand that appropriate donations will be made to the opensource project the used their source code from.
      >
      > Would it work?
      >
      >
      > (Guess I suck)

      I wouldn't use the word 'demand' though, personally. Sounds like 'give them money or else', but I think too that some of them need to understand this point more and hence be educated in this respect.

    2. By Matthew R. Dempsky (198.205.33.93) mrd@alkemio.org on

      > Would it work?

      I doubt the ROI would be great enough to make that option better than just donating the money you were planning to spend on stock.

  9. By jd (70.81.120.121) on

    This is a really cool story. One reason that I never taught about doing this is that I am not good at all at writting letters.

    I was wondering if you could post somewhere the letter you wrote to give us writting-handicaped a good starting point...

    Thanks,

    JD

    Comments

    1. By Stephan A. Rickauer (85.2.120.79) stephan.rickauer@ini.phys.ethz.ch on

      > This is a really cool story. One reason that I never taught about doing this is that I am not good at all at writting letters. I was wondering if you could post somewhere the letter you wrote to give us writting-handicaped a good starting point...

      Well, my initiative took place in Switzerland, so the letter has been written in German. However, for those who are interested in how it looked like, I've posted it here.

      I do remember example letters in English crossing misc@, maybe the archive helps.

      Stephan

  10. By Anonymous Coward (216.175.250.42) on

    Well, I just fired off a letter to HP, telling them that I had a ProCurve and loved the SSH interface...and, hey, by the way, the OpenSSH project needs money, I know you saved a ton of it by using their software, how's about some love?

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (70.80.48.184) on

      > Well, I just fired off a letter to HP, telling them that I had a ProCurve and loved the SSH interface...and, hey, by the way, the OpenSSH project needs money, I know you saved a ton of it by using their software, how's about some love?

      Did you even get a reply or do you think it was sent to /dev/null?

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (70.179.123.124) on

        > Did you even get a reply or do you think it was sent to /dev/null?

        I'm pretty sure it was summarily trashed.

        However, I did send it. Hopefully others are doing the same.

        The drip destroys the stone not by strenght, but by persistence.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (70.80.48.184) on

          > > Did you even get a reply or do you think it was sent to /dev/null?
          >
          > I'm pretty sure it was summarily trashed.
          >
          > However, I did send it. Hopefully others are doing the same.
          >
          > The drip destroys the stone not by strenght, but by persistence.

          Nicely said.

  11. By zendeath (216.113.24.1) on

    I know this subject has been approached many times in the past, but I am too lazy to search past references.

    What would it take/cost to make create an organization that could accept donations for the OpenBSD project, and be able to provide tax-deductible donations? Is there a large managing cost? Is it simply not possible?

    Secondly, you have to see where most financial support can come from; companies using openbsd. They use it because 1) it's free 2) because some techie told them that it's the best.

    Companies like "free". Some though, would rather pay for something, and hope to have some sort of support or liability in the event that they would want to sue for damages in the product does not work. Think what you may, but this is a leading belief in many large organizations that stay away from opensource and free software in general.

    Support; if they can buy support, or know that they could call someone for support, they would be willing to spend the money.

    Look at RedHat and the Linux movement, or MySQL for example.

    If someone decided to start an organization that would commercially support OpenBSD, be staffed by reputable people and can provide guidance/consulting, this would definately help finance the OpenBSD project (and sister projects like openssh, openntpd, opencvs, etc).

    The goal is to support OpenBSD. Providing a professionally looking company, backed by people like Theo and other core developers (but not involving them too much to distract them) will be the best way to ensure survival and even success.

    I know, many are not out to make the big bucks. We are not talking about
    major profits, the goal has to be set to be able to support the organization and stay afloat, and continue to produce quality, BSD licensed software for all the use freely and be able to resell.

    Once you start this support organization and gain legitimacy, others who may want to compete will have a hard time, once the name is already done.

    This may be the only way the project can ensure financial survival, and the ability to promote and finance future development, by paying for their flight to Hacking cons and whatnot.

