[time-nuts] Time in a cave

Harlan Stenn stenn at ntp.org
Thu May 14 15:59:59 EDT 2015


Hi Magnus,

I suspect you thought this was going only to me, but I'll use it for
what I hope is a short burst of illumination.

Magnus Danielson writes:
> Harlan,
> 
> On 05/14/2015 01:34 AM, Harlan Stenn wrote:
> > NTF is working to improve the products under its umbrella all the time,
> > and we're seriously resource-constrained.  OK, we're disturbingly
> > resource-constrained.  While the PTPd folks seem to have enough
> > developer resources and Richard Cochran has not complained about the
> > developer resources for Linux PTP, none of the projects have adequate
> > documentation writers.
> 
> Work is silently being made to ensure that NTP vendors become NTF 
> members, and that way start to pay back for the code they use and at 
> least somewhat help solving the resource issues. Hope that you seen that 
> in your end.

Yes, I'm hearing about this, and if it happens it will be *most*
helpful.

And while it will be genuinely helpful and a start, it won't be enough.

It is necessary, and not yet sufficient.

If 10 NTP vendors join NTF at the $50k/year level (as opposed to
whatever number at lower levels) NTF will *almost* have enough to cover
a partial combination of core staff, operating expenses, and equipment.
Core staff is just that - minimum core staff.  Throw documentation
writers, developers, Q/A test folks, sysadmin, a testing lab with a
scientist, testing gear, and sysadmin support, standards wrangling (Each
IETF meeting costs about $4k per person *just to attend*, and there is
ongoing work outside of the meetings.  There are IEEE and ITU meetings,
and others.), and things I'm forgetting to mention, and one discovers...

To really do the job that needs to be done we'll need a budget that is
closer to $3m/year, and we're working on ways to get there.

NTF's revenue stream has been steadily growing.  Last year NTF had
revenues of about $103k, and expenses of $104k (yes, we lost about
$1,000 last year).  This year we're continuing to grow (and NTF is still
not paying me).

Put another way, the ntp tarball is just a bit smaller than a bind-9
tarball. NTF does not have even 5% of the resources to support NTP that
ISC has to support BIND.

So yes, growing the membership at NTF is exactly what needs to happen,
and every new member noticeably helps.  And we need to do this and other
revenue-producing things even more.
-- 
Harlan Stenn <stenn at ntp.org>
http://networktimefoundation.org - be a member!


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