Date: Wed, 06 Dec 1995 16:49:39 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Jonathan Cargille <jcargill@cs.wisc.edu> Cc: Jon Loeliger <jdl@jdl.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Donations (was Re: Second appeal for sup ...) Message-ID: <21490.818297379@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Dec 1995 13:03:56 CST." <199512061903.NAA04391@felix.cs.wisc.edu>
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> > Jon Loeliger writes: > > In particular, freely speaking for some of us (:-), I'd say many of > us would be willing to chip in, say, $20 to $100 (each!) towards a > dedicated machine. Would this approach work to give freefall a > buddy? > > I can think of a couple of companies ;-) that would be glad to chip in > more than that! Well, let's explore this one further. Here's a list, in order of decreasing importance, of the kinds of resources I think the project most needs right now: 1. Internet connectivity (for providing more distributed services) 2. Hardware (for building more freefalls) 3. Money (for hiring contractors to do some of the things we've continually failed to do because they're too icky to do for free). 1. Internet connectivity is probably the real biggie right now because services like sup and mail take a fair bit of it. If it were distributed across multiple servers, we could probably get it down to managable limits for any given access point. 2. Hardware is a close second and a secondary freefall would be very good to have, assuming of course that internet connectivity for it could also be found. This is why just the parts for a freefall clone wouldn't be quite enough - we'd need someplace to put it, and WC's T1 is already starting to smoke. 3. Money, well, money is always good for a variety of purposes.. :-) Unfortunately, I can't offer any special tax shelters for donations since the FreeBSD, Inc. corporation that David and I set up isn't a non-profit, it's just a standard California `S' corporation. I *wanted* it to be a non-profit, mind you, but was talked out of it by both my lawyer and my accountant who said that the year-to-year management of such an enterprise was a lot more work. The IRS looks very closely at your books, and the slightest irregularity can result in the revocation of your status, resulting in an expensive return to square one. It also costs a fair bit more in accounting fees each and every year. Since I didn't want to spend a significant portion of my time or money managing a paper tiger, especially one that might self-destruct without proper management, I decided to take the straightest line between two points in setting up the company. Its charter is to try and manage assets for the FreeBSD Project, said assets currently totaling a princely sum of $776.00 ($200 of which will go to pay the accountant this year). There haven't been enough assets to even really discuss up to now, which is why most of you probably haven't even heard of this yet. With everything else going on, I simply didn't feel that FreeBSD, Inc. ranked very highly on my TODO list just now. In any case, if there are those of you who don't need a 503C to claim a reasonable write-off (and I could probably generate some paperwork crediting you for a development expense, though I'd have to run it by the accountant first) then I'll happily start collecting donations against the day when we actually have enough money to start discussing real uses for it. Again, any and all donations will be considered the *project's* money to be spent on project resources (all purchasing decisions being first discussed with the core team, of course, and full disclosure of assets being in effect at all times). I also fully understand that when the ugly subject of money is raised, people often have a lot of questions about its dispersement, and I'll be more than happy to try and answer such questions as best I can. People should realize first and foremost, however, that this is fundamentally a matter of trust. If you can't trust me to do the best I can for the project, using whatever resources I can lay my hands on, then we have a more fundamental problem that needs addressing. You should also consider that our current arrangement is somewhat less than ideal, and that the project isn't going to advance very quickly if the best it can hope for is the occasional scrap tossed its way by Walnut Creek CDROM. We need to become less reliant on a single source of revenue and. in order for that to happen, David and I created FreeBSD, Inc. Those wishing to donate funds may make their checks payable to "FreeBSD, Inc" (NOT to me!), sending them to the following address: FreeBSD, Inc. 246 Park St. Clyde CA, 94520 If you'd prefer to do it by wire, you may also send deposits directly to: Bank Of America Concord Main Office P.O. Box 37176 San Francisco CA, 94137-5176 Routing #: 121-000-358 Account #: 01411-07441 (FreeBSD, Inc). Any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask! I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to open this can of worms just yet, but it seems like events are pushing me in that direction whether I like it or not.. :) Jordan
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