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Dear Foundation Colleagues, |
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I want to touch on essentially 4 topics for the Fiscal 2020 year: Finances, |
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Foundation Programs, Spending, and the future for Gentoo Foundation Inc. |
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First, fiscal year 2020 (July 2019 - June 2020) ended as expected. The |
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Foundation paid taxes for 4 previous years (fiscal years |
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2016,2017,2018,2019) and we believe we have achieved good standing with the |
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IRS. We have retained a CPA (and have already begun the paperwork to file |
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for our taxes for fiscal year 2020, which we expect to occur before Oct |
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2020. In my original proposal for running for the board[0] this was item 1. |
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As I mentioned in last year’s letter[1] we did not expect to make a profit |
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in fiscal 2020 and we did not due to the expected tax related expenditures. |
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These can be found in the Secretary Report[2] for fiscal 2020. |
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Secondly, The Foundation engaged in three programs this year. |
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1. |
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Foundation Spending: Nominally the purpose of this program is to sustain |
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the correct operation of the Foundation; I expect this program to recur |
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every year until the Foundation ceases and that the program expense will be |
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non-trivial (e.g. $3000-5000) for accounting and bookkeeper expenses as |
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well as tax preparation. As noted by some members, this program is a |
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significant portion of the Gentoo Foundation’s revenue (e.g. in 2020 it was |
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6000 / 16000 for accounting, although this included tax prep for previous |
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years.) |
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2. |
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Nitrokey: Gentoo sponsors Nitro Keys hardware for Gentoo Developers. |
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This program technically began in 2019 but I believe invoicing (from |
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Nitrokey) did not begin until fiscal 2020. We believe the majority of the |
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cost of this program is completed (see the 2020 financials[3] for |
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specifics) but we may incur minor additional expenses as new developers |
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join Gentoo. |
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3. |
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Infrastructure Spending: Gentoo Foundation continues to support Gentoo |
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with infrastructure payments. We signed a deal with Amazon Web Services |
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(AWS) to join their open source credits program and Gentoo has used the |
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credits to run a distfiles mirror test and to host various Amazon VMs for |
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developers, as well as ARM64 development. |
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Thirdly, I want to discuss the spending of Gentoo Foundation’s capital. We |
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end fiscal 2020 with an excess of $140,000 in cash equivalents (cash on |
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hand, paypal, etc.) This is a significant pile of capital that we could |
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deploy in support of the Gentoo community. In the past, the board was |
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essentially unwilling to spend large amounts of capital due to the unknown |
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tax liabilities that the Foundation faced in previous years. However since |
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we have since resolved those liabilities we are in a stronger position to |
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fund new programs. However, it’s unclear exactly how we should deploy this |
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capital. I again implore the community to suggest ways that the money can |
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be put to good use in order to facilitate the mission of Gentoo and to |
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further its development. |
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Finally, I want to speak to the future of the Gentoo Foundation Inc. In my |
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original platform[0] I had written that I expected the Gentoo Foundation to |
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be dissolved. I wrote this because I believe the existing mission of the |
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Gentoo Foundation[4] nominally prevents a larger Foundation from existing. |
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The Foundation is not allowed to ‘intervene’ in Gentoo development and this |
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can be read as a broad moratorium on influencing development in any |
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significant way. This is perhaps a good thing, but it also means that the |
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Foundation is unlikely to be able to drive program spending from the |
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Foundation leadership or at the board of trustees level. Instead funding |
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requests must come from developers, to directly support development at the |
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explicit request of developers in the project. Since this is rare it seems |
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like the overhead of an entire nonprofit organization is not worth the |
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cost. This will likely remain true as long as the Foundation’s remit does |
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not change and while funding requests remain rare and small in scope. |
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Luckily we have individual members reaching out to various open source |
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umbrella organizations that we may replace the Gentoo Foundation with; and |
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I suspect that these organizations may better serve the needs of the |
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community. This is basically steps 2-3 of my original platform[0]. Expect |
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news on these efforts in fiscal 2021. |
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-A |
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[0] https://dev.gentoo.org/~antarus/AntarusBoardPlatform.pdf |
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[1] |
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https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-nfp/message/58481644444c8eb6c314aa2f8a0eceb8 |
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[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:2020_Secretary_Report |
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[3] |
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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Gentoo_Foundation_Finances_FY2020#Program:_Nitrokey |
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[4] https://www.gentoo.org/inside-gentoo/foundation/ |
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