Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for participating in this thread! I couldn't have asked for a better "retirement party" haha. I followed along all day yesterday while wrapping up the last few things at Sentry. Right as I posted my final goodbye on Slack, a friend showed up unannounced (my latest godson, in fact). We had a wonderful visit, drinking fresh iced tea on the front porch in the sunshine. What a contrast ... and a confirmation. The evening rolled on. By the time I returned to check the Slack replies, the company 'top was locked. C'est fini.
I'm now posting this from the family laptop. (If you want to see the hand-written original, you'll have to visit. ;) I'll be using it to fulfill my obligations as an Open Source Endowment board member through August. I've turned off chadwhitacre.com, and deleted (or kicked off deletions for) Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Discord, and Reddit. I've deleted one Amazon account and am working on the other (I'm pretty sure my dad's last book and author page are associated with it). I've transferred the openpath.quest domain and repos to Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, who asked if he could preserve it. I also gave him softwarecommons.com, the Czarin font, and MP4s of the five Open Path episodes to reupload so I can finish deleting my YouTube channel. (Maybe I'll burn DVDs to watch offline. Can I make VHS?) My Google account will be around as long as I need email; zetaweb.com is my last domain on auto-renew. If anyone wants to buy xmin.org or gospeldesk.{com,org}, ping me on chad@ before August. That'll subsidize 10-year renewals for my dad's memorials, whitacregreek.com and singinghome.com. Those are hosted on GitHub pages, so I won't be deleting that account. I've archived my other repos. I'll lose access if someday I'm able to delete email, which won't be until I don't need Carta anymore, at least. There's probably some other stuff that will make it hard to delete email. Wish me luck. Dang's even harder, so, here, I'm stuck. ;^)
My hope with the magazine is to recover a more humane information technology, so even though I'm leaving the Internet, I'm not leaving public life. After all, all the world's a stage, to quote a sage. Whether your own performance here has been friendly or cynical, thank you for it. This whole thread is beautiful to me, and all its little details. I love you, as much as this meatstick-manipulated textarea in the virtual realm will allow, which is not much, but not none. Hopefully some day one of you, friend or foe, finds me in the physical realm where we can vibrate air instead. I would love that! Until then, keep being HN.
Germany is making it work† but seems quite far off to say the least in the US. "Voluntary tax" like this is provocative in its own right, will be interesting to see what gets unlocked more broadly if this succeeds.
It's not a competition, but it is faux pax for GGP to make the comment the way they did. I would hope you all would know that having been here more than a decade
Here are a couple salient portions of our IRS application to put your mind at ease. :^)
> In limited circumstances, the Foundation may make grants to organizations that are not described in IRC Section 501(c)(3), or to individual OSS developers, maintainers, researchers, and educators. These grants will support persons and organizations engaged in developing, maintaining, securing, documenting, or conducting research on free and open source software critical to public digital infrastructure.
> Any such grants will be made exclusively for charitable or educational purposes, with the Foundation retaining complete discretion and control over the use of funds consistent with Revenue Ruling 68-489.
[...]
> In addition to project-based grants, the Foundation will make recognition awards to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to OSS serving as critical public digital infrastructure. These awards are analogous in structure and purpose to MacArthur Fellowships, the National Medal of Science, Pulitzer Prizes, and similar recognition programs administered by 501(c)(3) organizations.
Boldly asserting that all grants will be made exclusively for charitable or educational purposes does nothing to change the character of the grant. If you're giving money to someone for commercial product development then you're giving money to someone for commercial product development ... and if that constitutes the majority of what you do then you've got a major problem.
OSE won't give money for commercial product development - it is dedicated to supporting existing highly-used _nonprofit_ and independent OSS. Some specific examples are at https://endowment.dev/faq/#grants
As soon as you start paying individual maintainers, it stops being nonprofit OSS they work on. If you direct your funds to other charities, you're only shifting the tax issue to them. If you want to give money to maintainers with no strings attached, it's basically impossible to avoid double taxation.
We explicitly explained to the IRS that our endowment plans to make awards and grants to individual OSS developers and maintainers in the US and other eligible countries. Given our limited target scope — not just any software, but critical nonprofit independent OSS — it was acceptable, and the IRS approved our 501(c)(3) status. And we plan to operate within what is described in our application.
There are strict regulatory rules for 501c3 nonprofits (for instance - no private benefits for nonprofit insiders) and guidelines on how to implement them, for instance, via CoI policy, which we have: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/form-1023-purpose-...
Board members of a nonprofit are subject to external supervision, including auditing, regulators and—in extreme cases—lawsuits. The Supreme Court is unique because it is the court of last resort for the entire United States—even a state supreme court justice would be able to have their recusal decisions reviewed by a higher court, much less a random board member of a nonprofit.
I'm now posting this from the family laptop. (If you want to see the hand-written original, you'll have to visit. ;) I'll be using it to fulfill my obligations as an Open Source Endowment board member through August. I've turned off chadwhitacre.com, and deleted (or kicked off deletions for) Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Discord, and Reddit. I've deleted one Amazon account and am working on the other (I'm pretty sure my dad's last book and author page are associated with it). I've transferred the openpath.quest domain and repos to Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, who asked if he could preserve it. I also gave him softwarecommons.com, the Czarin font, and MP4s of the five Open Path episodes to reupload so I can finish deleting my YouTube channel. (Maybe I'll burn DVDs to watch offline. Can I make VHS?) My Google account will be around as long as I need email; zetaweb.com is my last domain on auto-renew. If anyone wants to buy xmin.org or gospeldesk.{com,org}, ping me on chad@ before August. That'll subsidize 10-year renewals for my dad's memorials, whitacregreek.com and singinghome.com. Those are hosted on GitHub pages, so I won't be deleting that account. I've archived my other repos. I'll lose access if someday I'm able to delete email, which won't be until I don't need Carta anymore, at least. There's probably some other stuff that will make it hard to delete email. Wish me luck. Dang's even harder, so, here, I'm stuck. ;^)
My hope with the magazine is to recover a more humane information technology, so even though I'm leaving the Internet, I'm not leaving public life. After all, all the world's a stage, to quote a sage. Whether your own performance here has been friendly or cynical, thank you for it. This whole thread is beautiful to me, and all its little details. I love you, as much as this meatstick-manipulated textarea in the virtual realm will allow, which is not much, but not none. Hopefully some day one of you, friend or foe, finds me in the physical realm where we can vibrate air instead. I would love that! Until then, keep being HN.
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