
GnuPG: The Linux Foundation granted me 60,000 USD - kissickas
https://twitter.com/gnupg/status/563456662024228865
======
sasvari
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791)

still on the front page, with all news and discussions.

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notsony
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is nothing more than a drop in
the ocean. While welcome, along with Stripe and Facebook throwing in 50k/year,
all of this looks like reaction to social media news rather than a genuine
shift. I hope I'm wrong.

I was downvoted for posting this yesterday, but I'll post it again because
it's relevant and you must put these donations into perspective:

Over the next three years, the Linux Foundation will receive a combined total
of $3.9 million from Google Intel, Amazon and others to fund core
infrastructure projects such as OpenSSL (and now GPG). Sounds good until you
take a step back...

 _> Intel will invest "$300 million to help improve the pipeline for women and
minorities, actively support the hiring and retention of diverse candidates,
and fund programs that support the positive representation of women and
minorities in technology and gaming industries."_
[http://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-
diversity/](http://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-diversity/)

 _> "Google Gives $775,000 to Nonprofit for Tech Diversity CODE2040 said
Monday it received $775,000 in grants from the tech giant to support the
launch of free training programs for more than 5,000 black and Latino college
engineering students over the next two years."_
[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/02/google-
gives-775000-t...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/02/google-
gives-775000-to-nonprofit-for-tech-diversity/)

There is a real question to ask here: Why do developers have to beg for
funding from technology companies, to work on projects which have a direct
impact on products and services, whereas social activists can scream social
injustice and extract hundreds of millions?

~~~
kissickas
I agree with you on principle, but I want to clarify this submission - the
rest of this post is not directed at notsony.

I was forced to truncate the title due to HN's title character limit, so I
removed the "Just got the okay from the @linuxfoundation to tell that..." part
which is somewhat deceptive. Of course it was later edited to change "$60,000"
to "60,000 USD," which is to me a meaningless edit (he's not Canadian or
something) where more could have been done (like adding back some of "The
contract was signed on Jan 28," but whatever.

If you'll check back to the original article from yesterday [0] there is an
update at the top which begins:

> Update, Feb. 5, 2015, 8:10 p.m.: After this article appeared, Werner Koch
> informed us that last week he was awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from
> Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. Werner told us he only
> received permission to disclose it after our article published. Meanwhile,
> since our story was posted, donations flooded Werner's website donation page
> and he reached his funding goal of $137,000. In addition, Facebook and the
> online payment processor Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a year to
> Koch’s project.

So yes, we still need to find a way to support these sorts of projects before
they nearly collapse. But the Linux Foundation's requirement that he not
disclose the contract until after the article was published means to me that
they understood there would be an outpouring of support as a "reaction to
social media news" and didn't want to hamper it with their $60k.

Say what you want about reactionary social media trends, this, and the "Ice
Bucket Challenge," but money is money and this isn't a zero-sum game. People
donated who weren't going to two days ago, and while far from a perfect
system, GPG is something we don't want to lose and these kinds of trends do
help.

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michaelbuckbee
This is nothing but awesome (seriously) - but it still seems like a stopgap to
the larger issue of supporting the people writing the software that we all
depend on.

What's the best way that I can help this? A recurring donation to the Linux
foundation?

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EC1
This gives me a warm feeling in my heart. That's great. To be struggling for
so long as to finally post your pressure's online and wake up to them being
alleviated the next.

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impostervt
Also saw this tweet:

@stripe · 22h 22 hours ago

Stripe and Facebook are going to sponsor @gnupg development with $50k/year
each.

