They are too dependent on government sponsorship.
80% of their funding comes from the US government in some shape.
I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be self-sufficient.
A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.
Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important.
Maybe they need marketing help more than anything else?
I work on a project depended upon and repeatedly promoted by Snowden (tweets) and less-than-public-figures-who-lives-depend-on-it (pastebins).
We gave up writing grant proposals. After repeatedly pouring hours into crafting proposals exactly as specified, the big one (no plural) OTF (.gov funding) has never responded. The smaller, more informal ones aren't interested as well (no clue why).
What little OTF money there is goes to the same projects, written by the same grant writers. We're told by insiders that we need connections, need to hire those writers, and we're told we need a sexier story.
We can't fund a modest income for the lead developer (approaching nearly a decade). He lives cheaply in a developing country off anonymous donations of unpredictable amount and timing.
Tor has resources we couldn't dream of, and if they're cutting staff, there's no hope for any open source security project.
> (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.
The thing is: When you're the kind of person that is able to amass m-/billions, you're unlikely to be very altruistic. Most of these people had to, excuse my language, fuck over people (workers, customers, investors, the larger public) along the way in various ways. You simply can't be a billionaire without some kind of severe exploitation and it is unlikely that, when you have no qualms doing so in one area, it is unlikely you care about people's livelihoods etc. in other areas (there are some exceptions ofc, Bill Gates comes to mind). Jeff Bezos is a perfect example: The richest person on earth has donated what amounts to a few cents for an ordinary person but with great public fanfare. Not even during the COVID-19 pandemic, he views it as necessary (cf. with Jack Dorsey, donating 1/3 of his wealth).
Oh no, I agree! He was definitely ruthless during his reign as the head of Microsoft. Generally, when one can show such disregard than one has an overall character allowing for that, so it's rare that people would behave differently when it comes to their wealth. But, of course, people can change - even if it is out of a feeling of guilt.
Craigslist isn’t a tech company. It’s a website. Not trying to disrespect them as I’m sure they do some impressive stuff behind the scenes to handle scale, I just don't feel they’re innovating in a way to be called “tech”.
Again, totally agree. But are you arguing that not changing/innovating, while refreshing, should be considered tech? I associate tech with innovation and trying something new. Zero to One.
It seems to me that Craigslist must have made some monumental misjudgment when they didn't expand internationally. I for one, for example, only know of them from hearsay as some kind of obscure US-only classified ads site.
They are international; it's just that outside of the US the quantity of posts is much lower as people use local alternatives.
Also a large portion of craigslist here was just the personals section - once that was shut down there is basically no good reason to use it anymore, as it simply doesn't have the network effect / critical mass of users to sustain itself. The remaining users all seem to be work-related scams of some kind (probably automated) and drug dealers (probably cops).
Companies with network effects benefit from having literally everyone on the platform, so you don’t need to go to a competitor to communicate with any particular person. That’s why Facebook has a Tor endpoint, so that people in repressive environments can still use it and add to the network effect. The downside is that Tor support does enable harassment on the platform.
Ironically, if they had more government sponsorship, they may be having fewer financial problems now. Government grant programs have multi-year contracts, and the agencies have yearly budgets. The government money is still flowing. It's the private money, from foundations and individuals, that has suddenly become unavailable due to declines in income and wealth.
I would imagine that a project of that importance deserves to be able to be self-sufficient. A US$2M budget/year is not that much, (m|b)illionaires making their money from the Internet could easily sponsor the project.
Better yet, having grass-root sponsorship is even more important. Maybe they need marketing help more than anything else?