This article last updated: Saturday, 22 April 2006

OpenBSD needs funds like anything else

How you can help the OpenBSD project's finances

As with any other piece of software, the OpenBSD project needs money in order to continue. The project receives no funding, cost sharing or similar financial assistance from any company or educational establishment. However, they do have costs to cover, which are greatly reduced thanks to the volunteer nature of it's development community. I say greatly reduced, as wages for the development work would have knocked the project out long ago. However, there are still costs and these need to be covered. Some of these costs involve acquiring hardware, both to carry out work and to help in development of drivers and such like for the hardware. There are various ways that you can help in these matters.

Donations

Many people make contributions to the project, both monetary and physical hardware donations. An added incentive for donations, is that you will have the option of having your name or company added to a list of donators on the OpenBSD website and you can basque in the glory of it. If you have useful hardware that is not in use, check the OpenBSD website (various links are provided at the bottom of this page) and see if the hardware that you have going spare, is needed by the project. You can also donate money to the project and this can be done to suit your budget or pocket. Regular small donations, for example a few pounds each month, can be just as helpful as one off, larger donations and would suit the smaller budgets well. You might not think that a fiver each month, adding up to £60 a year, will benefit the project much, but multiply that by a thousand donators and it's a very significant contribution to the project's finances. Many people who actually make a living from the deployment and support of OpenBSD, make donations to the project, which is a good investment in their own livelihoods. Monetary donations can be made through either of the official sites, for Europe (below at kd85.com) or worldwide (above). If you would rather donate via snail mail, check out the sites for more information.

Purchases

You can also help the project by purchasing official CD ROM sets (OpenBSD 3.8 - ISBN: 0973179163) and other merchandise, from one of the two official points of sale for the project. There's some rather fetching clothing, complete with the OpenBSD Puffy motif and the OpenBSD motto embroidered upon it, for the discerning geek with an eye for fashion. There are also various books, covering OpenBSD, that are also sold through the sites and will be money very well spent. You can purchase the books and CD sets from other sources and this will also benefit the project, but to a lesser degree. Resellers are given up to 40 percent discount for bulk purchasing, which obviously is less profit for the project itself. I myself, being fairly new to OpenBSD have opted to purchase an official CD ROM set, directly from kd85.com. Prices are good and delivery, in my experience, was fast and reliable. I also found the service to be prompt, very courteous and helpful.

Businesses

The majority of users of OpenBSD are businesses, yet the majority of donators to OpenBSD, appear to be individuals. This is a sad fact about the world, if you don't have to then don't. People have hearts and common sense, unfortunately businesses do not. Ask an accountant if the company should give money to a project, when they are not legally obliged to and they will answer in the negative. The decision makers need to be educated to the fact that unless some sort of financial support is given to the OpenBSD project and its peripheral projects, then it might one day cease to exist. If that happens, then along with it will go the hugely cost effective edge security and encryption and security mechanisms that these businesses rely on. It is good business sense to make small, yet sensibly significant, contributions to help ensure the long term future of OpenBSD and its accoiciated projects. If OpenBSD were to cease to exist, then these businesses would need to start migrating to other systems and methods of securing and encrypting their systems and data. There are going to be significant costs and disruption to this. Also, without OpenBSD in existence, the vendors of other security systems are going to raise their prices, I have no doubt. So, although there is no legal obligation for businesses that benefit from OpenBSD and related technologies, there are benefits in doing so, to ensure long term existence and continues use. There is also the moral obligation of not constantly taking without giving something significant back, but this will always fall on deaf ears in accounting offices and board rooms.

I am beginning to feel like there may need to be changes in the BSD license or the licensing of OpenBSD, if the project is to survive and progress. This would be a sad loss to all concerned and may affect things negatively in the long term. For things to continue to work as they do, it does indeed need some changes, but those changes need to happen in the business community of OpenBSD users. The decision makers need to have it impressed upon them that they need to be giving something back, or the gift that keeps on giving, will one day become a discontinued line. I'm sure that they will understand that.

Why?

(an individual's perspective)

Apart from the obvious benefit to the project and it's ongoing development, you may be wondering 'why buy CD ROM sets, when I can download it for free?' Well, downloading OpenBSD takes bandwidth, which ultimately costs somebody, so this in itself is a strain to them. However, it is also of direct benefit to you, to buy an official CD ROM set. You see the CD images themselves are covered by a copyright. So what you buy, cannot be downloaded in that form. You can download everything that is contained on the official CD ROMs, bit by bit and you are welcome to, but this means that your machine needs to be connected to the Internet during the initial deployment, or you have to create a local repository on your network, to source the files from, which means downloading it all in the first place. Not ideal for the beginner, I know as I have done it in the past. The CD ROM sets also cover six of the available architectures, in i386, vax, macppc, amd64, sparc and sparc64. This is particularly useful to me, as I have i386 and Sparc64 based hardware.

The CD insert also has instructions for installing OpenBSD, which I would probably have found useful in my initial deployments, but with hindsight I am kind of glad I did it the hard way as I usually tend to. Oh and you also get some cool stickers! So, what are you waiting for? You can have an ultra secure operating system for around £30 and you are making a genuine difference by purchasing it and helping to support this fantastic operating system. Remember that OpenBSD is often the origin of various security related technologies that tend to find their way into other operating systems, including Windows. So, when you help OpenBSD, you are helping in the continued development of computer security, the world over.

Here are some useful links, if you are considering donating to or buying from the OpenBSD project:

Hope that helps!