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Damian Conway Sponsored

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the way-to-go-everyone dept.

Use Perl is reporting that Damian Conway has been sponsored by several companies and individuals (most impressively Black Star who donated half of the needed $55k). Now Damian can continue working on amazing perl projects like Quantum::Superpositions and Lingua::Romana::Perligata for the next year! Malicose noted that Damian sponsor page explains a bit more too.

18 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Open source and bitchers by cluge · · Score: 3
    Here is somone doing what he loves. Better yet his source is open and available to all. Why is it that when somone does something good, AND gets paid the first post from slashdotters are nothing but bitches? Sounds like jealousy.

    Instead of bitching, perhaps some of the "coders" out there should use their spare time to try and develop something that they love AND somone would pay THEM for. (Not likely because the pool of truly talented coders is slim) Sounds like Damian got a dream job, good luck to him!

    --
    "Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
  2. Re:Blackstar. by DrWiggy · · Score: 3

    Because they can write it off against tax? We sponsor projects all the time, and the main pitch I make to management is that not only do we benefit in certain ways as other /.'ers will no doubt make clear, but that we are also able to write the donation off against tax. In the UK (which is where Blackstar is), a $27,500 donation, will actually only really cost them about $15,000 after the savings they make on tax.

  3. Re:27K isnt that much at all...puhlease by Lion-O · · Score: 4
    Believe it or not but this is how its done in most cases. If you take a closer look at history (more and more people should do that IMHO) you will see that a lot of great inventions were started by a group of people who were trying something knowing where they wanted to go yet could not focus on it. It takes money, a lot of money but it will gain you enormous expertise on the subject and, if the people working on it are really motivated and all, will get great results.

    Heck, even multinationals as Phillips had such research teams. Basicly they gave people a lab. with the resources to "go their way". The result? Well, one of them was the CD player as we know it today. And what to think of MS ? Even seen the programmers there getting all the room they want to go their own way?

    Sadly these tactics aren't possible in most cases due to the enourmas raise of wages and all (not every person qualifies for this setup, a lot will abuse their freedom). A bad thing since tactics like this will eventually lead to true innovation.

  4. 27K isnt that much at all...puhlease by eeks · · Score: 2
    With millions being thrown around to idiot start-ups with no proven viabable business plan, no proven value added to society, and you guys get all hot bothered when a large company throws half of what they pay a secretary at someone who is talented and deserves more, and you guys get excited?

    --
    niceFire.com - Humor and Lego's or Lego's and Humor or Some Combination of
  5. Re:Question: Why is it... by Howie · · Score: 2

    What do they know about perl? They don't even USE it as their database package!

    What do you know about perl? It's a programming language, not a database package!
    (Besides, as someone else pointed out, they use mod_perl - the smarter perl for apache)

    --
    "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  6. remember Yahoo's gift to Larry Wall? by _|()|\| · · Score: 2

    That's nothing. Yahoo is putting Larry Wall's daughter through college.

  7. Blackstar are a bunch of diamond geezers. by jns · · Score: 3

    It's all about the hits. Just think of the amount of people reading this on Slashdot who'd be tempted to click on the link to find out who they are.

    There is far too much cynicism and paranoia here, whilst I couldnt confirm that the motives of Blackstar were 100% altruistic, I do know that they feel that they owe some debt to the Perl community having built the infrastructire of their business upon the labours of untold and unanmed people in that community.

    Sure they are going to gain some kudos from this, and sure they are going to get some extra hits from it, but I am convinced that the greater benefit they will accrue, and I am sure they are aware of this, is from what will be achieved from their contribution in the development of Perl programming language and from the development of the Perl Community that will be a result of this group effort.

    The most cynical tack I would take on this is that it will encourage more talented Perl programmers to want to work for them, and if so more power to their elbow.

    I think if they were simpl aiming for a few more hits they would have piucked a more high profile venue to make their mark

  8. When will I ever learn? by brokeninside · · Score: 2

    I really ought not to feed the trolls ....

    if you had a SOCIAL LIFE you would not be REPLYING point by point to my post.

    Is that so?

