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paulywog writes: "It hasn't been posted to the YAPC website yet, but the announcement was on usePerl this weekend. The site for the YAPC 2002 will be my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. Goofy name for a school in eastern Missouri, I know, but it's a great place for conferences. ... So, if you're in the St. Louis area and are a PERL fanatic, watch for upcoming information on yapc.org or the St. Louis Perl Monger's site." See also the Yet Another Society site.

chromatic writes: "Larry Wall's latest explanation of Perl 6 features, Apocalypse 4 has been posted on Perl.com. That means Damian Conway's explanatory Exegesis can't be far behind. Looks like some nice simplifications this time around."

It's not a contradiction: Free software costs money. (That's because server space, bandwidth, coffee, electricity, computers, and workspace all cost money.) Besides which, the time it takes to code new window managers, programming libraries (and languages), web browsers, and all the other goodies which make a modern computer useful may be spent as a labor of love, but it's time that competes with real-world jobs, family time, vacations in the Riviera and sleep. Besides the relative few who work at work on their Free software projects, the programmers, project managers, web-site maintainers, documentation jockeys and QA volunteers behind the programs we enjoy every day don't seem to be in it for the money, so much as the thrill of releasing new software, a desire to make their own world a little better, and for plain old fun. The staffers and volunteers who put long hours and dedication into organizations trying to safeguard online freedoms are also obviously interested in rewards that go way beyond salaries. This New Year's, consider giving them a little money anyhow. Here are a few ideas; you're invited to point out projects and organizations that I've left out.

As you may have read the other day, the FreeBSD project is now taking donations via PayPal. And if you're in a clean, roots-UNIX kind of mood, the folks at OpenBSD and NetBSD (NetBSD PayPal) would probably also appreciate your goodwill, not to mention your money, hardware and time.

If you don't have a specific project in mind, but would like to donate some of your chunk of the time-money continuum to a worthy software undertaking, a good place to start is Software in the Public Interest. They can take both general donations as well as earmark for projects they support, like Berlin, Debian, GNOME and more. (Not into GNOME? KDE could use some assistance, including money, too.)

If you like the projects funded by the boxed-distribution makers (like paying for full-time work on endeavors like KOffice), you can do more than buy the box: Mandrake has recently formed something called the Mandrake Club as a gathering place for both people and funds.

To encourage (and reward) cross-platform goodness, supporting the Mozilla project is hard to beat. (This story was posted using a 9.7 build using the wonderful Modern theme.) Source of Mozilla wisdom Mozillazine could use some help paying for the switch to a new host, and to defray ongoing costs. Another good place to cast your perls is Yet Another Foundation, which supports the somewhat scrutable development of the not-so-scrutable Perl.

More generally, consider investing some money in organizations like the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), all of which help battle (in court and in the marketplace of ideas) the forces who wish to monitor and otherwise exert top-down control of your computer and everything to do with your on-line life.

Remember, with all of these projects, non-monetary contributions are welcomed as well -- if you can write or correct some online documentation, create test-cases to root out weaknesses, or create some pretty graphics to smooth the user experience, you can contribute. (Long-distance pizza deliveries to developers are also generally appreciated.) Teaching a coworker, classmate, parent or friend how to set up mailfilters on a Linux box, or how to edit photos in the GIMP, is a nice way to save them money, too. Making a difference locally might also mean contributing some time, money or hardware to help run local LUG events.

Note: Many of the organizations named above are set up as 501(c) charities; if you'd like to claim any charitable contributions as tax deductions, now's the time to get the postmark, at least if it's important to you for those donations to be on the current calendar year. For a few more ideas on ways to donate geekily this year, see Jack Bryar's Newsforge column with some more links.

And a Happy New Year's!

Kurt writes "Yet Another Society, through its newly formed Perl Foundation, is launching yet another fund drive to help support the Perl community. This year we will be supporting Damian Conway and Dan Sugalski. Damian will continue to work on a variety of Perl 5 modules and the design of Perl 6. Dan will continue his work on the implementation of Perl 6. More details are available at the Perl Foundation web site. Contributions are tax deductible, so donate today!" Many people will remember when we did this last year. I think it's been a roaring success. So go donate!

Kurt writes "Yet Another Society, through its newly formed Perl Foundation, is launching yet another fund drive to help support the Perl community. This year we will be supporting Damian Conway and Dan Sugalski. Damian will continue to work on a variety of Perl 5 modules and the design of Perl 6. Dan will continue his work on the implementation of Perl 6. More details are available at the Perl Foundation web site. Contributions are tax deductible, so donate today!" Many people will remember when we did this last year. I think it's been a roaring success. So go donate!

chromatic writes "On the heels of Larry's most recent revelation, the mad scientist of Perl (Damian Conway) has followed up with Exegesis 3. His article gives working Perl 6 code examples of Larry's design decisions." Lots of good stuff in here.

chipmunk writes "My prayers have been answered! Larry and Guido have joined forces to produce Parrot, what will surely become the best language ever written. The power of Perl and the sanity of Python. The Py3K and Perl 6 development are merging, with Jeremy Hylton and Dan Sugalski as joint development leads. Read more in the press release on use Perl;, and see a joint interview on perl.com!"

