[openssl-announce] Another record-breaking donation from Smartisan Technology

[Steve Marquess]

In May of this year the OpenSSL project received what has been our
largest single donation to date, 1000000 RMB (roughly 160000 USD or
133000 EUR) from Smartisan Technology (http://www.smartisan.com/). That
donation, along with other donations from multiple sources, enabled us
to fund a new full time dedicated OpenSSL resource (Matt Caswell).

We have just received a *second* donation from Smartisan, also for one
million RMB and tied only with the earlier Smartisan donation as our
largest single donation ever. It gives me great pleasure to announce
that this donation, in combination with other donation funding received
and promised, has enabled us to add two additional full time OpenSSL
resources, Geoff Thorpe and Richard Levitte. We had been waiting and
hoping for enough donations to "close the gap" in covering one new
position; this one donation did that and more.

Richard will be starting immediately on a full time basis. Geoff is
still arranging a transition from his current employment commitments,
with an expected transition in about a month.

When the OpenSSL team met in Düsseldorf earlier this year we agreed to
embark on an extensive overhaul of OpenSSL (see
https://www.openssl.org/about/roadmap.html and
https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2014/12/23/the-new-release-strategy/).
Some of us were concerned that those goals were too ambitious. This
addition of two new full time resources -- nearly doubling our dedicated
manpower -- significantly improves our prospects.

Thank you Smartisan Technology, and CEO Mr. Yonghao Luo. I hope that in
roughly a year from now with the release of OpenSSL 1.1 you will be
pleased with what we have accomplished.

-Steve M.

-- 
Steve Marquess
OpenSSL Software Foundation, Inc.
1829 Mount Ephraim Road
Adamstown, MD  21710
USA
+1 877 673 6775 s/b
+1 301 874 2571 direct
marquess at opensslfoundation.com
marquess at openssl.com
gpg/pgp key: http://openssl.com/docs/0x6D1892F5.asc