Great. ...if only people wouldn't have made such a fuss about a meagre $100.000 (yeah, it's a lot of money for me too, but these amazing guys are developing an OS, for god's sake, not crafting another "ubercool" webframework-of-the-month) and posted so many "i'd like to see the exact way the money is spent" comments everywhere (transparency is a lot of times the opposite of freedom, you know - once people have proved you they can deliver something great, as they have done in the past, stop incumbering them with extremely annoying requests for transparency!).
It's a legitimate request, and it shouldn't be even necessary to ask for it, for any project that accept donations or publicly funded. It's annoying, but it's important.
I don't think it is personally. Their transparency is in the updates to their software. If you think the updates don't correlate well with the level of contributions, than don't contribute.
Having to justify every expense would be extremely burdensome, and would only detract from running a productive foundation in my opinion. Would we ask Microsoft how it spends all the money we give it in exchange for a copy of Windows?
I think maybe if this was a cancer foundation, it would make sense. The results are harder to see, so you might legitimately be interested in seeing where the money goes.
In my experience it's not so much a matter of "legitimacy" or "transparency" so much as pragmatism; charities believe that "$10 buys and delivers an anti-malaria net" makes more than "$10 supports our work in various ways"
Whether OpenBSD believe transparency would increase donations enough to be worth the bother is of course another matter. And if they to and forego some donations that's up to them.
I think the analogy to MSFT shareholder is more apt and if the OpenBSD foundation is a foundation that has to report to some government bureau somewhere, there will be a report of some kind that the donors can use.
Even with shareholders. In the end, what they truely care about is that the bottom line keeps going higher. It's only when it's not that people start to care. But its really easy to look at expenses, and wonder how they are relevant.. then inadvertently make harmful decisions. Maybe the best programmer is most productive when surrounded by hookers and blow. If that showed up, people would instantly bulk, and it would be gone. But now the programmer is at a disadvantage.
I find it equally annoying to request for money, but not be transparent about it. Equally annoying is that when a request is made, you're considered an annoyance.
Deliver an OS has no relation to financial capabilities.
What would you do with the information? I think the OpenBSD foundation is transparent enough with their "Activities" page (http://openbsdfoundation.org/activities.html). What level of details would you like in a finacial statement from the OpenBSD project?
Keeping it pretty broad seems like the right solution. Given all the unsolicited "advice" they got just regarding their power bill, posting every expenditure would result in extreme amount of nitpicking of even the smallest items (perhaps especially the small expenses).
To be honest, I doubt that most of those who "Require complete transparency!" would even donate if a complet finacial statement was made. Most would probably find some small detail that they don't like an use that as an excuse for not donating. If you're concerned that money won't be spend on the project, I don't see how any promises about transparency would change your mind.
A standard "Statement of Activities" and "Financial Position" (the nonprofit equivalents of a Profit and Loss statement and Balance Sheet) would be nice.
These don't include every expenditure in detail, just the totals in broad categories. Yes, even that might generate some debate but when you're asking for donations you should not be offended if your benefactors would like at least some high-level insight into how their donations are being used.
This is not really a charity. The BSD team is providing great value by keeping the project alive to 'benefactors' and non-benefactors alike.
As long as they keep the promise of delivering the software with high quality, I don't think people should bother them with minutiae. Their time is better spent on working on the software. My two cents.
Within GNOME there is pretty complete financial transparency. There only a few who go over the numbers. I believe in "trust, but verify", though I don't check anything at all. I do see one or two people checking the financial figures. I really appreciate them taking the time to do that.
I agree with you that very likely anyone requesting this is not going to really donate. But at the same time I think the people who do verify the financial figures (independently) should be applauded.
I have seen other examples (not GNOME) where the lack of transparency caused things to happen that should not have. Sometimes even with the best intentions actually.
So regarding: what would I like to see? Nothing :-P I'm ok with a "not going to do that", as long as you don't dismiss that financial transparency (or an audit) does have its benefits.
"We would also like to thank the many smaller donors too numerous to list here for their contributons to the foundation."
If you go to the openbsd.org page, it does list the people who have given directly. I would like to see the foundation continue this tradition[1].
It's good to give first credit to the big donors, but it is kind of sad not to give credit to those paying every month[2]. It made me feel pretty good to get my name on the openbsd site's page and did encourage me to donate more.
1) with the donor's permission
2) reminds me a bit of Revision3's t-shirts sent to donors, but only the lump sum people who actually gave less than the monthly donors
Hm. I just realized that, while systems like this often display monthly donators, I've never seen one that showed the total donated by a monthly donator. If you've stuck with a monthly donation to X for a couple years, you could easily be in the hundreds, usually reserved for a relative few. It seems like this could be a good reward/incentive for monthly donors (which are probably worth more than one-timers anyway).
The developers of Dwarf Fortress (Bay 12 Games) do a financial/game report every month (though I'm unsure if you are not talking about disclosing what each monthly donor give):
I love to see that Google is on their top donors page every year, it shows their commitment to supporting open source and the tools they have used to build their business on.
Without putting motives into Google's metaphorical mouth - and because I'm sure your logic is likely correct - even if they didn't use these tools and didn't care about open source, the good will they get for being seen doing this would probably be worth the cost anyway if they pulled it from a marketing budget.
And yet you don't find any of the other companies we associate with "tech giants" there, nor on Freebsd's donors page [1], whereas Google is there every year.
So no, I really don't think it's that easy to dismiss it (even though that wasn't exactly what you were doing).
I know OpenBSD sells books and install media, but could they possibly sell other "swag" to help bring in stable money? I'm sure they could partner with one of the dozens of nerd shops (This is why i'm broke, thinkgeek, etc.) and sell $7 shirts with an OpenBSD logo on it for $12 + shipping. The partner shop takes $1 for overhead, OpenBSD takes $4.
In fact, I wonder if this could be a feasible startup? Selling FOSS swag with the principal of ~90% of all proceeds given directly to the defined organization... I'm sure it's been tried, but how unsuccessful have they been?
This was raised on the OpenBSD Misc mailing list. The response from OpenBSD team members was along the lines of: this stuff takes time/effort away from the development work.
Recall that the original funding request was asking for a Canadian company to basically pay the electricity bill, i.e. one or a small number of large sponsors.
Now: I'd like a laptop that will work with the *BSDs no fiddling. No blob wifi, no need for acpi daemons to control fans &c
OpenBSD sells this stuff in online stores. But the marketing sucks. You have to find the sorta buried link named 'CDs/Tshirts/Posters' on the main page - no "shop" or "buy" or "order" nearby. Clicking that link gets you a page you have to read to figure out that you still need to pick a store. Then the US store only had the latest three versions on CD. I've got to find another store that'll ship to the US if I want a t-shirt.
OpenBSD swag exists, but you've got to be a determined purchaser to buy it.
Yeah, I was able to find that, too. There wasn't an easy way to purchase things on most of those sites. It seemed like half didn't incorporate an online shopping cart/ecommerce solution at all, and would rather you contact them via email or phone to make a purchase. This seems really backwards.
And while OpenBSD may list them as a preferred vendor (or whatever nomenclature they used) how can I be assured the bulk of the proceeds from that sale will go to OpenBSD? I didn't find much (if any) indication that any amount of money was given back...
I'm with you but at the same time, who cares? I feel like they already earned every penny, not to mention as long as the project is alive it's money well spent.
