forked from robur/blog.robur.coop
410 lines
17 KiB
HTML
410 lines
17 KiB
HTML
<!doctype html>
|
|
<html lang="en">
|
|
<head>
|
|
<meta charset="utf-8">
|
|
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
|
|
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
|
|
<title>
|
|
Robur's blogHow has robur financially been doing since 2018?
|
|
</title>
|
|
<meta name="description" content="How we organise as a collective, and why we're doing that.">
|
|
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.robur.coop/css/hl.css">
|
|
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.robur.coop/css/style.css">
|
|
<script src="https://blog.robur.coop/js/hl.js"></script>
|
|
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://blog.robur.coop/feed.xml" title="blog.robur.coop">
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<header>
|
|
<h1>blog.robur.coop</h1>
|
|
<blockquote>
|
|
The <strong>Robur</strong> cooperative blog.
|
|
</blockquote>
|
|
</header>
|
|
<main><a href="https://blog.robur.coop/index.html">Back to index</a>
|
|
|
|
<article>
|
|
<h1>How has robur financially been doing since 2018?</h1>
|
|
<ul class="tags-list"><li><a href="https://blog.robur.coop/tags.html#tag-finances">finances</a></li><li><a href="https://blog.robur.coop/tags.html#tag-cooperative">cooperative</a></li></ul><p>Since the beginning, robur has been working on MirageOS unikernels and getting
|
|
them deployed. Due to our experience in hierarchical companies, we wanted to
|
|
create something different - a workplace without bosses and management. Instead,
|
|
we are a collective where everybody has a say on what we do, and who gets how
|
|
much money at the end of the month. This means nobody has to write report and
|
|
meet any goals - there's no KPI involved. We strive to be a bunch of people
|
|
working together nicely and projects that we own and want to bring forward. If
|
|
we discover lack of funding, we reach out to (potential) customers to fill our
|
|
cash register. Or reach out to people to donate money.</p>
|
|
<p>Since our mission is fulfilling and already complex - organising ourselves in a
|
|
hierarchy-free environment, including the payment, and work on software in a
|
|
niche market - we decided from the early days that bookeeping and invoicing
|
|
should not be part of our collective. Especially since we want to be free in
|
|
what kind of funding we accept - donations, commercial contracts, public
|
|
funding. In the books, robur is part of the non-profit company
|
|
<a href="https://aenderwerk.de">Änderwerk</a> in Germany - and friends of ours run that
|
|
company. They get a cut on each income we generate.</p>
|
|
<p>To be inclusive and enable everyone to participate in decisions, we are 100%
|
|
transparent in our books - every collective member has access to the financial
|
|
spreadsheets, contracts, etc. We use a needs-based payment model, so we talk
|
|
about the needs everyone has on a regular basis and adjust the salary, everyone
|
|
agreeing to all the numbers.</p>
|
|
<h2 id="2018"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2018"></a>2018</h2>
|
|
<p>We started operations in 2018. In late 2017, we got donations (in the form of
|
|
bitcoins) by friends who were convinced of our mission. This was 54,194.91 €.
