BTC update: sponsoring recent LAE work on Tahoe-LAFS

[Brian Warner]

Hey folks, just wanted to provide a heads up that we (the "Tahoe-LAFS
Software Foundation") will be sending some BTC to Least Authority TFA
GmbH, to fund a retroactive grant proposal that covers the last
year's-ish work on the codebase. The grant amount is roughly $250K
(which also covers fees, taxes, and currency translation into EUR). This
pays developers for work they've done in all of the following
repositories:

* Tahoe-LAFS: https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs/
* Magic-Folder: https://github.com/LeastAuthority/magic-folder
* Tahoe-SSK: https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/tahoe-ssk
* Tahoe-CHK: https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/tahoe-chk/
* Tahoe-Great-Black-Swamp:
https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/tahoe-great-black-swamp
* Tahoe-directory: 
https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/tahoe-directory
* Tahoe-capabilities: 
https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/tahoe-capabilities
* Gbs-downloader: 
https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/gbs-downloader
* Magic-foldr: https://whetstone.private.storage/privatestorage/magic-foldr

* zfec : https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/zfec/
* botan: https://github.com/ZHaskell/z-botan
* cabal : https://github.com/haskell/cabal/

* Magic-Folder: https://readthedocs.org/projects/magic-folder/

We announced[1] the beginning of this effort back in 2018, when we
engaged with Aspiration (a US non-profit) as a fiscal sponsor of the
Tahoe-LAFS project. At that time, we sent some BTC to Aspiration, who
used the funds to pay for the Python porting efforts, and other
developers working on maintaining the codebase. We sent additional BTC
in 2020 to cover more work.

The next round of funds are being sent through a different US
non-profit, Open Collective[2] (aka "OC"). Per our transparent
accounting practice[3], we'll be creating a separate address for OC
(1KZYr8UU2XjuEdSPzn2pF8eRPZZvffByDf, or "1KZY" for short), transferring
BTC for this purpose from our main 1Pxi address to 1KZY, transferring
the BTC from 1KZY to OC itself, then folding any leftover tokens back to
1Pxi. I'll be updating donations.rst[3] with the new address, and then
expenses.rst[4] with the details of how much we sent.

Thanks to Liz at Least Authority, and Ben at Open Collective, for all
their help in turning our unexpected windfall into funding for written
code. And many thanks to exarkun, itamarst, meejah, sajith, pythonspeed,
jaraco, and all the other developers who have contributed to the
codebase in the last few years.

cheers,
  -Brian Warner, on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS Software Foundation


[1]: https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2018-December/009926.html
[2]: https://opencollective.com/
[3]: https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs/blob/master/docs/donations.rst
[4]: https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs/blob/master/docs/expenses.rst