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 D?sseldorf 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