|
|
So, in 2018 we started with that money, and tried to find a mission, and
|
|
generate income to sustain our salaries.</p>
|
|
<p>Also, already in 2017, we applied for funding from
|
|
<a href="https://prototypefund.de">Prototypefund</a> on a <a href="https://prototypefund.de/project/robur-io/">CalDAV server</a>,
|
|
and we received the grant in early 2018. This was another 48,500 €, paid to
|
|
individuals (due to reasons, Prototype fund can't cash out to the non-profit -
|
|
this put us into some struggle, since we needed some double bookkeeping and
|
|
individuals had to dig into health care etc.).</p>
|
|
<p>We also did in the second half of 2018 a security audit for
|
|
<a href="https://leastauthority.com/blog/audits/five-security-audits-for-the-tezos-foundation/">Least Authority</a>
|
|
(invoicing 19,600 €).</p>
|
|
<p>And later in 2018 we started on what is now called NetHSM with an initial
|
|
design workshop (5,000 €).</p>
|
|
<p>And lastly, we started to work on a grant to implement <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8446">TLS 1.3</a>,
|
|
funded by Jane Street (via OCaml Labs Consulting). In 2018, we received 12,741.71 €</p>
|
|
<p>We applied at NLNet for improving the QubesOS firewall developed in MirageOS
|
|
(without success), tried to get the IT security prize in Germany (without
|
|
success), and to DIAL OSC (without success).</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Project</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Donation</td>
|
|
<td class="right">54,194.91</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Prototypefund</td>
|
|
<td class="right">48,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Least Authority</td>
|
|
<td class="right">19,600.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>TLS 1.3</td>
|
|
<td class="right">12,741.71</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Nitrokey</td>
|
|
<td class="right">5,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>140,036.62</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="2019"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2019"></a>2019</h2>
|
|
<p>We were keen to finish the CalDAV implementation (and start a CardDAV
|
|
implementation), and received some financial support from Tarides for it
|
|
(15,000 €).</p>
|
|
<p>The TLS 1.3 work continued, we got in total 68,887.53 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We also applied to (and got funding from) Prototypefund, once with an <a href="https://prototypefund.de/en/project/robust-openvpn-client-with-low-use-of-resources/">OpenVPN-compatible
|
|
MirageOS unikernel</a>,
|
|
and once with <a href="https://prototypefund.de/project/portable-firewall-fuer-qubesos/">improving the QubesOS firewall developed as MirageOS unikernel</a>.
|
|
This means again twice 48,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We also started the implementation work of NetHSM - which still included a lot
|
|
of design work - in total the contract was over 82,500 €. In 2019, we invoiced
|
|
Nitrokey in 2019 in total 40,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We also received a total of 516.48 € as donations from source unknown to us.</p>
|
|
<p>We also applied to NLnet with <a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/Robur/">DNSvizor</a>, and
|
|
got a grant, but due to buerocratic reasons they couldn't transfer the money to
|
|
our non-profit (which was involved with NLnet in some EU grants), and we didn't
|
|
get any money in the end.</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Project</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>CardDAV</td>
|
|
<td class="right">15,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>TLS 1.3</td>
|
|
<td class="right">68,887.53</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>OpenVPN</td>
|
|
<td class="right">48,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>QubesOS</td>
|
|
<td class="right">48,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Donation</td>
|
|
<td class="right">516.48</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Nitrokey</td>
|
|
<td class="right">40,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>221,904.01</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="2020"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2020"></a>2020</h2>
|
|
<p>In 2020, we agreed with OCaml Labs Consulting to work on maintenance of OCaml
|
|
packages in the MirageOS ecosystem. This was a contract where at the end of the
|
|
month, we reported on which PRs and issues we spent how much time. For us, this
|
|
was great to have the freedom to work on which OCaml packages we were keen to
|
|
get up to speed. In 2020, we received 45,000 € for this maintenance.</p>
|
|
<p>We finished the TLS 1.3 work (18,659.01 €)</p>
|
|
<p>We continued to work on the NetHSM project, and invoiced 55,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We received a total of 255 € in donations from sources unknown to us.</p>
|
|
<p>We applied at reset.tech again with DNSvizor, unfortunately without success.</p>
|
|
<p>We also applied at <a href="https://pointer.ngi.eu">NGI pointer</a> to work on reproducible
|
|
builds for MirageOS, and a web frontend. Here we got the grant of 200,000 €,
|
|
which we worked on in 2021 and 2022.</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Project</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>OCLC</td>
|
|
<td class="right">45,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>TLS 1.3</td>
|
|
<td class="right">18,659.01</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Nitrokey</td>
|
|
<td class="right">55,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Donations</td>
|
|
<td class="right">255.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>119,414.01</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="2021"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2021"></a>2021</h2>
|
|
<p>As outlined, we worked on reproducible builds of unikernels - rethinking the way
|
|
how a unikernel is configured: no more compiled-in secrets, but instead using
|
|
boot parameters. We setup the infrastructure for doing daily reproducible
|
|
builds, serving system packages via a package repository, and a
|
|
<a href="https://builds.robur.coop">web frontend</a> hosting the reproducible builds.
