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Perl Foundation Awards Perl Development Grant to Larry Wall

Posted by timothy on from the who-better dept.

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."

10 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Well, duh! by PeterClark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hate to say the obvious, but why wasn't he the _first_ one that the grant was awarded to? After all, he is only the creator and lead architect of PERL. Are there any blindly obvious reasons why this didn't happen earlier?
    :Peter

  2. Cart Before the Horse by solman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Am I the only one who thinks it is a bad idea to announce the awards before the money has been raised to pay for them?

    The could have delayed the announcement, made fewer awards or made smaller awards.

    Now, instead of focusing their efforts on raising money for future activities, they instead have to focus on digging out of a $160K hole.

    1. Re:Cart Before the Horse by randal_hicks · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Look at it this way: At least sponsors can see what their money is buying! I don't foresee them having any problem coming up with the money... besides, they have that wonderful paragraph about people feeling warm and fuzzy about the generousity of contributers, especially people who contributed early on.

  3. Best way to use money? by lkaos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is issuing grants the best way (from a taxation perspective) to use these donations?

    If the Perl Foundation is a non-profit (which I assume they are), wouldn't it make more sense to take these guys on the pay-roll so that the money wasn't taxed except for the consideribly smaller amount that would be paid for general living expenses?

    The 20K travel budget is what suprised me... Since that's a grant, it's not 20K for travel because Larry would still have to pay taxes on that no?

    I'm not terribly proficent in tax laws but something just seems a bit fishy to me... I wonder if it has to do with whether one can claim that writing perl is charity...

    If it isn't, then there definitely needs to be a movement to make OSS a charitable act because it certainly is. I know there was a /. thread about this but I remember it being rather ambiguous.

    --
    int func(int a);
    func((b += 3, b));
    1. Re:Best way to use money? by Krellis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In the current economic climate, travel stipends from conferences are going way down, and sometimes even being eliminated. Then there are also talks to smaller groups, which can't necessarily afford to fly someone out to see them, but would get a great benefit (and hopefully give back in some way, too) from having a visit; local Perl Mongers groups, to name just one example.

  4. Isn't it bad policy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To grant people money you don't have. As we all should be able to admit, too, most people using something that comes for free generally aren't too willing to donate money to an associated organization. [This is similar to why selling OSS isn't a viable business model - services, probably but OSS, no.]

  5. Re:Of Course -- he's on the board by Krellis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As the "patron" of the foundation, I do not believe Larry had any input into this, and I also believe that he will no longer be filling this position, as the recipient of this grant.

  6. Re:Great! But why is Larry no.3? by gnat · · Score: 3, Insightful
    No conspiracy or disrespect--Larry only recently stepped forward to say "you know, if you wanted to save me from the time sink of a day job, I could get through this perl6 thing a whole lot faster." (my words, not his). Dan and Damian have been on the cards since late last year.

    --Nathan Torkington

  7. Re:huh? by pne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With the small difference that Microsoft is a company that makes money, and Bill Gates is presumably an employee who already receives salary or benefits or whatever someone at that level gets. The Perl community does not, of itself, make money, and Larry is not employed by the community -- well, until now.

    A better comparison might be if the Linux community paid Linus Torvalds. As it is, he works for Transmeta; if he didn't, he probably wouldn't be making any money. Similar with Larry.

    --
    Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
  8. Re:YAS/Perl Foundation have lost it! by god · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I disagree. YAPC::Europe has been planning so far ahead because people have been complaining that they needed this much time to convince their bosses to sponsor them to go. You don't have to go to the beer events if you don't want to. It just happened to be a nice tie in as most of the Perl people I know are quite happy to take part in the Oktoberfest. Accomodation and flights are cheap at the moment (the yapc::europe crew have even organised group accomodation bookings, check the website) but as is often the case in Europe, yes, flights will get more expensive towards the event.

    "The Science of Perl" is a great topic which hasn't been explored already. Granted, there will be Perl 6 talks (hey, it looks like Larry will be there!), but it is nice to make a change.