It's about time. It's like the right brain and left brain are working together, at long last. O'Reilly has already inked a deal to publish Programming Parrot, and Yet Another Society is set to merge with the recently launched Python Software Foundation. Both Guido and Larry will be working for ActiveState.

The webmaster responsible for putting Red Hat Linux in service for the Royal Family steps down, The A in ALS stands this year for "oAkland," DSS hackers can rejoice for the moment, and visions of Perl will soon adorn at least two continents. For more on these completely explicable statements, read on in tonight's episode of Slashback.

007 would prefer not to be required to go reinstall Linux. You may recall that in addition to various other pieces of head-adornment, the members of Britain's Royal Family rely on Red Hat, by way of their webmaster, Mick Morgan.

Brian writes: "Looks to me as if the Queen's webmaster is pulling out. See the letter at http://www.open.gov.uk/services/letter201200.htm. Let's hope the new owners keep Linux eh?"

Yet another yet another. Pittsburgher Kevin Lenzo wants you to know that June 13-15 in Montreal marks yet another Yet Another Perl Conference. They're also looking for sponsors worthy enough to fund their deeds of derring-do. Suggested reading includes parent organization the Yet Another Society and YAPC Europe (which will be terrorizing Amsterdam sometime in early August, CFP soon), and darn-near required reading includes the (and I quote) "kick-ass" Damien diary going at the Joy of YAS.

Do you ever suspect that some people code Perl strictly for the interesting conferences?

Hey, is there good barbeque in Oakland? In a clever move which might have caused Sherman some consternation, one of the coolest things about the city of Atlanta will shortly be appearing in Oakland, CA. A notice sent out by Usenix announces that November 6-10th of this year will be the next manifestation of ALS. Maddog Hall is sure to be there, so play hookey from work or school to go visit. The announcement reads, in part:

The ALS 2001 Program Committee invites you to contribute your ideas, proposals, and papers for tutorials, invited talks program, refereed papers track, workshops, work-in-progress reports, and symposia tracks. We welcome submissions that address any and all issues relating to Linux and the Open Source world.

The Call for Papers with submission guidelines and suggested topics is now available at http://www.linuxshowcase.org.

Submissions are due June 5, 2001

Revenge of the -- oh, I won't say it. A coward who failed to sign his name writes: "DirecTV stuck on Sunday a week before the Superbowl and wiped out 98% of hacked DSS cards. Supposedly DirecTV wrote to an area that is write once thereby making the cards go into an infinite loop. Now the hackers have found a way to bypass that sequence in the ROM in the form of a DPBB (Dead Processor Blocker Board). The board has a simple Atmel ROM that glitches pass the looped part of the ASIC on the DSS cards. DSS hacking is back."

The webmaster responsible for putting Red Hat Linux in service for the Royal Family steps down, The A in ALS stands this year for "oAkland," DSS hackers can rejoice for the moment, and visions of Perl will soon adorn at least two continents. For more on these completely explicable statements, read on in tonight's episode of Slashback.

007 would prefer not to be required to go reinstall Linux. You may recall that in addition to various other pieces of head-adornment, the members of Britain's Royal Family rely on Red Hat, by way of their webmaster, Mick Morgan.

Brian writes: "Looks to me as if the Queen's webmaster is pulling out. See the letter at http://www.open.gov.uk/services/letter201200.htm. Let's hope the new owners keep Linux eh?"

Yet another yet another. Pittsburgher Kevin Lenzo wants you to know that June 13-15 in Montreal marks yet another Yet Another Perl Conference. They're also looking for sponsors worthy enough to fund their deeds of derring-do. Suggested reading includes parent organization the Yet Another Society and YAPC Europe (which will be terrorizing Amsterdam sometime in early August, CFP soon), and darn-near required reading includes the (and I quote) "kick-ass" Damien diary going at the Joy of YAS.

Do you ever suspect that some people code Perl strictly for the interesting conferences?

Hey, is there good barbeque in Oakland? In a clever move which might have caused Sherman some consternation, one of the coolest things about the city of Atlanta will shortly be appearing in Oakland, CA. A notice sent out by Usenix announces that November 6-10th of this year will be the next manifestation of ALS. Maddog Hall is sure to be there, so play hookey from work or school to go visit. The announcement reads, in part:

The ALS 2001 Program Committee invites you to contribute your ideas, proposals, and papers for tutorials, invited talks program, refereed papers track, workshops, work-in-progress reports, and symposia tracks. We welcome submissions that address any and all issues relating to Linux and the Open Source world.

The Call for Papers with submission guidelines and suggested topics is now available at http://www.linuxshowcase.org.

Submissions are due June 5, 2001

Revenge of the -- oh, I won't say it. A coward who failed to sign his name writes: "DirecTV stuck on Sunday a week before the Superbowl and wiped out 98% of hacked DSS cards. Supposedly DirecTV wrote to an area that is write once thereby making the cards go into an infinite loop. Now the hackers have found a way to bypass that sequence in the ROM in the form of a DPBB (Dead Processor Blocker Board). The board has a simple Atmel ROM that glitches pass the looped part of the ASIC on the DSS cards. DSS hacking is back."