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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why, really. I read Facebook's statement. But everyone always has internal motives (in particular when money is involved), and I wonder what Facebook gains from this?

I know why EFF/Mozilla does it (charity), Akamai do it ($$$ for them), Cisco might also profit from it somehow (e.g. upgraded enterprise appliances to support HTTPS on the proxy), but Facebook? I don't get Facebook's play here.

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Why can't their motivation be charity like Mozilla? Or maybe they just want to see a more secure internet?

They aren't totally evil. They want to use their power for good once in a while.

Mozilla are a registered charity, Facebook are a for profit company.

I'm not a huge fan of facebook either, but how is this a response to @jedberg's point, at all? Being a "For profit company" doesn't preclude them from "using their power for good once in a while."

It's not binary. Companies can do good things without being charities.

Mozilla's corporate structure is a bit more complicated than that.. The Mozilla Foundation is the overarching 501.3(c) nonprofit, but much of the software development (Firefox et al) is owned by a for-profit wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation called Mozilla Corporation.

Maybe when you're worth $40bn or whatever and you plan to give 99% of it away for philanthropic purposes, you don't need to live life with such a miserly attitude?

Facebook, the company, is planning on giving away their entire net worth? Where are you getting this from? Also isn't Facebook worth somewhere in the region of $245 billion?

Not FB, only Mark Zuckerberg AFAIK.

when FB runs an elaborate campaign to make plebs believe their dear leader is investing his fortune into a charity, when in reality he's invested it into a Delaware based LLC that allows him to avoid Estate taxes....then you start questioning the intent of FB.

It's not "philanthropic purpose" it's an investment vehicle that can be used to do virtually everyone, without scrutiny.

TFA says that Facebook has a "Gold" level sponsorship. Gold sponsorships cost $150K/year (see https://letsencrypt.org/become-a-sponsor/), which isn't much for a company the size of FB. (It's not even the most expensive sponsorship level available -- Akamai and Cisco are both "Platinum" sponsors, for instance, which costs $300-350K/year.)

So the motivation is pretty straightforward: they spend what to them is a small amount of cash in order to get a little goodwill and maybe some positive press. (Which are the usual reasons corporations sponsor not-for-profit projects anyway.) Everybody wins.

And really goodwill is the excuse used by the advocates in the company for whatever the sponsorship they want the company to make. It makes sense.

Also even just the goodwill of employees of their own employees (who want their company to support this or various open source projects etc.) makes donation make sense for many companies.

Deliver funding on the day of the public opening. Get some of the PR; some may perceive you (a fictional, corporate entity) as the primary driver of the project.

The only people who care about free SSL certs would know enough about Let's Encrypt to know facebook didn't do much. LE isn't something most people find interesting.

Eh, I think you are underestimating how many people are interested in this. One of my friends who does small business web design and hosting has had several customers ask him about Let's Encrypt.

SSL is a pretty big market, and the impending release of Lets Encrypt to the general market has some of the SSL vendors somewhat rattled, based on their FUDdy blog posts lately...

By having a reputation for being cool like this, they can hire people more easily and more cheaply.

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