As many of you will be aware, several months ago we set up a non-profit
corporation called "Freenet Project Inc", the intention of which is to
support the development of Freenet (note that this is unrelated to
Uprizer Inc). We also started asking for donations on our website, and
the results have been impressive. We have received almost $2000 in
donations over the past few months, and donations continue on a daily
basis.
One of the stated purposes of this money was to hire a full-time
programmer to work on Freenet. We are extremely fortunate that Oskar
Sandberg has agreed to work full-time on Freenet this summer, supported
by $2500 from the non-profit funds. Note that this is significantly
less than he could earn in the same amount of time as a professional
programmer. Oskar has been the lynchpin of Freenet development for over
a year, and his full-time attention to the project will provide a
significant boost to development. While the rate of donations should
comfortably accomodate this cost, Steven Starr (who helps me to run the
non-prof) and I have agreed to cover any short-fall should things go
horribly wrong.
As for the future, hopefully people's generosity towards the project
will continue, this may give us the opportunity to hire additional
people, or maybe extend Oskar's arrangement if that is acceptable to
him.
Anyone interested in donating to the project, or finding out more about
the Freenet Project non-profit, should take a look here:
http://freenetproject.org/index.php?page=donations
Ian Clarke
Founder & Coordinator,
Free Network Project.
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