Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 14:33:29 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: Kirk Fort <kirk@patrohn.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD finances Message-ID: <4594.911082809@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 14 Nov 1998 13:08:38 PST." <199811142108.NAA07371@dingo.cdrom.com>
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> I don't know where you heard this, but this isn't the case. > > Walnut Creek CDROM spends a lot of money on the Project, yes, but there > is no such formal agreement (and indeed, if you think about it for a > moment, there would be no incentive for such an agreement). Actually, there is currently an informal agreement between ourselves and the owner of Walnut Creek CDROM which states that WC will be investing 100% (or something very close to it) of its net profits from FreeBSD into the project for now. We're in a growth phase right now and such reinvestment is not unusual - Bob wants to make a bunch of new things (like tech support) happen and he knows that it's going to take some significant $$$ in the short term to make that happen. Since we're making a reasonable but not killer profit at the moment (the whole CD biz seems to be in a slump), that doesn't take a lot of $$$ before reaching 100%. > WC has never, to the best of my knowledge, given money to the FreeBSD > project. Assistance has always come in the form of non-cash assets Yeah, they've done that too. Paying Eugene, for example, is a pretty good example of direct monetary contribution. :-) > Since you're working from fundamentally flawed numbers to start with, > none of this holds. I'm not at liberty to discuss the actual numbers > involved, but I can say that you're *wildly* off on the low side. I was talking to him earlier about just the donation side, that is money people give directly to FreeBSD, Inc. vs money spent on CDs. That amount is, indeed, around $10K/yr (in a good year - some years its as low as $4-$5K) and, of that, $600 goes to pay California's ridiculously high corporation tax every year and $400 goes to the company's accountant to keep the books balanced and generally handle all the receipts. I could have registered this corporation in Nevada or something but it would have only added in a different set of hassles, not necessarily a better/cheaper set. > Money donated directly to FreeBSD Inc. is spent primarily on the > following types of items: > > - Hardware for developers (eg. new cards for driver development, > systems for testing purposes, other infrastructure). > - Consulting fees for developers specifically working on focussed > FreeBSD-related issues. > - Promotional activities. That pretty much sums it up. > Walnut Creek CDROM is known to support the FreeBSD Project in at least > the following ways. You'll note that none of these involve giving cash > to FreeBSD Inc. Right, no actual cash to FreeBSD, Inc. is given by WC, they preferring to make their contributions directly and we also liking things that way. Give money to FreeBSD, Inc. and now I've just got to manage the funds and see that they're spent before the end of the year (tax time); agree to buy the hardware or developer hours yourself, however, and now you've just made my job a lot easier. That's another reason FreeBSD, Inc. doesn't get more than $10K/yr worth of donations - it's a lot better for me to get somebody like David Filo to hire a couple of FreeBSD geeks (which is a $200K/yr proposition once you add medical, dental and 401K) rather than trying to solicit the money for such programs directly. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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