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Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

ziglang.org

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Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#31

Post by timClicks »

AndyKelley wrote: post #28
nindalf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Here's the Rust Foundation annual report for 2023 ( https://foundation.rust-lang.org/static/publications/annual-... ). No "legal bullshit", it's short and to the point. Or here's another example. An interview they published with one of the developers whom they awarded a grant to. He worked on a Rust implementation of git and was awarded the grant to integrate it with cargo, the Rust build tool. ( https://found…

Thanks for sharing this. I would be interested to see a more detailed pie chart on the 2023 expenditures. Approximately half the expenses (1.5 million dollars) spent on "Membership & Admin". What does that mean exactly?

I'll ask in Zulip if a more detailed breakdown is available. Inferring by exclusion from the other categories, it's likely the cost of the staff, such as payroll, travel and related expenses.

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#32

Post by jonahx »

"Some of this cost is for hosting ziglang.org. Since our free AWS credits have expired we have plans to switch to Fastly which should save about $500/month."

Just curious why a static site would cost so much even on AWS? Would it be many downloads of large-ish binary files?

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#33

Post by the_duke »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #29

It's very interesting to see Uber betting on Zig, let alone the income it generates. This certainly benefited my faith in Zig's long-term sustainability.

They are "just" using the toolchain though, not the language

> Uber uses Zig to compile its C/C++ code.

> Uber does not have any plans to use zig-the-language yet.

https://jakstys.lt/2022/how-uber-uses-zig/

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#34

Post by AndyKelley »

jonahx wrote: post #32

"Some of this cost is for hosting ziglang.org. Since our free AWS credits have expired we have plans to switch to Fastly which should save about $500/month." Just curious why a static site would cost so much even on AWS? Would it be many downloads of large-ish binary files?

Yes it's primarily bandwidth costs for the binary tarballs. People fetch directly from ziglang.org in their CI scripts and don't use caching. It would be nice if people would try to use caching and mirrors more.

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#35

Post by anotherhue »

AndyKelley wrote: post #34
jonahx wrote: post #32

"Some of this cost is for hosting ziglang.org. Since our free AWS credits have expired we have plans to switch to Fastly which should save about $500/month." Just curious why a static site would cost so much even on AWS? Would it be many downloads of large-ish binary files?

Yes it's primarily bandwidth costs for the binary tarballs. People fetch directly from ziglang.org in their CI scripts and don't use caching. It would be nice if people would try to use caching and mirrors more.

Hat tip to you sir. May I suggest checking out Cloudflare R2 - they don't charge for egress.

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#36

Post by lifthrasiir »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #16
pid-1 wrote: post #11

> We spent 92% of our money in 2023 on paying contributors for their time. That's really cool. Sometimes I think about donating to the PSF, but I don't really care about PyCon.

These organizations should really let users direct their donations toward specific goals. I'd love to donate to Firefox but not for Mozilla to use the money on something else. It would also let them see what people values most and help them prioritize.

This kind of suggestion is indeed pretty common for all kinds of governments and organizations, but would be disastrous or useless for many reasons.

For example, Firefox the software project depends on many other essential components that are not strictly a software project but Firefox can't survive without them---developer and test infrastructures, addons.mozilla.org, localization platform (Pontoon) and so on. And there are more nuanced projects like Rust and Servo that might shape the next decade of Firefox. And yet there are technically uninteresting but financially positive projects like Pocket Premium and VPN, which started to provide a significant portion of the revenue [1] and represents a less dependence on Google's search royalties.

Requiring specific goals only makes sense when donors exactly know all those dependencies---an unreasonable assumption. In fact, if a majority of the revenue came from such donations, it would be very disastrous. Thankfully for Mozilla, it doesn't depend too much on donations (~2% of the total revenue in 2022), but then those donations don't mean much financially anyway.

There are alternative schemes as well. For example, donations may have wishes that are not guaranteed but to be explicitly considered (I think Vim did so for a long time). This is better than enforced goals, but not without a problem because significant donations would affect developers regardless of the acceptance anyway.

[1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202... (Specifically "Subscription and advertising revenue", which accounted for ~13% of the total revenue in 2022)

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#37

Post by lifthrasiir »

the_duke wrote: post #33
xcdzvyn wrote: post #29

It's very interesting to see Uber betting on Zig, let alone the income it generates. This certainly benefited my faith in Zig's long-term sustainability.

They are "just" using the toolchain though, not the language > Uber uses Zig to compile its C/C++ code. > Uber does not have any plans to use zig-the-language yet. https://jakstys.lt/2022/how-uber-uses-zig/

This is in fact a good strategization for the ZSF because Zig kinda needs all the work for `zig cc` anyway but `zig cc` can be sold without Zig itself. The next question is then, why something like `zig cc` didn't exist before? It's more complicated to answer...

Traditionally cross-compilation needed a separate copy of everything per target, which is really annoying but not really impossible. Any large enough company would therefore just build an infrastructure and put dedicated employees for cross-compilation. Tools like `zig cc` would benefit the rest---smaller companies and individuals---but you can't really expect those to kickstart the development of such tools from the beginning. Thankfully, `zig cc` was born as a byproduct so it had time to mature within the Zig project. And given we now have a working `zig cc`, larger companies can consider `zig cc` and possibly donate to the ZSF, even if that's only for `zig cc`.

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#38

Post by nbittich »

timClicks wrote: post #30
nbittich wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they lost me in the trademark drama.

That's a silly thing to get upset about. It was a draft proposal written by volunteers outside the Foundation.

I don't think I'm the only one tho.

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#39

Post by timClicks »

AndyKelley wrote: post #28
nindalf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Here's the Rust Foundation annual report for 2023 ( https://foundation.rust-lang.org/static/publications/annual-... ). No "legal bullshit", it's short and to the point. Or here's another example. An interview they published with one of the developers whom they awarded a grant to. He worked on a Rust implementation of git and was awarded the grant to integrate it with cargo, the Rust build tool. ( https://found…

Thanks for sharing this. I would be interested to see a more detailed pie chart on the 2023 expenditures. Approximately half the expenses (1.5 million dollars) spent on "Membership & Admin". What does that mean exactly?

Hi Andrew, as per https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/335408-founda...

    To answer your question, the "Membership & Admin" slide covers:

    - General admin (software, bank fees, meeting rooms etcetera)
    - Legal and professional fees
    - Marketing services & tooling
    - Events (travel and sponsorship, primarily the latter)
    - Salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, & payroll service provider fees.
    - Membership and donor acquisition

Re: Zig Software Foundation 2024 Financial Report and Fundraiser

#40

Post by AndyKelley »

timClicks wrote: post #39
AndyKelley wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this. I would be interested to see a more detailed pie chart on the 2023 expenditures. Approximately half the expenses (1.5 million dollars) spent on "Membership & Admin". What does that mean exactly?

Hi Andrew, as per https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/335408-founda... To answer your question, the "Membership & Admin" slide covers: - General admin (software, bank fees, meeting rooms etcetera) - Legal and professional fees - Marketing services & tooling - Events (travel and sponsorship, primarily the latter) - Salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, & payroll service provider fees. - Membership and donor ac…

Thanks for digging in. I would certainly be interested to see the extra granularity next year as offered by Gracie Gregory in that thread.
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