Perl Foundation Awards Perl Development Grant to Larry Wall

Krellis writes: "The Perl Foundation today announced that they have awarded a Perl Development Grant to Larry Wall, the creator of Perl and designer of Perl 6, joining Dan Sugalski and Dr. Damian Conway, the other 2002 grant recipients. The Perl Development Grants are funded by donations; over USD 80,000 has been donated so far, a total of USD 240,000 is needed for the three grants. See http://donate.perl-foundation.org/ for more information on how you can pitch in - every dollar counts! See also the use.perl.org story for more information."

Comments

Maybe it is just an honorary thing...

[bovinewasteproduct]

Could be that this is just a way to honor him and he will never see the cash.

The article said they did not have a enough money for all of the grants and Damian Conway had to have the cash to take the break from the university down under. They are shy of about $160,000 which may take a little while to dig up..:)

Sound good to me.
BWP

Re:Maybe it is just an honorary thing...

[gnat]

It's real--the checks went out last week. The idea is to get people started on their good work, rather than waiting for however long it takes to raise the rest of the cash. Part of Dan's duties will be to raise the rest of the money. Having someone without the distractions of a day job (I edit books, Kevin runs a company) to handle the corporate fundraising should make the rest of the money easier to raise.

--Nat

Re:Well, duh!

[babbage]

As I understand it, Larry Wall is/was an employee of O'Reilly, but I don't think he had any job duties per se; rather it was more of a patronage for him to keep working on Perl while he was on their payroll. (Think of how the Medici family sponsored artists during the Italian Renaissance -- same idea here.)

With the establishment of this new Perl Foundation, maybe the idea is to formalize these kinds of patronages for key developers. Damien Conway was first because he's such a great teacher & advocate, and Dan Sugalski was second because he needed more time to work on the Parrot engine for Perl6. Now that Larry is joining this, hopefully he'll have more time to work on the high level language specification...

Re:Great! But why is Larry no.3?

[babbage]

Of the two previous ( slash current ) recipients of the grant, the first was a college professor -- not a student -- who used the patronage to travel the world teaching Perl to people, and the second had been a gainfully employed member of a search engine company who is going to be using his grant year to work on Perl6's core engine. It's not exactly that they were unemployable... :)

Re:Great! But why is Larry no.3?

[Krellis]

Larry was, up until October, funded by O'Reilly to continue his development of Perl. Unfortunately, in the economic climate that we are all facing, ORA had to make the decision to lay off Larry in October, after 5 years of supporting him. The previous two grants were arranged and planned when it was assumed that Larry would still be working. When that ceased to be the case, things were brought together such that Larry could also be brought on board.

Re:At the risk of being curmudgeonly...

[Krellis]

As I posted in a different comment thread, Larry was laid off by ORA in October, and has been without work since then. He could go back into industry and get a "real job". I imagine his old employer, the JPL, for one, would be happy to have him back, but that would leave him with very little time to dedicate to the continued development of Perl 6.

to correct a few earlier posts...

[psycho_tinman]

warning: this is just the situation as I see it and have heard.. no official quotes or insider info here

Larry Wall is the founder of Perl, yes.. however, usually he does less active development on the language itself, usually stepping into settle a dispute or submitting the occasional patch.. Since the Perl 6 initiative was launched, he has been busier than in recent years, because of the RFC approval process and being the lead architect for Perl 6.

Damian Conway, in the past year, has contributed (IMHO) enormously to the popularity, usefulness and general knowledge of Perl.. he's toured giving talks and lectures, written more modules per week than even an ordinarily active Perl programmer would write in an year (Ok, some of them, I don't get, and others leave me just scratching my head..) As I understand it, he was given the grant so he could take a sabbatical from his university and concentrate on Perl full time for one year..

so, its irrelevant as to who gets it and in which order.. certainly, I think Larry Wall should get a grant, but to point fingers and question why he wasn't the first to get it, is simply to make a superficial assessment without knowing the facts behind the grants..

One final note: last year, the powers that be committed to funding Damian Conway, and it worked out well, even though they promised money that they hadn't collected (at that point). If you use Perl in any way, please consider making a donation..

I'm personally rooting for Dan Sugalski to work some more on Perl threads :o) hope he finds time for it in the course of the year...

Re:Well, duh!

[cjcollier]

Mr. Wall was until recently employed by O'Reilly and Associates. I believe that the perl community (C/O YAS) was looking to sponsor those who didn't have a job where they could spend great ammounts of time working on Perl. When Larry fell into this category, they jumped at the opportunity to add him to the roster. or at least that's how I see it. I'm glad they've given us the opportunity to support Larry and the whole of the Perl community. I hope we can compensate him as well as ORA did.

Re:Isn't it bad policy?

[gnat]

We're not granting people money we don't have. We've issued 4-month grants to Damian and Larry, and a 3-month grant to Dan. That's what we do have money for. During the coming months, we'll be fundraising to raise the rest of the year's money so we can make further grants.

As for freeness being an issue, we're actually surprised at how readily people will donate. It's just a matter of having someone on the ground to make the presentation and explain the benefits. Dan's going to be handling that part-time for the duration of his grant, and we expect great things as a result.

So yes, it is bad policy to grant money you don't have. Fortunately for us, we're not doing that :-)

Nathan Torkington

Re:Best way to use money?

[gnat]

Ha! Vacation? No. The travel budget comes from our goal of keeping the people we fund active in the community. That means sending them to conferences like YAPC and OSCON, as well as regular trips to see other Perl Monger groups.

Damian has set the bar very high in this regard--see the start of his 2002 schedule, and read his 2001 diary to see how much he gets around. While I doubt Larry and Dan will be travelling internationally as much as Damian, we do want them to visit user groups outside their home town.

In an ideal world, a conference would pay Larry to be Larry. Unfortunately, you might have noticed that this world isn't ideal. Larry has to pay his own way to conferences, just like everyone else.

--Nathan Torkington

Re:Well, duh!

[chromatic]

O'Reilly is willing to make books available in similar ways (redistributable and modifiable provided you make the copyright and changes clear) -- it's usually the choice of the author. Look at their Running Samba or Open Sources books for examples. (I know there's a link to a page somewhere that describes this in more detail, but I can't find it. You'll just have to trust me for now. :|)