I've published my official response over on GitHub, where I provide context and answer the specific questions the OP has asked: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issueco...

I'm copying the first part of my response here for y'all's convenience:

Hi @alohapersona, I’ve included answers to your specific questions below, but first I wanted to share some context.

You can expect the Matrix.org Foundation to grow and evolve like other open source foundations, in terms of incrementally staffing up, increasing transparency and community governance, and establishing programs that support the ecosystem.

There are a lot of great examples we can learn from, though the manner in which we are starting adds some complexity. It’s a lot cleaner to start with a small balance and some IP than to inherit massive pre-existing commitments like running the matrix.org homeserver. The added complexity also makes things more difficult, and it’s fair to say the path to now has reflected that difficulty level.

The Foundation hit a key milestone this year when it delivered on its promise to make its first hire. If you look at the landscape and the history, you’ll find that the first hire makes a radical difference in delivering on the kinds of things I see you’ve been seeking for the last four years.

Setting expectations

So, I’d like to set some expectations. The Foundation’s fiscal year, as you know by now, runs from November 1 to October 31, and it takes time to close the books. Especially when we’re still separating out our infrastructure and relying on people for whom the Foundation isn’t their first priority. After we close our books, two things happen: we send them off to the tax accountants, and I begin preparing our annual report. That annual report will cover revenue, expenses, and programmatic activity, all contextualized with our vision and where we are on the path to realizing our vision.

The timeline is a little fuzzy, but I’d expect that annual report to land around March or April.

And we should expect further maturation/normalization of process each successive year: when we seat our first elected Governing Board in 2024 Q2, I’ll finally have a board of community representatives to review and approve my budget! With that, we’ll start to see both a public budget before each financial year begins, and an annual report after it ends.

Getting involved

Ultimately, the project is to build this Foundation up into an independent, transparent, self-sustaining organization with community-driven governance at every layer. We will need continued mutual accountability to stay the course on the way to achieving that vision. To wit, I welcome call-ins and incisive questions, and also stress the need to be charitable with each other. This work is hard, it is painfully incremental, and it happens over the scale of years and decades.

I do not, however, welcome escalation to Hacker News with bad faith editorializing, which brings out the worst in people and leaves me wasting time confronting FUD rather than tending to forward-looking work that truly serves the community. Starting fires like that isn’t helpful.

For those who are invested in Matrix and want greater visibility into the Foundation’s activities, I invite you to join the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room I launched last month. We have a lovely community of people there who provide input, offer accountability, and join together to celebrate even the small successes on our collective journey to organizational maturity and self-governance.

I hope this helps you and all those who read this to understand where we are, where we are going, why things are the way they are, and how to get involved.

With gratitude,
Josh Simmons
Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation

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