Late last year, Theo de Raadt, founder of the security-focused OpenBSD project, issued a plea for funding. The project was facing a serious, perhaps even crippling setback due to the $20,000 cost of powering its development and build machines. The project repeated this plea last week with the electricity bill still unpaid.

The outlook was bleak, with OpenBSD developer Bob Beck stating flatly that "OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on." While OpenBSD isn't mainstream in the way that Linux has become, the highly secure UNIX operating system—it claims to have suffered just two remotely exploitable flaws in the default distribution in a "heck of a long time"—still has an important role to play in systems such as firewalls.

The repeated pleas have finally caught the attention of would-be benefactors, and today, the future for OpenBSD is looking rather brighter. Mircea Popescu, Romanian creator of the MPEx Bitcoin stock exchange, made a $20,000 donation to the project, enabling the 2013 electricity bill to be paid.

Along with other donations made in response to the appeal, the OpenBSD Foundation has now raised $100,000. The group is still trying to raise money, however. It's target is $150,000 for 2014, enough to continue to sponsor hackathons and other development efforts.