Before the skeptical comments rush in, can we for a moment take a step back and appreciate this. Facebook has a lot of leaders who has worked in the industry for long and I am sure they understand the value as much as we do. There’s a very strong possibility that FB did this without any motives.
And the bigger news is that letsencrypt starts its public beta today! You don't need to buy SSL certs anymore! Wow! Someone submit <i>this</i> story!
Is there any indication what the sponsorship money of Let's Encrypt goes toward?<p>Corporate sponsorship looks to be somewhere around $2m/year.<p>Is the money needed for scaling? Hiring engineers? Broadening product line?
I wonder why, really. I read Facebook's statement. But everyone always has internal motives (in particular when money is involved), and I wonder what Facebook gains from this?<p>I know why EFF/Mozilla does it (charity), Akamai do it ($$$ for them), Cisco might also profit from it somehow (e.g. upgraded enterprise appliances to support HTTPS on the proxy), but Facebook? I don't get Facebook's play here.
Being careful not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but...
It is interesting that Facebook ($300 Billion market cap) decided to support at the $150k level instead of the $350k level (i.e. saving themselves from a rounding-error $200,000 additional commitment).<p>It cost them more than that to make the decision and the press release.
Taken in isolation, this is a laudable move. But shouldn't it be evaluated within the context of their own internet.org initiative?<p>For those unaware, internet.org does not support TLS/HTTPS for most connections. It is probably the single largest attempt in history to remove secure access from a population, just in the name of advertising instead of national security.
React, Casandra, Flux, and tons more, Internet.org and now this? I can now feel a little less bad that every time I click like, that at least my personal information is supporting some great projects.<p><a href="https://code.facebook.com/projects/" rel="nofollow">https://code.facebook.com/projects/</a>