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Comment by raydev | Hacker News Reader

I feel like it's useful to point that OpenBSD won't say exactly why the bill is so high, and apparently they don't have open accounting. That bothers me a bit.

Link to relevant reddit comment thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1vakm9/openbsd_develo...

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What kind of "why" do you expect? There is a pretty large collection of computers, network equipment, UPS and HVAC stuff. You want a machine per machine watt usage?

8 year old image of one of the racks, is only grew since... http://www.openbsd.org/images/newrack.jpg

It's a due diligence kind of thing. If you're asking people to make significant monetary contributions, it makes sense to provide a clear picture of what you're using that money on.

Exactly. Donors of non-profits like to see where the money is going. If you're doing an arms length transaction, then it's ok to say "No need to look behind the curtain, and feel free to buy from someone else."

They could at least say, We use X watts to power Y machines

If they don't know at least numbers like that, there are some bigger issues.

That bothers me too, what if they are mining bitcoins with the energy/funds? That wouldn't seem too far-fetched for unaudited tech-savy people.

I'm sorry, but that is just absurd. Some of the servers in question are coming up on 20 years of age. We didn't have the power-conserving hardware back then that we have now. Those old SPARCstations put out heat like a hair dryer. That stuff uses a lot of power and remember that ever watt of power you put into a server needs to be cooled. So, basically double the electricity costs for any given piece of gear. This rack is not cheap to run or cool, and definitely not in a home basement without access to highly efficient (and huge) datacenter-class cooling and power infrastructure. There are reasons that this gear needs to stay at Theo's place. If you don't like his reasons, you don't have to donate. He didn't email you and ask for a donation; you read the story here.

Cool. I won't then. If you want money, then (as has been pointed out quite a few times) you need to be able to give an explanation for what your hardware does.

You're expecting a medium to large size company to donate to you. Those companies have a moral and fiduciary duty to know what they are spending their money on. It seems odd that the "Open"BSD project doesn't feel the need to be open about the hardware they use!

Just an idea: those who have reservations about donating to OpenBSD could just buy a CD-ROM set. You pay for a product part of the cost of which supports the project. And if OpenBSD dies, you can keep it on the shelf and say 'I helped'.

My understanding is that 1000 CD-ROM sets will bring in the CA$20K needed

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