diff --git a/articles/finances.md b/articles/finances.md index d54cc90..7d69483 100644 --- a/articles/finances.md +++ b/articles/finances.md @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -date: 2024-08-26 +date: 2024-10-21 article.title: What has robur been doing and how since 2018? article.description: tags: @@ -26,8 +26,9 @@ 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 a non-profit company in Germany - and -friends of ours run that company. They get a cut on each income we generate. +funding. In the books, robur is part of the non-profit company +[Änderwerk](https://aenderwerk.de) in Germany - and friends of ours run that +company. They get a cut on each income we generate. 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 @@ -57,7 +58,7 @@ And later in 2018 we started on what is now called NetHSM with an initial design workshop (5,000 EUR). And lastly, we started to work on [TLS 1.3](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8446) -funded by Jane Street via OCaml Labs Consulting. In 2018, we received 12,741.71 EUR +funded by Jane Street (via OCaml Labs Consulting). In 2018, we received 12,741.71 EUR We applied at NLNet for improving the QubesOS firewall developed in MirageOS (without success), tried to get the IT security prize in Germany (without @@ -94,7 +95,8 @@ We also received a total of 516.48 EUR as donations from source unknown to us. We also applied to NLnet with [DNSvizor](https://nlnet.nl/project/Robur/), and got a grant, but due to buerocratic reasons they couldn't transfer the money to -our non-profit, and we didn't get any money in the end. +our non-profit (which was involved with NLnet in some EU grants), and we didn't +get any money in the end. | Project | Amount | |----------|----------:| @@ -114,7 +116,7 @@ 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 EUR for this maintenance. -We finished the TLS 1.3 work (18659.01 EUR) +We finished the TLS 1.3 work (18,659.01 EUR) We continued to work on the NetHSM project, and invoiced 55,500 EUR. @@ -179,7 +181,7 @@ total 22,500 EUR. A grant application for [bob](https://github.com/dinosaure/bob/) was rejected, but a grant application for [MirageVPN](https://github.com/robur-coop/miragevpn) -got accepted. +got accepted. Both at NLnet within the EU NGI project. | Project | Amount | |-------------|---------:| @@ -221,7 +223,7 @@ contract (54,937.50 EUR). We also finished the MirageVPN work, and received another 45,000 EUR. -We had a small contract with Semgrep again on porting Python code to OCaml and received 18,559.40 EUR. +We had a contract with Semgrep again on porting Python code to OCaml and received 18,559.40 EUR. We again worked on several successful funding applications, one on [PTT](https://nlnet.nl/project/PTT/) (NGI Zero Core), a continuation of the @@ -230,14 +232,14 @@ now realizing mailing lists with our SMTP stack. We also got [MTE](https://nlnet.nl/project/MTE/) (NGI Taler) accepted. -The below table is until end of August 2024. +The below table is until end of September 2024. | Project | Amount | |-----------|----------:| | Semgrep | 18,559.40 | -| Tarides | 54,937.50 | +| Tarides | 62,812.50 | | MirageVPN | 45,000.00 | -| __Total__ | __118,496.90__ | +| __Total__ | __126,371.90__ | ## Total @@ -251,24 +253,33 @@ In a single table, here's our income over the last 5 years. | 2021 | 164,976.00 | | 2022 | 107,000.00 | | 2023 | 141,250.00 | -| 2024 | 118,496.90 | -| __Total__ | __1,013,077.54__ | +| 2024 | 126,371.90 | +| __Total__ | __1,020,952.54__ | As you can spot, it varies quite a bit. In some years we have fewer money available than in other years. +## Expenses + +As mentioned, the non-profit company [Änderwerk](https://aenderwerk.de) 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. + +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). + ## Conclusion 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. From our income, some money flows to Aenderwerk for their amazing -bookkeeping work - writing invoices, doing the taxes, helping us with contracts. -We also finance our server, including a severe hard disk failure in June 2024. +other. 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. +public funding. This was our initial goal, and we're very happy that it works +fine over the last five years. 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. @@ -279,5 +290,11 @@ We are always happy to discuss how our collective operates. If you're interested, please drop us a message. Of course, if we receive donations, we use them wisely - mainly for working on -the currently not funded projects (bob, miou, mollymawk - to name a few). If you +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 [donate](https://robur.coop/Donate). +Donations are tax-deductable in Germany (and should be in Europe) since we're a +registered non-profit. + +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.