I just wanted to remind the community that OpenBSD 3.9 pre-orders are
up.
I know you saw a blurb from Bob a few days ago and many of you
purchased and/or
donated some cash, thank you very much for that! The bad news is
that OpenBSD
for the past 2 years has turned a loss of approximately $20K USD
($40K total).
I don't think I need to explain in many words what that is doing to
our beloved
OS, and worse, our main systems architect. This is starting to
seriously
impede the development of OpenBSD and OpenSSH. A lot of serious
architecture
and development is done at hackathons around the world. The week-
long one in
Calgary being the big one where everyone tries to get together to
discuss and
plot a course for the future. To put this in perspective, due to
financial
restraints the 2007 hackathon is not going to happen unless someone
is willing
to pick up that tab. The scheduled hackathon of 2006 will happen in
about 2
months. Large hackathons like that cost up $30K USD. The smaller
hackathons
that are concentrated on a single area of development are less
expensive and
come in at around $10K USD. These figures do not include flights and
stay for
the poorer and student developers we have. Unfortunately not
everyone in
OpenBSD is able to afford these trips but we do love to fly them out
to pick
their brains.
What is happening is that the CD purchase FTP ratio is out of
control. People
pretty much stopped purchasing CDs in quantities they used to and use
the FTP
mirrors instead. This lack of sales is what is causing the project
to turn a
small loss for the 2nd year in a row.
To fulfill most development goals OpenBSD should be generating about
$100K USD.
With that amount of money the project can finance 1 large and 4 small
hackathons per year. Pay the bills and a part-time developer to mind
the shop
when Theo isn't around. In an ideal world we would have a sponsor per
hackathon and the CD sales would be paying for other expenses.
Inquiries about sponsoring hackathons and other fund raising
questions can be
sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Serious/interesting offers will be
evaluated by me
and discussed with Theo. The idea is to keep him busy with technical
stuff and
as little as possible with fund-raising activities. Unfortunately
sending
email to the lists is counter-productive and worse will generate flames.
Please restrain yourself and simply contact me off list.
What I want to point out what a lot of people don't seem to realize
is that
OpenSSH development is paid from the same pool of money as OpenBSD.
OpenSSH is
in use by millions around the world however the revenue stream just
simply
isn't there. This is where other projects could help. Without
naming entities
or projects by name there are others out there that are sitting on
some cash.
It would be wonderful if these entities could share some of the
wealth to keep
us going.
All this said, a few words of caution. First and foremost OpenBSD/
OpenSSH will
not compromise its goals. The reason why the project has been able
to maintain
integrity is by simply saying "no" to outside preassure. Doing the
right thing
can and sometimes is painful, but it is what makes the project into
what it is
today. All donations will therefore have to be without any strings
attached.
