Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
Perl Foundation Awards Perl Development Grant to Perl Creator
Scott.
Is issuing grants the best way (from a taxation perspective) to use these donations?
/. thread about this but I remember it being rather ambiguous.
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
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
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.]
Last Thursday, the Microsoft's community received a boost when Microsoft chose software developer Bill Gates as the first recipient of the Microsoft Foundation grant. Microsoft initially donated an estimated $500,000 worth of hardware and software. See http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/default.asp?subid =22 for more information on how you can pitch in - every dollar counts!
"We're pleased to be able to let Bill focus on golf without distraction," said Craig Mundie, lead moron of the Microsoft Foundation. "Through these grants, the support of the monopolization -- including sizeable amounts from victims, can be put to use for the good of everyone!"
Yes, I'm just kidding, you can mod me down now. *close his eyes*
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
Larry on the other hand has other sources of income and didn't really need the grant as much. Now it seems that the Perl Foundation would like Larry to travel more to promote Perl. Since travel is pretty costly the Perl Foundation wanted to help Larry defer some of those costs.
Damion Conway was a professor, who took a sabbatical to do his perl thing this year. Larry Wall was an O'Reilly employee, the last I heard, and was being paid to develop (wait for it) perl. So what's the story behind the story here? Is ORA looking for help to pay Larry's salary, or just a tax deduction, or is something else going on
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... :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
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 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.
A former co-worker of mine told me this story one day. I got a kick out of it.
Anyway, apparently my co-worker's fence to the rear of his house had deteriorated to a severe state so he decided to repair it.
Being the polite guy (and probably wanting a little help with the funding of such a project) he is, my co-worker decided to contact the neighbors, all of whom he indicated he didn't know at all.
So he set off around the opposite side of the block to knock on the neighbors door directly behind his house. A gentleman comes to the door and my co-worker introduces himself and the gentleman introduces himself as Larry Wall.
My co-worker doesn't recognize the name since he really doesn't program to any extreme degree, more of a planning/management type guy.
But since the company is a software development house he knows several people who use Perl and they describe what they do with it on an almost daily basis. Thus he is aware of Perl.
So apparently the chit-chat continues on and the topic eventually comes to what each person does for a living.
My co-worker describes his job and then Larry says that he is currently writing a book for O'Reilly.
My co-worker is definitely intrigued by this answer and asks what sort of book and Larry describes that it's a book detailing the (is his a more appropriate adjective here) latest version of Perl.
When my co-worker hears the word Perl he gets all excited. His reaction was basically that it's pretty cool to have a neighbor who has contributed so much to the programming community.
Anyway to make an already long story shorter my understanding is that Larry was really cool about the fence, basically letting my co-worker take care of the details (the way my co-worker wanted them) and I believe he helped with the cost as well.
So if you contribute to the Perl Development Grant be aware that you are helping support some really nice folks! And that is to be commended!
I hope I got the details correct, at least that's how I remember them....
Caution: Contents under pressure
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...
It is an icon aware world, and people like to receive some sort of notoriety or publicity for making contributions to charities. For example stickers such as "i gave blood" or "World Wildlife Fund" are prevalent.
Why not generate a cool gif that people can display on their web sites to signify that they contribute to the Perl Foundation. Might encourage contributions.
Figured it would end with the fence being built with a swiss army knife and some duct tape, or something.
--Nathan Torkington
Kudos to the Perl community. They are building something truly great here. However, I won't give them a dime until they put more effort into being a bit nicer to people who need help. Personally, I've found them to be extremely helpful and a great resource. I've also seen them be downright nasty and arrogant towards people they perceive to be less than "elite". I know there's been some effort to do that in the past, however it seems to have died out from a public image point of view.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
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.
"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.