Fundraising for FreeBSD security development

[Colin Percival]

Dear FreeBSD users,

Slightly more than three years ago, I released FreeBSD Update, my first
major contribution to FreeBSD.  Since then, I have become a FreeBSD
committer, joined the FreeBSD Security Team, released Portsnap, and
become the FreeBSD Security Officer.  However, as I have gone from
being a graduate student at Oxford University -- busy writing my thesis
-- to a researcher at Simon Fraser University -- busy doing research
and writing papers -- my "to do" list of FreeBSD-related work has
continued growing, and I have now come to realize that some of the
items on that list will probably never be finished until I get a chance
to work full-time on FreeBSD.

This is where you come in.  I'm hoping to raise $15,000 Canadian (about
US$13,000) to pay me to work full-time on FreeBSD for 16 weeks over the
summer.  This will allow me to devote more time to my role as FreeBSD
Security Officer, perform a complete overhaul of FreeBSD Update, and
make some significant improvements to Portsnap.

Based on my estimates of the number of systems currently using Portsnap
and FreeBSD Update (about 8500 and 4500 respectively based on my server
logs) this works out to one US dollar per computer (or two dollars for
systems using both Portsnap and FreeBSD Update); I don't think this is
an unreasonable amount to ask for even if I only receive donations
from people who are using Portsnap or FreeBSD Update.  That said, if
I don't reach my target for donations, I'll get as much work done within
the time I have funds for before returning to other paying work (most
likely at the university again).

Donations can be sent by paypal to cperciva at freebsd.org; if you would
prefer to send a cheque (which is probably only worthwhile for cheques
in Canadian or US dollars), please contact me by email to obtain my
mailing address.  In either case, please let me know if you wish to
remain anonymous.

For more details, see http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/funding.html .

Colin Percival