
Microsoft Now OpenBSD Foundation Gold Contributor - saghul
http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20150708134520
======
Systemic33
Worth noting that Facebook and Google are both silver contributors.

===
[http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html](http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html)
===

For 2015 The OpenBSD Foundation will recognize donors in the following
categories based on contribution amount.

On request we will provide a link to your website for donations of $5000 or
more, and display your logo for donations of $10,000 or more.

    
    
        Iridium: $100,000 to $250,000
        Platinum: $50,000 to $100,000
        Gold: $25,000 to $50,000
            Microsoft Corporation 
        Silver: $10,000 to $25,000
            Facebook Inc.
            Google Inc. 
        Bronze: $5,000 to $10,000
            2Keys Security Solutions
            Mandrill
            genua mbh 

=============================================

~~~
hackuser

        Gold: $25,000 to $50,000
            Microsoft Corporation 
        Silver: $10,000 to $25,000
            Facebook Inc.
            Google Inc.
    

Arguably these are small amounts for all three companies, but what is the best
way to calculate a fair share - not just for large companies but for anyone?
For example,

* How much does OpenBSD need?

* How much does each company benefit from OpenBSD's work?

* How much would it cost to license the software if it were proprietary? How much would it cost to build and maintain it in-house?

~~~
seiji
Those are hilariously small numbers. The accounting departments of those
companies probably wouldn't even blink if one extra zero were added to the
end.

If you're funding open source products like this, companies should fund at
least 3-5 full time senior engineer salaries per year. We should praise
"donating" $3 million to $10 million per year. Anything less is a joke seeing
these amounts are from multi-billion dollar companies _built on_ free
software.

Imagine you lived next to a free buffet that only accepted donations. You ate
there every day of the year, saved thousands of dollars over buying and making
your own food, then thought you were being "generous" by dropping them a
tenner at Christmas. Also, you're a full time tech employee who cashed out
millions in stock and have several million dollar apartments in cities around
the world. But, sure, you're generous by dropping them $10.

~~~
tyho
You don't get to be a successful company if your accounting department doesn't
blink if there are zeros appearing on invoices.

~~~
jenscow

      "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks"

------
grdvnl
All the comments in the thread are focussing on comparing Microsoft's
contribution to Facebook or Google for one project and giving credit to
Microsoft. But, it is important to remember that Google and Facebook
contribute to OSS in different forms. For example, Google spends regularly on
Google Summer of Code. There may be other example for Facebook as well.

I am not a fan/employee of any of these companies. I am just putting the
contribution into a different perspective.

~~~
deegles
CoreCLR alone is ~2.6 million lines of code, with several million lines of
code to go [1]. I would wager that by raw LOC, Microsoft will open source more
code in 2014-2015 than Google and Facebook combined.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/02/03/coreclr-
is...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/02/03/coreclr-is-now-open-
source.aspx)

------
SoMuchToGrok
FYI - Gold contributor means the donation was somewhere in the range of
$25,000 to $50,000.

~~~
mulander
I'm pretty sure they got a donation closer to the lower $25,000 bound. I check
the fund raisin page quite often and up to this morning it showed a total of
$100,000 raised. It's now at $125,000.

Still great regardless of the amount. I'm happy that the money was donated to
the project.

~~~
pki
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.openbsdfoundation.org%2Fcampaign2015.html)

100k -> 125k, yep

------
s_dev
Theo de Raadt always complained that such companies never gave back. HNers
were always quick to suggest he change his open source licence. Hopefully this
means him and his crew can do a better job than they are already doing without
them feeling they compromised on their values.

------
vezzy-fnord
Probably has something to do with their OpenSSH adoption, indeed.

Theo de Raadt actually praised Windows in a ruBSD 2013 interview, saying their
exploit mitigations were second to OpenBSD.

~~~
pekk
Another way to read that is as more of a slam of his major competitor.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Only if you try hard.

------
raindev
It's a shame that three top contributions by multibillion companies combined
hardly cover a decent yearly salary for a single developer.

------
sudioStudio64
Yay! OpenBSD does great work, I'm glad they are getting serious support now.
Hopefully other large vendors do the same thing...I'm looking at you Intel,
HP...

~~~
liviu-
Both Intel and HP have donated to OpenBSD:
[http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html](http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html)

~~~
sudioStudio64
I stand corrected. Cheers.

------
zxcvcxz
What's in it for microsoft though? What is their end-goal? If they support
opensource I'd rather they port some major programs to other platforms to make
those platforms more viable.

~~~
Scarbutt
If I heard correct, Microsoft wants to add openssh support to Windows 10,
server and client.

~~~
ams6110
This has been possible with Cygwin for many years.

~~~
nailer
Yes but you don't get Powershell. If you're even remotely into actual
scripting on Unix you'll love Powershell's consistency and separation of
data/presentation.

