Fundraising for FreeBSD development.

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20040408171501.V82460 at beck.quonix.net>, John Von Essen writes:
>Hi,
>
>Have a few questions for you. Would the fund raising be handled through
>FreeBSD or direct to you?

Direct to me.

There are three relevant and different things we need to keep separate
here:

The FreeBSD Project
    Headed by the core team.  Does not ever deal with money, only
    with software.  In response to my informing them about this
    project they have said what amounts to "This is a good thing",
    only in quite a few more words.  (I need to get their permission
    to disclose those emails, but I pressume it will figure in the
    monthly core report as well).
   

The FreeBSD Foundation.
    Headed by their own board of directors.  Deals mostly with money
    and donations.
    See point 11 on http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/funding.html
    Why this is not a Foundation controlled event.

Me
    I hack FreeBSD code when I have time for it.  If donate money
    so I can feed my kids, I have more time to hack FreeBSD.

>Are you taking pledges now? I would assume you would gather pledges over
>the next month to see if can get the USD16500, if you do, then the pledges
>become real donations, if you dont, then the pledges become null.

Yes, I am taking pledges and counting them towards the 3 month
mininum goal.

Pledges will not be listed on the web-page for a number of reasons,
but mostly that people may not be able to carry through for various
valid reasons, and I don't want to embaras them in that case.

>If the fund raising is connected with FreeBSD, could people who donate
>larger amounts get some form of acknowledgement on the FreeBSD site? This
>would give an incentive for vendors who sell products that rely or use
>FreeBSD to donate larger amounts.

(see above)

Everybody who donate will be listed (possibly anonymously) on
	http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/donations.html

I cannot promise exposure on the main FreeBSD Project pages, that
would be up to the webmasters (and to some extent the core team)
to arrange and allow for such precense.

I realize that marketing budgets might become available if I could
offer better PR for donations, but it is really outside my power
to do so.

Does that answer your questions ?

Poul-Henning


-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.