Paying Tomasz Wasilczyk for security improvements

Ethan Blanton elb at pidgin.im
Wed Feb 20 12:53:20 EST 2013


Some clarifications.

Mark Doliner spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Someone from Google emailed me, Ethan and Sean a week ago.  They want
> to donate $10,000 USD to IMF, which we then pay to Tomasz Wasilczyk
> upon completion of some work.  Tomasz was a 2012 Summer of Code
> student who worked on the Gadu Gadu protocol plugin.  The work in
> question is assorted bug fixes and improvements to "improve the
> security of Pidgin/Adium."  The donor didn't specify what, exactly.  I
> think his requirements are someone loose.  I have a hunch he would
> like to see the master password code finalized and merged.

I want to stress here that we are *not* accepting funds to direct
Pidgin development.  Google and Tomasz worked out an agreement
independent of IMF, Inc., and the only thing we would be doing is
facilitating that agreement.  Google has indicated that they will not
"direct the work in detail", but the funds are earmarked for Tomasz to
work on security aspects, as Mark noted above.

I see this as a win-win situation for all involved; the community gets
funded security auditing and improvement of Pidgin/Adium/libpurple,
Tomasz gets some compensation for his time, and IMF fulfills our
charter of supporting IM software.

> The company would most likely pay us via a credit card donation
> through the Pay Pal account that Ethan and I set up on IMF's behalf
> last year.  We believe Pay Pal will charge a commission of 2.2% (or
> possibly 1.9%, but I'm not optimistic) plus $0.30 USD for this
> donation.  That comes out to $220.30 USD (or $190.30 USD, but I'm not
> optimistic).  Because of this, the donor will probably donate a little
> extra to cover the fee.  We might still end up covering some of the
> difference from our current cash.  This amount should be less than
> $300 USD... I'm guessing $30 USD.

I clarified this with PayPal, and we will for sure be changed 2.2%.

> PROPOSAL TO BE VOTED ON ONE WEEK FROM RIGHT NOW (I'll send a reminder)
> Shall Instant Messaging Freedom, Inc. accept a large one-time
> donation, then pay those funds to Tomasz Wasilczyk for assorted bug
> fixes and improvements to improve the security of Pidgin and Adium?
> And, if needed, shall Instant Messaging Freedom, Inc. make up for the
> credit card processing fee by paying some money from our current
> funds, of an amount not to exceed $300 USD.

I note also that I am happy to handle the treasurer-ish paperwork for
this, should there be any (tax or otherwise).  My understanding is
that this donation is not large enough to push us into more
complicated tax filing than our usual postcard.  There may be some
various small expenses related to sending funds out of the country,
but they should fall under our authorization for execution costs.

Ethan

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