~~~
stonogo
I spent fifteen years scripting on Unix for a living. I consider powershell to
be garbage. Lack of 'separation of data/presentation' is what made unix
ubiquitous. It's also what made HTML ubiquitous. I think it's great that
powershell is getting full, native ssh support -- because then I can manage
windows computers in a non-ridiculous way, regardless of what PL wankery
Microsoft shoved into the syntax.

~~~
nailer
> Lack of 'separation of data/presentation' is what made unix ubiquitous.

I think standardization and easy scripting made Unix ubiquitous. Making a
regex to search for start time in ps output did not.

> It's also what made HTML ubiquitous.

Most HTML on the internet uses CSS for presentation.

> I think it's great that powershell is getting full, native ssh support --
> because then I can manage windows computers in a non-ridiculous way

So it's non ridiculous, but you'd still be using Powershell, which you just
said is garbage. I'm not following.

You seem /really/ pissed off. I'm not sure why.

~~~
stonogo
> I think standardization and easy scripting made Unix ubiquitous. Making a
> regex to search for start time in ps output did not.

So was it easy or not?

> Most HTML on the internet uses CSS for presentation.

...now. That was extremely not the case during the period that HTML grew
popular.

> So it's non ridiculous, but you'd still be using Powershell, which you just
> said is garbage. I'm not following.

It's non ridiculous because my control scripts can be written in a real
scripting language, dispatching generated powershell commands to windows
machine over the same protocol that real computers use. Powershell itself
isn't really the attraction in this case.

> You seem /really/ pissed off. I'm not sure why.

I'm not sure why you would think that. They're just opinions. I can consider
something garbage without getting emotional about it. Actual garbage in a
garbage can, for instance.

------
epety
Microsoft windows dying, this is new business of microsoft ?
[http://blog.sudoask.com/great-dictator-on-software-dying-
and...](http://blog.sudoask.com/great-dictator-on-software-dying-and-unix-
like-systems-is-the-will-back-again/)

------
nickpsecurity
Good they're contributing something back. They should sponsor more developers
to work on infrastructure they could integrate into their offerings. Even from
their evil perspective, they'd still be able to use their EEE strategy for
people foolish enough to buy their non-standard version. They'd benefit from
increased innovation and reduced costs as projects get bigger. We'd benefit
with components that had financial support to keep improving and maybe get
more security review than certain FOSS projects that have never heard of that.

So, it's in their interest to expand their role in open source software
whether they intend to play nice or evil. They'll benefit and we'll possibly
benefit either way. At the least, quality and innovation should both go up.
Microsoft could always use more of those. ;)

------
alexnewman
Canadian tax structure does not consider "software projects" eligible for
charitable contribution, so the donations are not generally tax deductible.

This is why i'm not sending a check right now

~~~
sliverstorm
... Which makes me wonder why the OpenBSD hasn't filed for 501(c)(3). I'm sure
it comes with strings, but given the donation revenue they've generated, tax-
deductible status could be a big lever in pure dollar terms...

~~~
nickpsecurity
They say on the foundation website that, in Canada, the overhead of doing that
is too high to justify it. They're hardly getting in donations so any amount
of overhead can detract significantly to the project. If it's serious
overhead, that's a serious loss. So, they're just not doing it until they get
enough donations to justify it.

~~~
AaronFriel
This is unfortunately backwards. Many large corporations will only donate and
provide matching donations to registered non-profits. Applying for 501(c)(3),
and whatever the Canadian equivalent is, would be the gateway to much larger
donations. Yes, there's overhead and headache, but the benefit is that being a
registered non-profit is one of the requirements for corporate donations.

The reason the project gets so few donations may well be that many businesses
and individuals have to weigh donating to OpenBSD (not tax deductible, not
registered as a non-profit) versus literally any other cause that is tax
deductible. Simply put, a dollar to OpenBSD doesn't go as far as a dollar to
say, the Linux Foundation (a 501(c)(6)).

~~~
nickpsecurity
The counter I expected and I totally agree with that. They might be shooting
themselves in the wallet with this choice. Although, Theo and others have
repeatedly said how little companies even try to donate to them. They might
have wasted significant amounts of their funds complying with Canadian
requirements for little to no gain.

So, I'm not sure which is the best route given the two facts: plenty of
opportunity for gain and loss on each end. I'd like to see them at least
attempt to get the status then tell a bunch of potential donors it's tax
exempt. If money doesn't roll in, drop the status. If it does, keep it. Seems
like a worthwhile risk to take.

What do you think?

~~~
AaronFriel
Absolutely worth it. It isn't terribly costly to get registered as a non-
profit, especially for low revenue organizations. I run a student organization
at a mid-size university, and it's only just barely cost prohibitive for us,
given that we don't stand to gain much from our current status as a de facto
non-profit.

From what I understand, the cost amounts to a few hundred dollars in legal
fees for paperwork, less if you're willing to use some hip website to do it,
and some annual compliance costs (keeping receipts, filing tax returns).

I have no idea why they wouldn't pursue that. Maybe it's much harder in
Canada?

------
TruthSHIFT
How much does one need to contribute to be Gold?

~~~
brynet
>
> [http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html](http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/contributors.html)

Iridium: $100,000 to $250,000

Platinum: $50,000 to $100,000

Gold: $25,000 to $50,000

Silver: $10,000 to $25,000

Bronze: $5,000 to $10,000

~~~
bcg1
OT, but incidentally, gold is more valuable than platinum at the moment:

[http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html](http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html)

[http://www.kitco.com/charts/liveplatinum.html](http://www.kitco.com/charts/liveplatinum.html)

