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For Sale: 1 Damian Conway, 1 Dan Sugalski

Posted by chrisd on from the here-comes-another-one dept.

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!

7 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. These guys should contact O'Reilly ... by cygnusx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... with the money they make out of selling Perl books, they could easily fulfil a goodly part of the modest $55000 they talk about on this page. (Yes, I know 55k was the *2001* budget.)

    But dunno how much people will be willing to fork out to charity during tough times.. last year this time, things were much better.

    1. Re:These guys should contact O'Reilly ... by doom · · Score: 4, Insightful


      O'Reilly also keeps Larry Wall on staff, and just let
      him do whatever he wants.

      Lack of support for the perl community is not
      one of O'Reilly's problems.

  2. Re:Buying people... by Howie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    duh, they do Windows and Macintosh, and anything else you care to mention (Psion5 Perl?)

    *you* may not do windows, but why would such a prolific programming language cut off a huge chunk of potential audience.

    Oh sorry, you implied microsoft was bad, so I should laugh. nyuk nyuk.

    --
    "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  3. donations by CmdrSanity · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This article kind of got me thinking. Initially I thought it would be a great idea to send these guys some money for their hard work (and take a little tax deduction for myself on the side :) ). But then I saw some troll post about how he was glad that there was charity that didn't involve "starving black children."

    That got me thinking: could the money be better used elsewhere? A $10 donation to a PERL hacker will buy him a six pack and some chips. $10 to the right humanitarian organization will literally save people's lives. But I guess that with donating to the PERL guys, you'll actually get to see some results from your charity. With most humanitarian groups you never know where the money goes.

  4. Shilling For Amazon... by ObligatoryUserName · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I hate to sound like an advertisement, but as a rule I'm probably 2-300% more likely to donate money if people use the uber-easy Amazon Honor system. I don't have to give anyone new my personal information, it all happens in a few quick clicks, and it doesn't have fits with my debit card like PayPal does (they require a 1 time refunded charge to verify the card since it isn't linked to a billing address like a credit card is - I know it's for my own good, but knowing that it would take a month to process always saps my will.)


    In this case I might go against my set ways, but if they'd set up an Honor System account I wouldn't be writing this note right now, I'd be donating!

    1. Re:Shilling For Amazon... by ObligatoryUserName · · Score: 4, Insightful

      85% of $20 is a heck of a lot more than 100% of $0.

      Especially because I hate to use credit cards/love to use my debit card, I like sharing the card number as few places as I can get by with. That 15% they lose is the cost of my piece of mind and the convenience of my donation. (Though, like I say, I'll probably make an exception in this case, but that doesn't mean I don't reserve my right to grumble about it.)

  5. Re:It's a poor system... by sparkyz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Back-up folks. Soliciting contributions to fund the work of major contributors to the significant development of a great tool is in no way a sign of failure. It's a time tried model that has brought us a lot of great advances in a multitude of other areas. Here's a great example: A pharmaceutical company gives a research grant to a university professor to conduct a study or work on a treatment for a specific condition that he/she/it may not otherwise be able to dedicate time to. Yeah, I know, there are attendant patent issues and all that; but the idea is still sound. Some life saving drugs that were produced on the same model:

    Synthroid
    Fosamax
    Rezulin
    and the inattentive programmers perennial favorite: Ritalin

    Count me in when the time comes. Lord knows I've made enough money hacking Perl. I can give a little back.

    --
    Oops