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Background: Smartisan is an Android phone maker in China. Smartisan fans pay for admission tickets to attend Smartisan's new product release events, and Smartis
by riobard 10y ago
Background: Smartisan is an Android phone maker in China. Smartisan fans pay for admission tickets to attend Smartisan's new product release events, and Smartisan donates the ticket sales to an open source project. So far they've donated to OpenSSL ($160k), OpenBSD (CA$280k), and OpenResty (pending approval).
Edit: IIRC, Smartisan's first donation to OpenSSL happened right after HeartBleed.
- behnamoh 10y agoSo we should expect Chinese backdoors in OpenBSD too?
- AsyncAwait 10y agoI really do hope this is sarcasm, hard to detect over text.
- behnamoh 10y agoOne thing I've learnt about this world is that no one will do something for you just for the mere joy of doing it. There's always costs/benefits analysis involved.
- pc86 10y agoThe "mere joy" of doing something is itself a benefit, so I think you've just proved yourself wrong.
- behnamoh 10y agoHow can one measure "joy" with money? How can some quality have more value than some quantity (cost)? I did not prove myself wrong.
- happy-go-lucky 10y agoIt may be that you would have avoided being so cynical if they had not made that donation, but as can be seen, their contribution will keep the project going for a time.
- AsyncAwait 10y agoThe very fact that this reached the front page of HN indicates that it has a PR value - that a value in itself. Or maybe they trully want to help out projects that they most likely depend on daily. In any case, this is a positive thing so why repeat the propaganda that if it's coming from China/Russia == bad? Evaluating individual cases is much more productive and in this case, I don't really see an ulterior motive here.
- buovjaga 10y agoThey donated $320k in two batches to OpenSSL in 2014. Is the $160k you mention for this year? Do you have a source for the exact amount? The PR News wire bit does not mention the exact sums per org.
- riobard 10y agoI went back and checked the video for the latest release event in October 2016. Smartisan collected about 2 million RMB (Chinese Yuan) in ticket sales. They also donated another 1 million RMB originally for Smartisan Open Source Foundation (its own charity arm). So that's about 3 million RMB in total donated to OpenSSL and OpenBSD. For its December 2015 event, Smartisan tried to donate ticket sales to OpenResty, but OpenResty could not legally accept the donation due to complicated Chinese laws governing non-profit organizations. So the money is still in Smartisan's bank account and pending regulatory approval. For its 2014 event, Smartisan donated 1 million RMB to OpenSSL.
- buovjaga 10y ago> For its 2014 event, Smartisan donated 1 million RMB to OpenSSL. They donated 2 million RMB, see https://mta.openssl.org/pipermail/openssl-announce/2014-December/000001.html https://mta.openssl.org/pipermail/openssl-announce/2014-Dece...
- riobard 10y agoMy bad. I only knew one of the donations. Anyway, I'm asking a friend at Smartisan and see if their PR could release a detailed list of past donations.
- na85 10y agoWhy would they donate to openssl in USD but openbsd in CAD? Aren't they both Canadian projects?
- protomyth 10y agoOpenSSL is a corp out of Maryland. OpenSSH is a OpenBSD project.