[OmniOS-discuss] Investing into the Future of OmniOS Community Edition

[Tobias Oetiker]

Hi All

tl;tr? head over to https://omniosce.org/patron and support your favorite OS with a regular donation.

Since the OmniOS Community Edition Association has taken over maintenance and care of OmniOSce, things have been moving at a brisk pace.

  * Upstream changes from Illumos and Joyent are integrated weekly into our github repo.

  * Security fixes are normally available within hours. 

  * We have committed to an elaborate long term release plan. 

  * In early November we have released OmniOS r24 on schedule with many enhancements. 

  * Our new website has a lot of new content on feeding and care of your OmniOS instance.

Judging from the 566 systems that have been switched over to our new repos, downloading regular updates, we think there is ample interest in OmniOS. Not even taking into account all those who have not yet upgraded.

With the release of OmniOSce r24 we have created the OmniOS Patron Page where you can set up regular contribution or a one time donation to the project.

Unfortunately only very few people have yet made the step of actually pledging funds. According to the straw poll conducted in spring, there should be at least 80k USD per year available to those who maintain and release updates for  OmniOS.

At the moment we are getting about 25 USD per month from 4 individuals. This is pretty bleak and does not even begin to cover the cost of running the show and certainly does not allow us to plan for the future.

Head over to https://omniosce.org/patron and let us know how much you value OmniOS and our work. If everybody spent just 20 dollar per system and month things would be looking much brighter already. 

To put this into perspective: a single O365 Enterprise license costs 35 USD/month. Most individuals pay a similar amount every month for the internet connection or mobile phone contract.

Andy Fiddaman
Dominik Hassler
Tobi Oetiker

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OmniOS Community Edition Association
Aarweg 17, 4600 Olten, Switzerland
www.omniosce.org
info at omniosce.org