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.
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.
Let's back up: The way an endowment works is that donors donate money, which goes into a more-or-less permanent investment fund. The interest from the investment fund is then used to a) fund mission-aligned programs (in our case, OSS), b) stay ahead of inflation, and c) pay operating costs.
Where are you seeing capitalists "extract a slice of the pie" here?
> flooded with requests to give money to vibe-coded crap
And our plan is to willy-nilly give money to everyone who asks for it with no oversight or attention to other factors or human involvement. Game over. You win.
The companies listed there have all paid at least $2000/eng on staff/year to OSS maintainers. Real accountability. Endowment accepts corporate donors but is primarily geared towards individuals at this point. Pledge members are all companies. Both/and ... to the OSS moon!
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.