    Remember the end goal: survivability and success; all extra money generated can be used (must be?) reinvested in the project, that way those with a greedy profit motive will be held far away.

    It's just an idea.

    Comments

    1. By Matthew R. Dempsky (198.205.33.93) mrd@alkemio.org on

      > Support; if they can buy support, or know that they could call someone
      > for support, they would be willing to spend the money.

      Have you looked at http://www.openbsd.org/support.html?

    2. By Anonymous Coward (74.12.83.104) on


      >
      > What would it take/cost to make create an organization that could accept donations for the OpenBSD project, and be able to provide tax-deductible donations? Is there a large managing cost? Is it simply not possible?

      OpenBSD is based in Canada, hence there would be no tax deduction for American companies.

      Comments

      1. By Nate (74.13.45.173) on

        >
        > >
        > > What would it take/cost to make create an organization that could accept donations for the OpenBSD project, and be able to provide tax-deductible donations? Is there a large managing cost? Is it simply not possible?
        >
        > OpenBSD is based in Canada, hence there would be no tax deduction for American companies.

        Most American companies have Canadian branches, we're treated like another state for the most part. The Canadian part would be able to get said deduction.

      2. By Anonymous Coward (70.167.129.212) on

        >
        > >
        > > What would it take/cost to make create an organization that could accept donations for the OpenBSD project, and be able to provide tax-deductible donations? Is there a large managing cost? Is it simply not possible?
        >
        > OpenBSD is based in Canada, hence there would be no tax deduction for American companies.

        That's not the problem. US 501.3(c) corporations can use their funds in foreign countries. The problems are:
        1. There are all sorts of restrictions about who can get the money and how the corporation can be run. The charter could probably be drafted by an attorney to get around this, but hiring a good lawyer is expensive.
        2. The US govt could attach strings to the use of the funds that the devs don't like.
        3. Someone would have to do it and it is a shit lot of work.
        4. You can't directly benefit from the donation, so companies like Sun might be ruled out (I'm not a tax lawyer, I'd have to ask one).
        5. Even if you get it set up, it's not clear that more people would actually bother to donate.

        I need some community service hours to get my J.D. so I'll see if I can get with a professor and look into what it would take/how much it would cost/what work would be involved. If I can find someone to take care of the ongoing work and the problems are surmountable, I'll email theo et. al. and ask if they would like to go forward.

    3. By Leon Yendor (218.214.194.113) on

      > I know this subject has been approached many times in the past, but I am too lazy to search past references.

      Slack troll.

      >
      > What would it take/cost to make create an organization that could accept donations for the OpenBSD project, and be able to provide tax-deductible donations? Is there a large managing cost? Is it simply not possible?

      What would it take? Hell to freeze over, as you would know if you weren't a slack troll.

      > It's just an idea.

      That's an overstatement.
      Just STFU and do what others do: Contribute. Your own funds, money you raise, proceeds from selling your clients copies of OpenBSD, even buying swag helps.


    4. By Heiko Gerstung (217.5.178.130) heiko.gerstung@meinberg.de on http://www.meinberg.de

      > What would it take/cost to make create an organization that could accept donations for the OpenBSD project, and be able to provide tax-deductible donations? Is there a large managing cost? Is it simply not possible?
      >

      I am working for a vendor who is using OpenSSH in its products (NTP Time Server Appliances) and we really, really love it (I mean, we are not selling products in large quantities, like HP or Cisco or Sun or all the Linux Distributions out there). A couple of months ago I read a "Donations Wanted" message on the OpenSSH mailing list and contacted someone from the OpenSSH team to tell them we are willing to contribute due to the fact that we are using this great software and would like to support it.

      After exchanging some nice mails with someone from the team I asked for something like an invoice in order to be able to satisfy our bookkeeping department and I never heard about this again.

      So, a company that would be able to write an invoice would automatically allow companies to deduct these "costs" from their tax bill, because they are "costs" and no "donations". This is not a trick, it would be even possible to offer a little benefit like a support contract or something like that, but this would in fact allow corporations to send money to the OpenSSH project.

