Perl Community To Buy Damian Conway?

jbc writes: "As discussed over at use Perl, the Perl community is attempting to raise US$55K in donations to support Perl überhacker Damian Conway for a year so he can devote himself to worthwhile pursuits related to Perl development. Thanks to a large donation from an as-yet-unnamed corporate donor, they're apparently already more than halfway there." Update: 10/15 11:31 PM by H : To actually give, go to the YAPC site.

Comments

What Damian has to say about this...

[acm]

taken from Use Perl:

--

That's an astonishingly generous offer, Elaine. Thank-you.

I thought perhaps I should take the opportunity to explain the nature of -- and reason for -- the rush.

YAS has not been able to accept donations for this project until its tax status was confirmed. But my department at Monash University has now gone into the planning phase for next year, and needs to know within the next week or two whether they'll have my teaching/admin services for 2001 (which they most decidedly won't if the Perl community wants me).

So my department needs a clear indication of what I'm doing next year, which means YAS needs a clear indication of whether the community thinks "buying me out" is a worthwhile thing, and something they would actually fund (I'm not nearly egoistical enough to simply assume that the weird stuff I do is worth real money :-)

That's what's required by next week: pledges of support. Actual cash could come (a little) later.

Meanwhile, I've already been overwhelmed by the support that people have privately expressed for this. Whether or not the project comes together, I am deeply honoured and grateful that so many people seem to believe I would be worth "buying".

Brief Bio

[bguilliams]

Taken from the Perl.com website...

Dr. Damian Conway is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), where he teaches object-oriented software engineering. He is an effective teacher, an accomplished writer, and the author of several popular Perl modules. He is also a semi-regular contributor to the Perl Journal. In 1998 he was the winner of the Larry Wall Award for Practical Utility for two modules (Getopt::Declare and Lingua::EN::Inflect) and in 1999 he won his second "Larry" for his Coy.pm haiku-generation module. He has just published "Object-Oriented Perl" (Manning, 1999).

Patrons

[Capt Dan]

The concept of patron is ancient. There was a time (awhile ago) when artists and scientists were supported by rich patrons so that they could focus on their creative work.

The modern world would be much different if it were not for the discoveries and art of these men. (if someone could reply to this message with some names of these artists and scientists, it would be much appreciated. I cannot remember any at the moment...)

I have felt for a long time that free software development could benefit from this model.

How many great developers are out there who have to work 8 hours a day, before coming home exhausted to fit in 2 or 3 hours of coding between dinner and bedtime?

So here's the next point. Altough the wave of get rich quick startups that characterized the laste 90's is in decline, there are now 1000's of financially sufficent millionaire developers.

If you are one of there people, run down to your investment counselor and find out how you could donate a couple of grand a year to Open Source development. There's probably some loophole that would make it tax exempt or a deduction. Get together with some of your millionaire friends and pick a project to sponsor. It doesn't have to be perl, but a project that you feel could benefit your interests and hopfully the interests of the community by having a full time developer(s). Go to sourceforge and find one that looks cool. Perl, linux kernel development, freenet, maybe a game engine. It's your money, but you could use it to help us all.