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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."
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.
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.
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