Great. ...if only people wouldn't have made such a fuss about a meagre $100.000 (yeah, it's a lot of money for me too, but these amazing guys are developing an OS, for god's sake, not crafting another "ubercool" webframework-of-the-month) and posted so many "i'd like to see the exact way the money is spent" comments everywhere (transparency is a lot of times the opposite of freedom, you know - once people have proved you they can deliver something great, as they have done in the past, stop incumbering them with extremely annoying requests for transparency!).
OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
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Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#12I love to see that Google is on their top donors page every year, it shows their commitment to supporting open source and the tools they have used to build their business on. http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html
Without putting motives into Google's metaphorical mouth - and because I'm sure your logic is likely correct - even if they didn't use these tools and didn't care about open source, the good will they get for being seen doing this would probably be worth the cost anyway if they pulled it from a marketing budget.
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#13that's a good news
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#14"We would also like to thank the many smaller donors too numerous to list here for their contributons to the foundation." If you go to the openbsd.org page, it does list the people who have given directly. I would like to see the foundation continue this tradition[1]. It's good to give first credit to the big donors, but it is kind of sad not to give credit to those paying every month[2]. It made me feel pretty good…
Hm. I just realized that, while systems like this often display monthly donators, I've never seen one that showed the total donated by a monthly donator. If you've stuck with a monthly donation to X for a couple years, you could easily be in the hundreds, usually reserved for a relative few. It seems like this could be a good reward/incentive for monthly donors (which are probably worth more than one-timers anyway).
The (tiny) AROS Development Fund does that:
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#15I love to see that Google is on their top donors page every year, it shows their commitment to supporting open source and the tools they have used to build their business on. http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html
Without putting motives into Google's metaphorical mouth - and because I'm sure your logic is likely correct - even if they didn't use these tools and didn't care about open source, the good will they get for being seen doing this would probably be worth the cost anyway if they pulled it from a marketing budget.
if every tech company did this the world would be a better place
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#16Great. ...if only people wouldn't have made such a fuss about a meagre $100.000 (yeah, it's a lot of money for me too, but these amazing guys are developing an OS , for god's sake, not crafting another "ubercool" webframework-of-the-month) and posted so many "i'd like to see the exact way the money is spent" comments everywhere (transparency is a lot of times the opposite of freedom, you know - once people have prove…
I find it equally annoying to request for money, but not be transparent about it. Equally annoying is that when a request is made, you're considered an annoyance.
Deliver an OS has no relation to financial capabilities.
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#17Great. ...if only people wouldn't have made such a fuss about a meagre $100.000 (yeah, it's a lot of money for me too, but these amazing guys are developing an OS , for god's sake, not crafting another "ubercool" webframework-of-the-month) and posted so many "i'd like to see the exact way the money is spent" comments everywhere (transparency is a lot of times the opposite of freedom, you know - once people have prove…
It's a legitimate request, and it shouldn't be even necessary to ask for it, for any project that accept donations or publicly funded. It's annoying, but it's important.
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#18I love to see that Google is on their top donors page every year, it shows their commitment to supporting open source and the tools they have used to build their business on. http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html
Without putting motives into Google's metaphorical mouth - and because I'm sure your logic is likely correct - even if they didn't use these tools and didn't care about open source, the good will they get for being seen doing this would probably be worth the cost anyway if they pulled it from a marketing budget.
And yet you don't find any of the other companies we associate with "tech giants" there, nor on Freebsd's donors page [1], whereas Google is there every year.
So no, I really don't think it's that easy to dismiss it (even though that wasn't exactly what you were doing).
[1] https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors (click 2013 or 2012)
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#19Awesome. If the $20,000 quote on electricity costs is accurate, hopefully this will last them another five years or so.
Re: OpenBSD receives approximately $100,000 in donations
#20Great. ...if only people wouldn't have made such a fuss about a meagre $100.000 (yeah, it's a lot of money for me too, but these amazing guys are developing an OS , for god's sake, not crafting another "ubercool" webframework-of-the-month) and posted so many "i'd like to see the exact way the money is spent" comments everywhere (transparency is a lot of times the opposite of freedom, you know - once people have prove…
I find it equally annoying to request for money, but not be transparent about it. Equally annoying is that when a request is made, you're considered an annoyance. Deliver an OS has no relation to financial capabilities.
What would you do with the information? I think the OpenBSD foundation is transparent enough with their "Activities" page (http://openbsdfoundation.org/activities.html). What level of details would you like in a finacial statement from the OpenBSD project?
Keeping it pretty broad seems like the right solution. Given all the unsolicited "advice" they got just regarding their power bill, posting every expenditure would result in extreme amount of nitpicking of even the smallest items (perhaps especially the small expenses).
To be honest, I doubt that most of those who "Require complete transparency!" would even donate if a complet finacial statement was made. Most would probably find some small detail that they don't like an use that as an excuse for not donating. If you're concerned that money won't be spend on the project, I don't see how any promises about transparency would change your mind.