This is a great news and I am happy that such a foundation exists with as purpose to help bitcoin grow.
From the letter page:
So, what will we be doing in 2013 with the Bitcoin Foundation? We’ve set our eyes on accomplishing the following things:
-Begin to pay Gavin’s salary and get him some budget for the core development team
-Run a payments-oriented Silicon Valley Bitcoin Conference in the spring (Bitcoin 2013)
-Publish a set of best practices for businesses transacting in Bitcoin, covering topics from accounting to physical and digital security
-Create an opt-in certification process for Bitcoin businesses
Those are great goals which I'm more than happy to help fund.
Out of curiosity, I wonder if Gavin's salary will be paid in bitcoins
And for the doomsayers: the foundation does not suddenly have control over all your bitcoins or bitcoin in general. Bitcoin is, and will stay, an open source project. Every single change is publicly viewable and a lot of people do look at them (I do every now and then). If something were to change bitcoin so that it is not bitcoin anymore, then a fork would be quickly created.
Besides, as time progresses, we will see more and more alternative clients too. So it will not simply be a matter of changing the main client, but also convincing the developers of every other client too.