|
|
We received in total 120,000 € from NGI Pointer in 2021.</p>
|
|
<p>Our work on NetHSM continued, including the introduction of elliptic curves
|
|
in mirage-crypto (using <a href="https://github.com/mit-plv/fiat-crypto/">fiat</a>). The
|
|
invoices to Nitrokey summed up to 26,000 € in 2021.</p>
|
|
<p>We developed in a short timeframe two packages, <a href="https://github.com/robur-coop/u2f">u2f</a>
|
|
and later <a href="https://git.robur.coop/robur/webauthn">webauthn</a> for Skolem Labs based
|
|
on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy">gift economy</a>. This resulted in
|
|
donations of 18,976 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We agreed with <a href="https://ocaml-sf.org/">OCSF</a> to work on
|
|
<a href="https://github.com/hannesm/conex">conex</a>, which we have not delivered yet
|
|
(lots of other things had to be cleared first: we did a security review of opam
|
|
(leading to <a href="https://opam.ocaml.org/blog/opam-2-1-5-local-cache/">a security advisory</a>),
|
|
we got rid of <a href="https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-opam-repository-policy-change-checksums-no-md5-and-no-extra-files"><code>extra-files</code></a>
|
|
in the opam-repository, and we <a href="https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-opam-repository-policy-change-checksums-no-md5-and-no-extra-files">removed the weak hash md5</a>
|
|
from the opam-repository.</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Customer</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>NGI Pointer</td>
|
|
<td class="right">120,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Nitrokey</td>
|
|
<td class="right">26,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Skolem</td>
|
|
<td class="right">18,976.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>164,976.00</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="2022"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2022"></a>2022</h2>
|
|
<p>We finished our NGI pointer project, and received another 80,000 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We also did some minor maintenance for Nitrokey, and invoiced 4,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>For Tarides, we started another maintaining MirageOS packages (and continuing
|
|
<a href="https://github.com/robur-coop/utcp">our TCP/IP stack</a>), and invoiced in
|
|
total 22,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>A grant application for <a href="https://github.com/dinosaure/bob/">bob</a> was rejected,
|
|
but a grant application for <a href="https://github.com/robur-coop/miragevpn">MirageVPN</a>
|
|
got accepted. Both at NLnet within the EU NGI project.</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Project</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>NGI Pointer</td>
|
|
<td class="right">80,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Nitrokey</td>
|
|
<td class="right">4,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Tarides</td>
|
|
<td class="right">22,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>107,000.00</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="2023"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2023"></a>2023</h2>
|
|
<p>We finished the NetHSM project, and had a final invoice over 2,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We started a collaboration for <a href="https://semgrep.dev">semgrep</a>, porting some of
|
|
their Python code to OCaml. We received in total 37,500 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We continued the MirageOS opam package maintenance and invoiced in total
|
|
89,250 € to Tarides.</p>
|
|
<p>A grant application on <a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/MirageVPN/">MirageVPN</a> got
|
|
accepted (NGI Assure), and we received in total 12,000 € for our work on it.
