Openness Stack
From a development perspective, transparency doesn't just mean that we show you our source code . The second layer to transparency is publishing specifications to explain what we thought we implemented in the source code. And the layer above that is publishing design documents and research papers to explain why we chose to build it that way, including analyzing the security implications and the tradeoffs of alternate designs.
Financial Summary for 2015
Tor's annual revenue in 2015 was up from 2014, at almost $3.3 million.
Income from individual donations and other non-government things is higher, and also a higher percentage, in 2015 than 2014, but it's still in the 10-15% range.
- In 2015 we counted $498000 in "donated services", that is, volunteers helping with translations, website hosting, and so on.
Modes of Funding
A brief crash course on two common contract models for organizations that take government funding: Some of our funding *(NSF, State Dept) is what's called the "cost reimbursement" model, where we have to show that we've spent the money in order to get paid (which is designed to make sure organizations spend the money in the way they've agreed to spend it), whereas others of our funding (RFA/OTF, SRI) is what's called the "milestone based" model, where we give the funder a set of deliverables and prices, and when we tell them a deliverable is done, they pay us that amount. The milestone based model gives us more flexibility to do all the things that need to get done , but it can also be more risky because it's on us if we under estimate costs.