There's no such thing as a "partially charitable act", FreeBSD can use the help - Colin shouldn't feel compelled to disclose his company's financials because someone on the internet feels that he somehow deserves that information.

I guess if you needed some sort of baseline by which to base your donation (assuming you actually intend to make one instead of just being snarky on the internet), I'd suggest starting with donating significant portions of your time to the FreeBSD project as Colin has done.

Frankly, this seems dumb to me. Self-sacrifice is not good if others are also made to suffer, profit is not evil if others also benefit.

And the fact that it is a business making the donation means that it isn't personal information, it's information about the business, so I didn't think his response was a reasonable answer.

The reasonable answer is "I'm not telling," not "I'm not telling and it's none of your business because this is a personal charitable contribution," which it isn't.

I don't think it's a bad thing he's trying to help FreeBSD, or make a profit. I just don't feel the same reverence for the act that the other people in this thread seem to, particularly since I have no way to judge how much FreeBSD will make, or how much he will profit on the increased sales.

All in all a good PR stunt... whether it's all that charitable of an act, we'll never know.

I didn't notice this bit when I replied earlier. If Tarsnap were a traditional startup company and there were cofounders and investors, I'd agree with you; but Tarsnap isn't that. Rather, Tarsnap is 100% owned by me, and the profits Tarsnap makes -- when I'm not donating them to the FreeBSD Foundation -- are my income.

To me this moves it from "business information" to "personal information": You're basically asking how much money I earn -- and while I know many people are happy to discuss that, the way I was raised makes me treat discussions of someone's income as only slightly less taboo than discussions of their sex life.

Well, that makes two of us!

When I contacted the FreeBSD Foundation to check that they had no objection to me announcing a donation this way, I gave them an estimate of how much they would receive if this didn't lead to more users signing up; but I'm certainly hoping that they'll get more than that.

So the "charitableness" of each good act is now to be quantified, measured, and judged? This heralds the end of small kindnesses, heretofore reckoned one of life's great pleasures.

Say again?

Thank you for making the donation though; it really is a great gesture.

The more customers he gains through this, the more he can give back come the end of the month, so why not mention it?