    Let's me think. This past weekend I went to the symphony to see a rendition of one of Alexander Zemlinksky's works, had hot passionate sex with a woman, turned down on offer to go out to lunch to attend a birthday party and was suprised by two different friends paying unexpected visits (one Friday night, one Saturday night).

    What does having or not having a social life have to do with replying to a post on /. late Monday morning?

    you also have a quote from SIGNAL 11 who is a FUCKING CUNT anyway, so i must conclude that YOU TOO are an IDIOT.

    If I am an idiot, at least I am an idiot that can compose a post that is coherent and displays an understanding of logic. Too bad the same can not be said for you.

    your POOR ATTEMPT at HUMOUR is also LAUGHABLE and shows how LACKING your SOCIAL SKILLS are.

    Not unlike your uncouth use of capital letters to display emphasis in a web forum at the dawn of the 21st century.

    have a day,

    -l

  9. No money in Open source. by Restil · · Score: 2

    Hasn't anyone ever told you people there is no money to be made with open source software? There's NO way you can make a living at it. Why would anyone want to PAY money to someone for something they could just download for free.

    Hmmmm...

    :)

    -Restil

    --
    Play with my webcams and lights here
  10. Re:Blackstar. by jbrw · · Score: 2

    Last year, 'round about this time, I ordered a video from there to send to my brother in Oz as a festive season present. It's the first time i've ordered from there (erm, and the last time - i'm not a big pre-recorded video purchaser).

    Some time just before the festive season itself, I received another package from them. "Yippee! Misdirect goods!" thinks I.

    Nup - they had sent copies of "It's a Wonderful Life" out to thousands of people who had purchased off them in the previous year, as a festive season thank you gift.

    Wow. I was impressed, anyway...

    If I ever have need to purchase another pre-recorded video, they've got my cash (erm, credit card number. Whatever.)

    ...j

  11. I am very glad to see this by brokeninside · · Score: 3

    I've been using Perl for about three years and have loved every minute of it.

    About six months ago I picked up Dr. Conway's Object Oriented Perl. Reading that book really took my understanding of Perl to a whole new level. Dr. Conway has a gift for truly grokking the heart of a matter and explaing it in a comprehensible manner. I've learned how to use Perl from the standard sources, the man pages, the FAQs, the camel and llama books. OOP taught me to understand Perl. I can not reccomend OOP highly enough for people that want to deeply understand Perl.

    I really look forward to seeing what Dr. Conway will do with his year sabbatical to work on things Perl. He has a great mind.

    On a tangent, I also think this is part of a growing wave of programming going in the right direction. Using public calls for money to put competent people to work on free software is a great way make free software a more intrical part of people's every day lives. It would be funny to look at sources of Perl or the Linux kernel and see:
    /* the following code was made possible by a sponsorship from John Doe */

    have a day,

    -l

    1. Re:I am very glad to see this by brokeninside · · Score: 2
      Object Orientated Programing is seriouslt FUCKED UP concept from the start (Since when did your CPU work in Objects and Methods?),

      The last I checked, CPUs were much, much cheaper than programmers. Given that virtually every study down on programmer productivity and programming paradigms has found a correlation between high level languages using paradigms such as OO and higher productivity, a cost/benefit analysis will result in a positive verdict for OO programming.

      Perl is also a seriously FUCKED UP language.

      This is an accurate statement. I would certainly consider Perl to be be an extremely esoteric language. That said, if people are highly productive with it, what does it matter?

      Therefore, OOP Perl is only used by fucked up crack heads who want to be cool, but are actually to FUCKING STUPID too use a proper language that is actually SUITED TOO THE JOB.

      Someone seems to a have a very poor grasp of logic.


      1. OOP is FU.
      2. Perl is FU.
      .:
      3. People who use Perl are crackheads and too stupid to use a proper language.

      Your conclusion certainly does not result from your premises. The only person apparently on crack is the anonymous author of the reply to my post.

      What Winston Churchill said of democracy in relation to other forms of government can be said of OOP in relation to other forms of programming paradigms. OOP is the worst programming paradigm, except for all of the other programming paradigms.

      The bottom line is that thinking in OOP is typically easier than thinking in other paradigms. The result is that programmers can typically solve problems faster with OOP than with other languages.