|
|
This is a continuation of our 2019 work funded by Prototypefund.</p>
|
|
<p>We also wrote various funding applications, including one for
|
|
<a href="https://github.com/robur-coop/dnsvizor">DNSvizor</a> that was
|
|
<a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/DNSvizor/">accepted</a> (NGI0 Entrust).</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Customer</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Nitrokey</td>
|
|
<td class="right">2,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>semgrep</td>
|
|
<td class="right">37,500.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Tarides</td>
|
|
<td class="right">89,250.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>MirageVPN</td>
|
|
<td class="right">12,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>141,250.00</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="2024"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#2024"></a>2024</h2>
|
|
<p>We're still in the middle of it, but so far we continued the Tarides maintenance
|
|
contract (54,937.50 €).</p>
|
|
<p>We also finished the MirageVPN work, and received another 45,000 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We had a contract with Semgrep again on porting Python code to OCaml and received 18,559.40 €.</p>
|
|
<p>We again worked on several successful funding applications, one on
|
|
<a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/PTT/">PTT</a> (NGI Zero Core), a continuation of the
|
|
<a href="https://www.ngi.eu/funded_solution/ngi-dapsiproject-24/">NGI DAPSI</a> project -
|
|
now realizing mailing lists with our SMTP stack.</p>
|
|
<p>We also got <a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/MTE/">MTE</a> (NGI Taler) accepted.</p>
|
|
<p>The below table is until end of September 2024.</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Project</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Semgrep</td>
|
|
<td class="right">18,559.40</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>Tarides</td>
|
|
<td class="right">62,812.50</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>MirageVPN</td>
|
|
<td class="right">45,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>126,371.90</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><h2 id="total"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#total"></a>Total</h2>
|
|
<p>In a single table, here's our income since robur started.</p>
|
|
<div role="region"><table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<th>Year</th>
|
|
<th class="right">Amount</th>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2018</td>
|
|
<td class="right">140,036.62</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2019</td>
|
|
<td class="right">221,904.01</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2020</td>
|
|
<td class="right">119,414.01</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2021</td>
|
|
<td class="right">164,976.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2022</td>
|
|
<td class="right">107,000.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2023</td>
|
|
<td class="right">141,250.00</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>2024</td>
|
|
<td class="right">126,371.90</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td><strong>Total</strong></td>
|
|
<td class="right"><strong>1,020,952.54</strong></td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table></div><p><img src="../images/finances.png" alt="Plot of above income table" ></p>
|
|
<p>As you can spot, it varies quite a bit. In some years we have fewer money
|
|
available than in other years.</p>
|
|
<h2 id="expenses"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#expenses"></a>Expenses</h2>
|
|
<p>As mentioned, the non-profit company <a href="https://aenderwerk.de">Änderwerk</a> running
|
|
the bookkeeping and legal stuff (invoices, tax statements, contracts, etc.) gets
|
|
a cut on each income we produce. They are doing amazing work and are very
|
|
quick responding to our queries.</p>
|
|
<p>We spend most of our income on salary. Some money we spend on travel. We also
|
|
pay monthly for our server (plus some extra for hardware, and in June 2024 a
|
|
huge amount for trying to recover data from failed SSDs).</p>
|
|
<h2 id="conclusion"><a class="anchor" aria-hidden="true" href="#conclusion"></a>Conclusion</h2>
|
|
<p>We have provided an overview of our income, we were three to five people working
|
|
at robur over the entire time. As written at the beginning, we use needs-based
|
|
payment. Our experience with this is great! It provides a lot of trust into each
|
|
other.</p>
|
|
<p>Our funding is diverse from multiple sources - donations, commercial work,
|
|
public funding. This was our initial goal, and we're very happy that it works
|
|
fine over the last five years.</p>
|
|
<p>Taking the numbers into account, we are not paying ourselves "industry standard"
|
|
rates - but we really love what we do - and sometimes we just take some time off.
|
|
We do work on various projects that we really really enjoy - but where (at the
|
|
moment) no funding is available for.</p>
|
|
<p>We are always happy to discuss how our collective operates. If you're
|
|
interested, please drop us a message.</p>
|
|
<p>Of course, if we receive donations, we use them wisely - mainly for working on
|
|
the currently not funded projects (bob, albatross, miou, mollymawk - to name a few). If you
|
|
can spare a dime or two, don't hesitate to <a href="https://robur.coop/Donate">donate</a>.
|
|
Donations are tax-deductable in Germany (and should be in Europe) since we're a
|
|
registered non-profit.</p>
|
|
<p>If you're interested in MirageOS and using it in your domain, don't hesitate
|
|
to reach out to us (via eMail: team@robur.coop) so we can start to chat - we're keen to deploy MirageOS
|
|
and find more domains where it is useful.</p>
|
|
|
|
</article>
|
|
|
|
</main>
|
|
<footer>
|
|
<a href="https://github.com/xhtmlboi/yocaml">Powered by <strong>YOCaml</strong></a>
|
|
<br />
|
|
</footer>
|
|
<script>hljs.highlightAll();</script>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|