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Mozilla Foundation Donates $10K to OpenSSH
eklitzke writes to tell us the OpenBSD journal is reporting that the Mozilla Foundation is donating $10,000 USD to the OpenSSH project. This comes as good news after the recent reported financial troubles from the OpenBSD and by extension the OpenSSH team. It seems that quite a few people have answered the call for aid made by OpenBSD's de Raadt.
Is this going directly to OpenSSH efforts, or to OpenBSD in general? There's nothing in there that specifically states which.
There has been much talk in the recent past about the difference between wanting to support OpenBSD (and by default, OpenSSH), and just OpenSSH itself. Is it even possible to support 'just' OpenSSH?
Either way, a classy move by the Mozilla Foundation.
Now if you guys can just make Thunderbird stop sucking, I'd be much happier.
Is this something that can be deducted from Income Tax as a charitable donation?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
This money is coming from the Mozilla Foundation, which makes serious dough from google searches run via the firefox browser's default start page and the default search engine field. So use firefox, hit CTRL-k to search with google, and keep it going.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
That he uses the money to establish a foundation that is equipped to do things like fundraising and marketing. As I said before, being a non-profit is hard as heck, he needs to run it like a business and hire people who have real world non-profit experience. Raising just enough money to get by without committing to major organizational change is extremely shortsighted. Let's also hope that others follow the Mozilla foundation's example.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Although I can see how OpenBSD and OpenSSH aren't doing themselves any favors by alienating people with obnoxious comments and general indifference.
Latest example:
A lots of people/companies asked the OpenSSH group to include the ability to include rate limiting due to large SSH user/dictionary attacks being run by script kiddies. One person even WROTE it for them. I believe the OpenSSH group's response was "Not an ssh problem."
Dissappointing.
How can there be a dotcom crash of OSS? Most everyone involved in producing the stuff does it with the foreknowledge that there isn't any money in it directly - and yet they persist. That's because many people are driven more by a need to create than a need to make money. You see that in the extreme with the classic "starving artist" and a lot of the best OSS hackers fit in that same category. They do what they do for the love of it or because there's some kind of deep internal drive to create their visions. No it doesn't put food on the table, but that's often not the point. The beauty of OSS is that even if one author stops due to the demands of real life and the need to eat, their contributions are public and visible for the next hackers to step up and take over. OSS doesn't necessarily work as a model to sustain one individual; instead it works at a level above that - it is the currency of a culture.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I disagree. Donations to the Moz foundation should go toward work on improving the broswer. It's not their place to redirect donations.
I wonder how many security patches OpenBSD has submitted to the mozilla project. I don't know, but this point makes the argument swing both ways. In theory, any software that runs on OpenBSD has to be audited for security, and any changes can be submitted upstream. Perhaps OpenBSD is doing more work for the Mozilla foundation than you might originally think.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
1. Given that Mozilla does acutlaly have a revenue stream in addition to donations, what makes you think that $10K is all redirected donations?
2. Given that "the Mozilla project uses SSH extensively for various purposes, including securing connections to the Mozilla CVS repository," perhaps supporting further development of OpenSSH might be considered important for continued development of the browser?
What about other uses of money that aren't directly "improving the browser?" Would it be acceptable for MoFo to buy new servers for download mirrors? Support forums? How about Windows licenses or Mac hardware for development workstations, build boxes, and QA?
3. While we're at it, what is it with the donate-but-with-strings-attached attitude these days?
I seem to recall RMS getting a 'genius grant' a while back. IIRC, those grants come with no strings, not traceability, and aren't conditional upon the recipient being tax-exempt. Basically, the idea seems (I know this sounds nutty) that people who are passionate about something and have made it their life's work will take such gifts in the spirit intended by the giver.
Now, I may be wrong, but I do not recall a flamefest back then about how that anticapitalist hippie Stallman would just spend the money on pizza and T-shirts. Why is it, then, that when the Mozilla group seeks to fund OpenSSH, the standard seems to be different?
However, postingwithout backing it up is kinda trollish. I'd be interested in seeing the information whose existence is implied by that statement.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
IBM, Red Hat, Novell, etc. already contribute to open source. Red Hat pays kernel devs! Novell has worked on XGL. If OpenSSH developers all suddenly decided to quit because of IBM, Red Hat, Novell, etc's lack of generosity, gratitude, and groveling, then someone would pick up the development and maintenance of this critical project. But I don't care if these giants don't give one dime to OpenSSH. They can only be expected to do what is in their best interest, and apparently they've decided that doesn't include giving to OpenSSH. I don't see why they should be expected to make pro rata contributions to every one of the THOUSANDS of open source projects that comprise any Linux distribution.
Penny - plain text accounting
Software Freedom Conservancy offers nonprofit umbrella to free and open source projects
see this groklaw page for entire article http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200604011 21120517
Here's yet another creative idea to protect FOSS developers. The Software Freedom Law Center has launched the Software Freedom Conservancy, which is designed to permit certain projects accepted as members, such as Wine, uClibc and BusyBox currently, to apply for and then benefit from nonprofit tax-exempt status. The Conservancy does all the onerous paperwork needed to set it up and run that way.
It does the paperwork and it provides the umbrella. It will file one tax return covering all members' projects, and it will handle the other corporate and tax issues that are associated with becoming a nonprofit and then operating as one, as well as holding project assets and managing them as the project directs. That leaves projects members free to code. It's a free service, if your project is accepted as a member.