      But one of the beautiful things about Perl is that one does not have to use OOP. Perl can use just about any programming paradigm one desires.

      Also, your use of the word "Grok" implies that you have done a couple of computer courses (MCSE perhaps?) and have read the Hacker Dictionary, and now consider yourself a Geek.

      Really? What about the word grok implies that I've had any computer courses.

      For the record, I'm not an MCSE, nor have I ever even read the Hacker's Dictionary. I came across the word 'grok' when I read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land while in seventh grade. In the crowd I hung around with in high school, the word 'grok' was in everyday usage. This crowd only ended up producing two computer geeks out of about twenty people, so I don't really get how using 'grok' implies anything to do with computers.

      Get yourself a FUCKING LIFE buddy, and learn A REAL LANGUAGE!

      Sure, I'll learn a real language, with the provision that you learn logic. Of course not everyone has the mental capacity to understand logic, so it might be a bit beyond you. Then again, you never know unless you try.

      As for getting a life, I have one thank you. If I didn't, I couldn't have composed this reply could I? The non-living don't read /.

      have a day,

      -l

  12. Re:Question: Why is it... by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 3

    What do they know about perl? They don't even USE it as their database package!

    [nico@nico nico]$ HEAD http://www.blackstar.co.uk/
    200 OK
    Cache-Control: private
    Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 15:44:50 GMT
    Pragma: no-cache
    Server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_perl/1.21
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
    Expires: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 15:44:50 GMT
    Client-Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 14:55:31 GMT
    Client-Peer: 194.202.192.13:80


    --

  13. Re:Well, I'm impressed by psergiu · · Score: 2

    And maybe Damian will code the much sought Perfect::Moderation perl module :)

    --

    --
    1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
  14. Re:Blackstar. by Rob+Kaper · · Score: 3
    Does anyone have any details on why Blackstar should feel so endebted to Conway?

    Maybe because they are one of the few newconomy websites that truly understand the Internet and e-commerce.

    • Their websites is focussed on the products, nothing else.
    • When e-mailing them you get a direct response with an estimated reply time based on their inbox size and present crew - 24hrs a day.
    • One bloke congratulated me with a victory of my national team during the Euro2000 football (soccer) championships. At 4am.
    • One of my orders got lost in the mail or something, bottomline, it never arrived. They replaced it free of charge, no questions asked (except to return one of the items in case a second one would ever show up).

    I've always felt very comfortable shopping there, because Blackstar seems to care about its customers. It doesn't amaze me that instead of patenting stupid stuff like Amazon, they contribute to cool stuff.

    I don't want to turn this into a commercial, so I must admit I am not happy with their plain text login form/handler. Or that some actors/actresses and goods appear in the database multiple times.

    I've always felt very comfortable shopping there, because Blackstar seems to care about its customers. It doesn't amaze me that instead of patenting stupid stuff like Amazon, they contribute to cool stuff. Not all companies are stupid or evil and Damian Conway is benefitting from that right now.

  15. Re:Ahh, ok. by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 2
    Err?? If they implement it directly in mod_perl instead of CGI-like 'Registry' files, then there's no reason for '.pl' endings.

    --

  16. This is good news. by Hornsby · · Score: 2

    Damian isn't just another perl hacker... Anybody who's read even part of his Object Oriented Perl book understands the kind of "Deep Magic" coding that this guy knows how to do. I'd say he's up there with Tom Christiansen and Randal Schwartz in his perl prowess. Of course this is every hackers dream. Getting paid to code GPL'd programs in your language of choice. I'm just glad that Damian gets to write a bunch more neat OO perl mods.

    --
    A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
  17. Re:Well, I'm impressed by Ratface · · Score: 2

    "remember, Slash is coded in Perl, so the better Perl gets, in theory, the easier it should be to make Slash better"

    ... in Latin :-)

    Nah seriously I'm in agreement. I try to be as language agnostic as possible, coding in perl and PHP on *nix and ASP using both VBScript and JavaScript as appropriate on MS platforms.

    Conway sounds like a genius, although I have trouble imaginging the importance of Lingua::Romana::Perligata!

    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"

    --

    A little planning goes a long way...