[orbitur]

If I'm donating I would like to know exactly where the money is going, and what options have already been explored. OpenBSD should have referenced, full documentation about these things if they want to maximize donations.

Apparently, there isn't very much documentation/open accounting, and they aren't willing to discuss options to reduce the bill. That doesn't inspire confidence.

[gtaylor]

> Apparently, there isn't very much documentation/open accounting, and they aren't willing to discuss options to reduce the bill. That doesn't inspire confidence.

It is a lot of work for a small team to itemize and publish every expense, but some rough breakdown of monthly expenses that my donation would be going towards would really help.

[cdcarter]

If their books are clean, this is actually pretty easy. Just pulling an annual operating budget should be much easier, if they have good financial practices and controls in place.

[jff]

If they know they need $20k, they must have arrived at that number somehow. Publishing that estimation would be a good start.

[hhw]

They're not looking for a lot of smaller donators in this specific instance (although I'm sure it's appreciated), but rather one large Canadian company to foot the bill and on that company's books for accounting purposes.

[gabeguz]

And suppose OpenBSD wanted to know exactly wtf you were planning on doing with OpenSSH after you downloaded it... what servers are you planning to connect to, what keys are you planning on using? You know, if you're going to use OpenSSH they want to know exactly what for. Just leaching off the project doesn't inspire confidence.

OpenBSD releases quality software that all of us use EVERY SINGLE DAY as far as I'm concerned Theo can take the money and buy a yacht with it as long as they keep doing what they are doing.

[rantanplan]

Yes he can(and probably should) buy a yacht. What you're missing though is that by not being transparent they miss out on a lot more contributors. So it's not a super smart move.

Also keep in mind that a lot of contributors might not use OpenBSD, yet they might be interested in offering some small amount if they believe it's for a good cause and they know where that money is going.

[jessaustin]

...there isn't very much documentation/open accounting...

So your feeling is similar to that toward a homeless dude? You'll give him a sandwich but not cash? If they're saying power is the shortfall, maybe we just need to buy them some solar panels or wind generators or something.

[justincormack]

These costs are not much versus the costs of hiring developers.

[jethro_tell]

Not sure how much they are hiring developers. They said the number they need annually is more inline with $150,000. I'm not sure if that's in addition to current donations or total but you wouldn't be hiring many devs with $150k - $20k for power- wherever Theo needs.