      > Secondly, you have to see where most financial support can come from; companies using openbsd. They use it because 1) it's free 2) because some techie told them that it's the best.
      >
      > Companies like "free". Some though, would rather pay for something, and hope to have some sort of support or liability in the event that they would want to sue for damages in the product does not work. Think what you may, but this is a leading belief in many large organizations that stay away from opensource and free software in general.
      We like OpenSource software because it is free, that is true. But the biggest advantages are that you can fix "bugs" or introduce new functionanlity on your own, if you want. You can look into the source code to find out why something is going on and you are able to get a new version almost every month ;-)

      > Support; if they can buy support, or know that they could call someone for support, they would be willing to spend the money.
      >
      > Look at RedHat and the Linux movement, or MySQL for example.
      Yep.

      > If someone decided to start an organization that would commercially support OpenBSD, be staffed by reputable people and can provide guidance/consulting, this would definately help finance the OpenBSD project (and sister projects like openssh, openntpd, opencvs, etc).
      >
      > The goal is to support OpenBSD. Providing a professionally looking company, backed by people like Theo and other core developers (but not involving them too much to distract them) will be the best way to ensure survival and even success.
      >
      > I know, many are not out to make the big bucks. We are not talking about
      > major profits, the goal has to be set to be able to support the organization and stay afloat, and continue to produce quality, BSD licensed software for all the use freely and be able to resell.
      >
      I totally agree on that.

      > Once you start this support organization and gain legitimacy, others who may want to compete will have a hard time, once the name is already done.
      >
      I think if you are known to be the "official OpenSSH" support company, there will be no competition. Simply because you can assure that all the money you make will be put into the OpenSSH project.

      > This may be the only way the project can ensure financial survival, and the ability to promote and finance future development, by paying for their flight to Hacking cons and whatnot.
      >
      > Remember the end goal: survivability and success; all extra money generated can be used (must be?) reinvested in the project, that way those with a greedy profit motive will be held far away.
      >
      > It's just an idea.
      I like it (from a vendor's perspective as well as from a users point of view!).

      Regards,
      Heiko

  12. By tmib (82.93.30.80) t m i b AT x s 4 a l l DOT n l on

    For Dutch readers who would like to help out by writing letters; I have posted an example letter, in Dutch of course, which may be used to address the CEO/management of the company you work for, to ask for corporate donations/sponsoring. I have sent this letter to the CEO of the company I work for. My request will be discussed in a management meeting to be held on friday, december 15th (aka tomorrow).

    To read the example letter and some of my comments in Dutch, please visit NedBSD The letter should appear in the news section shortly. I have put emphasis on some advantages which should be valued by PR (publicity, community support, etc)

    For those of you who would like to read it, I have uploaded the letter here as well; donaties_openssh.txt Names have been edited, if you want to use this in your organization, please read it thoroughly and edit it before sending. You may want to edit the style to make it more formal or easier to read for those Pointy Haired Boss types...

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (70.80.48.184) on

      > For Dutch readers who would like to help out by writing letters; I have posted an example letter, in Dutch of course, which may be used to address the CEO/management of the company you work for, to ask for corporate donations/sponsoring. I have sent this letter to the CEO of the company I work for. My request will be discussed in a management meeting to be held on friday, december 15th (aka tomorrow).
      >
      > To read the example letter and some of my comments in Dutch, please visit NedBSD The letter should appear in the news section shortly. I have put emphasis on some advantages which should be valued by PR (publicity, community support, etc)
      >
      > For those of you who would like to read it, I have uploaded the letter here as well; donaties_openssh.txt
      > Names have been edited, if you want to use this in your organization, please read it thoroughly and edit it before sending. You may want to edit the style to make it more formal or easier to read for those Pointy Haired Boss types...

      Great work, not that I can read it though...

