NixOS Foundation Financial Summary 2023
Last year, we started the recurring effort of making all financials around the NixOS Foundation as transparent as possible. Building on that commitment, we are now sharing the financials for 2023. This report extends beyond a simple breakdown of our income and expenses; it represents a more structured approach to enhancing both effectiveness and transparency in our financial management.
TL;DR - Financials are steadily improving, with no immediate short-term risks. There are numerous plans and substantial room for the long-term sustainability of Nix. The net balance increased from €112,785 at the end of 2022 to €239,805 at the end of 2023. A significant increase in donations, facilitated through various channels including additional fundraising efforts such as the documentation and S3 projects, resulted in a total of €138,274 compared to €88,620 in 2022—a 56% increase year-over-year. There was also a rise in successful grants, such as from the Sovereign Tech Fund, and a sponsorship of approximately $100,000 per year from the AWS Open Source team for Nix S3. Increased expenses were incurred from initiating funding for community projects (e.g., S3 long-term, documentation, various sprints), supporting community gatherings, hiring part-time administrative support, and transitioning S3 sponsorship.
Key Goals & Priorities
- Provide insights into our financial journey/status
- Highlight opportunities for future growth and improvement
- Encourage community involvement in the financial aspects
- Help us understand our finances so that we can more confidently use them for what they are here for, the community.
- Make progress on community effort to establish fundraising/sponsorship guidelines and policies
- Make progress on cost reductions, alternative options, backup plans/redundancies and general scalability
- Make progress on “Sustainable Nix” macro effort
If you are interested to partake in any of the above, please reach out or follow on discourse/matrix channels.
NixOS Foundation’s 2023 Financial Overview
- Foundation total expenses/liabilities: € 47,403.73
- Foundation net profit: € 77,980.30
Assets on 2023-12-31:
- Bunq balance: € 369,257.30 Gross (Part of funds earmarked for certain projects) €161.824,90 Net
Liabilities on 2023-12-31:
- STF funds left (to be imbursed to the participants): € 183,316.01
- Documentation project funds remaining: € 10,070.94
Sources of Incoming Funds
During the year, the NixOS Foundation received funding from various sources, including:
Open Collective
- Side note, most of the S3 Cache Long Term donations came in during January 2024 and aren’t shown here. The current donations through open collective for that specific project stands at €10,406.47.
- NixCon net profit: € 18,604.13
| Company Direct Donations | € 22,124.00 |
|---|---|
| Donations via Paypal (excluding platform transaction fees) | € 940.36 |
| Personal Donations | € 45,708.29 |
| NixCon sponsorship total | € 28,239.67 |
| NixCon ticket sales | € 17,300.00 |
| Sovereign Tech Fund | € 226,000.00 |
Significant Expenses
Summer of Nix 2023 costs include participants invoices billed for their work. It is planned to be reimbursed by NGI with a 25% overhead/profit.
There are substantial “potential” expenses that are currently sponsored by external companies and therefore some are not represented in the NixOS accounting platform e-Boekhouden. As these are critical, we do want to keep them in mind as we calculate our financial projections and into our estimate of the buffer we want to keep in case of emergencies. These items include:
- Fastly currently sponsors Nix usage on the platform. A rough baseline estimation would assume 1500 TB traffic/month and $0.08/GB = $125,000/month
- AWS Open Source is sponsoring $9,000/month of our S3 costs out of ~$14,500. Leaving an additional $5500/month paid out from the foundation.
- Equinix metal: $40,000-$55,000 / month.
- Flying Circus: €1.958,94 / month for premium Discourse hosting.
- Hetzner: ~€150 / month for an aarch64 machine
Miscellaneous and Minor Expenses
In addition to the major sources of income and expenses, the NixOS Foundation also experienced several minor expenses and miscellaneous transactions:
| Bunq bank fees | € 318.88 |
|---|---|
| PayPal bank fees | € 74.76 |
| Stripe fees | € 2,474.59 |
| Administrative Assistant | € 1,081.15 |
| Notion Labs subscription | € 420.27 |
| SkillSource B.V. (eboekhouden-accounting software) | € 138.00 |
| AT&C tax belastingdienst advisory | € 1,587.50 |
| Open Collective platform tips | € 2,281.85 |
Forecasting 2024 and Planning for 2025
I’ve shared a high level summary of our approach around the financial side in the recent NixCon State of the Union (https://youtu.be/G2uN7cw-PaU?t=15357). Slides - NixConContent/NixCon NA 2024 - California/Day 2 - Keynotes/Nix, State of the Union - 2024 (LA).pdf at main · nixcon/NixConContent (github.com)
The main goal is to continue on a trajectory to ensure Nix Sustainability with long term high confidence in financials and support. This includes the goal of achieving a minimum of 12 months of runway for the project to endure any key risk or fall of income, with the ideal goal of achieving 24 months of runway with 0 reliance on external entities in the calculation. This would allow us to ensure we as a community have more than enough time to resolve any potential issue. The effort to ensure a “Sustainable Nix” isn’t one constrained only to direct funding, it can and should stretch further beyond that and include areas such as alternative solutions, fall back plans, proactive mitigation, investment into more scalable technical resolutions as examples.
The primary objective for 2024 is to continue on a path that ensures long-term sustainability for Nix with robust financial support and confidence. We aim to maintain a minimum of 12 months of financial runway to safeguard against any significant risks or revenue shortfalls, ideally extending this to 24 months to achieve a level of independence from external funding sources. This cushion will enable our community to effectively address any challenges that may arise without worrying about financials. Our commitment to a “Sustainable Nix” extends beyond funding; it encompasses a broader scope that includes exploring alternative solutions, establishing fallback plans, proactively mitigating risks, and investing in scalable technical solutions. (Please ping if you’re interested to take part here as well!)
Potential Financial Risk Areas
As part of the financial planning, we want to make sure to be as exhaustive as possible in listing/acknowledging potential risk areas. If you are aware of any other risks, please add them or let us know!
- S3 Cost Inflation: Monitor and address the rising costs associated with S3 storage to prevent budget overruns.
- Sponsorship Volatility: Prepare for potential fluctuations in key sponsorships, particularly for S3 and Fastly services, to ensure continuous support.
- Infrastructure Scaling: Proactively develop a scalable backup plan for our infrastructure.
- Demand Surge: Strategize for unexpected growth spikes to maintain service quality and financial balance.
Incoming Funds
Diverse Revenue Streams: We will continue to issue invoices for specific initiatives like the Summer of Nix and actively seek out varied funding sources to enhance our financial robustness.
Engaging with Donors/Sponsors: Ongoing efforts will be made to foster relationships with current and potential donors to ensure a steady flow of support. This includes an effort around formalizing a Nix yearly fundraising. If you are interested to partake in planning for it please reach out.
Expenses
Hosting costs are a significant portion of total expenses each year and can be impacted by the change of sponsorships. Sharing a few of the expected recurring costs in 2024 below:
- AWS: €5500-€8500 per month
- Hetzner: €650 per month
- Netlify: €25 per month
- Administrative assistant: €750 per month
As always, feedback, thoughts, additional points are super welcome (here, github, on Matrix, email, whatever is best!) This is only the 2nd year we put an explicit effort to make the financials transparent thereforeI’m sure there is a lot to learn and improve. <3
I also plan to kick off a general community effort around formal and yearly Nix fundraising. This topic will most likely touch a lot of areas on how to go about it in the best way possible while putting all the needs of the community and project first. If you are interested please let me know.
Reference to community budget discussion: Community teams budget