FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012

Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by cperciva on Friday December 28, 2012 @06:09PM (#4980087)

There's something very interesting going on here: A week ago the total jumped by $100k from an anonymous donation. Now the total just jumped by another $150k, and the donors list is showing "Anonymous Donor" in a new $250k+ category. Did Mr. Anonymous send in a $100k check and then change his mind and add another $150k a week later?

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by enduser on Friday December 28, 2012 @10:12PM (#4980929)

US public charities (which means donations from the public are tax-deductable) are limited in the percentage of their income they can receive from private foundations and families. The amount of the large donation may have been contingent upon receiving enough funds from a broader base of sources. Too large of a donation could have caused the FreeBSD Foundation to fail their public support test for the year and be reclassified as a private foundation.

IANAL, but I am the chairman of a 501(c)(3)

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by cperciva on Saturday December 29, 2012 @12:13AM (#4981224)

I don't think that's a problem here. I've been looking at the donors list and the sizes of donations for the past few months with an eye to where the public support test ends up, and by my arithmetic they could have given the $250k earlier in the year without ever putting the Foundation at risk of failing the public support test.

For what it's worth: Over the 2008-2012 window, the 2%-of-total-support cap on the amount of each donor's contribution which counts as "public" is currently at almost $40k; and there are five donors (Anonymous, NetApp, Hudson River Trading, iXsystems, and Google) which are currently above that limit. As a result, each new dollar donated by someone not on that list else counts as $1.10 towards the "public support" amount, since it increases by 5 x $0.02 the amount of "public support" from those five largest donors, in addition to the $1 itself counting as public support.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by oijaf888 on Saturday December 29, 2012 @03:24AM (#4981516)

Maybe Apple? Perhaps some departments had spare budget to spend before the end of the year so they donated it and it was just consolidation?

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by reidrac on Saturday December 29, 2012 @04:28AM (#4981597)

The whole point of an anonymous donation is that is anonymous. I agree that it is a corporate user, and it's possible that using FreeBSD is a strategic advantage they don't want to disclose. Or is just that they don't want the PR part of it.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by oijaf888 on Saturday December 29, 2012 @12:34PM (#4982693)

Right I'm saying it could be a large enough company that they have multiple streams of donations going at once and it was consolidated after the fact. Like international divisions or similar.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by mrkodiak on Friday December 28, 2012 @06:47PM (#4980232)

I'm curious who Mr. Anon is as well. Seems like the expected big pocket FreeBSD companies are already listed.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by cperciva on Friday December 28, 2012 @06:53PM (#4980248)

I'm aware of large FreeBSD-using companies which are not listed. Some of them go to varying lengths to avoid publicizing their use of FreeBSD, so if it's one of them I could certainly understand why they'd want to avoid having their name appear at the top of the FreeBSD Foundation donors list.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by ced on Friday December 28, 2012 @07:36PM (#4980395)

Some of them go to varying lengths to avoid publicizing their use of FreeBSD

Why?

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by cperciva on Friday December 28, 2012 @07:43PM (#4980425)

Usually it's a matter of keeping secrets from their competitors. If you know that a device due to be released next year will be running FreeBSD, it could help you figure out what components are going to be in it, for example (probably parts which FreeBSD can already run on), which might tell you something about its performance.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by BadDesign on Saturday December 29, 2012 @04:26AM (#4981593)

Innovation through obscurity.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by cperciva on Saturday December 29, 2012 @07:05AM (#4981869)

Alas, there's more to commercial success than mere innovation.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by vacri on Friday December 28, 2012 @06:45PM (#4980218)

You may be on to something - perhaps the donor is not anonymous, but Anonymous, of 4chan fame?

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by cperciva on Friday December 28, 2012 @06:51PM (#4980241)

No, it's someone or some company wishing to remain anonymous. There are other listings for anonymous donations.

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Re:FreeBSD Foundation exceeds target for 2012 by vacri on Friday December 28, 2012 @10:30PM (#4980986)

(joke)

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