      Any chance you can convert it to english? ;-)

      Comments

      1. By tmib (82.93.30.80) t m i b AT x s 4 a l l DOT n l on

        > Great work, not that I can read it though...

        Thanks!

        > Any chance you can convert it to english? ;-)

        Ok, I have been thinking about this and saw the previous request for an example letter as well. I have translated my letter to English. Keep in mind that I am not a native speaker and that it may require some corrections. Furthermore, it is specifically written for employees who address their own company's CEO. If you want to write a letter to some other company, you may want to leave out certain bits and adjust the general tone of the letter itself. It is a fairly literal translation of the Dutch letter;

        donations_openssh.txt

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (70.80.48.184) on

          > Great work, not that I can read it though...
          >
          > Thanks!
          >
          > Any chance you can convert it to english? ;-)
          >
          > Ok, I have been thinking about this and saw the previous request for an example letter as well. I have translated my letter to English. Keep in mind that I am not a native speaker and that it may require some corrections. Furthermore, it is specifically written for employees who address their own company's CEO. If you want to write a letter to some other company, you may want to leave out certain bits and adjust the general tone of the letter itself. It is a fairly literal translation of the Dutch letter;
          >
          > donations_openssh.txt

          Awesome stuff!

  13. By joe_bruin (76.167.179.26) on

    Of course, there is a pink elephant in the room that nobody wants to discuss. There is NO WAY to donate to the development of OpenSSH. There is only a way to donate to the OpenBSD project. While I realize that these are effectively the same people, making the case becomes much more difficult. I can easily say to my boss (and he to his bosses) that we need to cut the OpenSSH Foundation (or whatever) a check because their product is deployed company-wide. I have a much harder time convincing by proxy the higher ups that we need to sponsor OpenBSD development, even though we don't use that, because some of the money might also go to OpenSSH.

    I realize Theo has taken a firm stand against separate money for OpenSSH. I consider it unfortunate that he has placed this restriction, because without it, it is my opinion that OpenSSH would see a lot more money from corporations that use it.

    Comments

    1. By Xipher (12.219.26.162) on

      > Of course, there is a pink elephant in the room that nobody wants to discuss. There is NO WAY to donate to the development of OpenSSH. There is only a way to donate to the OpenBSD project. While I realize that these are effectively the same people, making the case becomes much more difficult. I can easily say to my boss (and he to his bosses) that we need to cut the OpenSSH Foundation (or whatever) a check because their product is deployed company-wide. I have a much harder time convincing by proxy the higher ups that we need to sponsor OpenBSD development, even though we don't use that, because some of the money might also go to OpenSSH.
      >
      > I realize Theo has taken a firm stand against separate money for OpenSSH. I consider it unfortunate that he has placed this restriction, because without it, it is my opinion that OpenSSH would see a lot more money from corporations that use it.

      Please look at http://www.openssh.org/donations.html
      You can specify if you want to donate to OpenSSH specifically.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (24.40.137.125) on

        > Please look at http://www.openssh.org/donations.html

        I did. And stopped reading at this point "While donations are not US tax deductible as charitable contribution [...]"

        There is no point in continuing as most of our employers wouldn't want the hassle of donating to a group that is not a straightforward tax deduction.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (83.5.228.52) on


          > I did. And stopped reading at this point "While donations are not US tax deductible as charitable contribution [...]"
          >
          > There is no point in continuing as most of our employers wouldn't want the hassle of donating to a group that is not a straightforward tax deduction.
          >

          If you had actually ever donated you would know that you get an invoice containing the amount, which goes down quite well as an operating expense.

          Quite certainly very few companies wish to make a substantial enough contribution for this to be a problem.

      2. By joe_bruin (76.167.179.26) on

        > Please look at http://www.openssh.org/donations.html
        > You can specify if you want to donate to OpenSSH specifically.

        Wow, live and learn. I stand corrected, thanks. To my knowledge, this was not the case the last time I looked.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (67.64.89.177) on

      blah blah blah, just another excuse from someone who only talks and doesn't do anything.

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